A special Christmas post: Not sure if I posted it last year. Oh well. Here goes. Its an edited version of a little talk I gave at a Christmas program last year at Upper Perkiomen High School. Premise: I wondered what it would be like if TV news existed when the first Christmas happened: A phone rings in the newsroom. A guy is phoning in a tip. He says: do you hear what I hear? The reporter (slightly annoyed, as all good reporters are) says, well… what do you hear? The answer: something about a song in the night. Immediately another tip call comes in: “do you see what I see? A star, a star – kind of dancing in the night – did you guys see it?” The reporter says, “No. Tell you what – we’ll get a crew out there to Bethlehem to check it out. “ The news crew heads into that little town – Bethlehem – and runs into some very excited men. Shepherds. Smiling and happy. “Shepherds,” the crew asks. “Why this jubilee?” They explain that they had looked up and they saw a star...shining in the east, beyond them far. A little boy runs up to the news truck. He blurts out: “Come, they told me – a newborn King to see! He looks a little upset. Im a poor boy; I have no gift to bring...thats fit to give the king. Up ride these guys on camels, a big entourage: lots of servants and donkeys carrying cargo. The three dudes on the biggest camels are decked out in extremely fancy clothes and jewelry, and they have body guards – Secret Service types – and the news crew learns that these fancy-schmancy guys are three kings, just arrived from the Orient, bearing gifts for this baby theyd heard about. And, well, they’ve seen that star, too – “westward leading, still proceeding,” their spokesman says – and they’ve ended up here in Bethlehem. Weird. At this point, the reporters have only bits and pieces of a story; they can’t really put it all together. They call back to the station: Its about a strangely bright star, apparently; and its about a baby everyone wants to see; and we even saw three ships come sailing in. Its got this whole little town of Bethlehem agitated.” They hang up and stop in a coffee shop, BrewBucks. The cameraman thinks to himself, “after this crazy night, they oughta re-name this place ‘Star-Bucks.’” Next thing you know, the news truck pulls up to a little stable – an odd place for a crowd to gather. Ground Zero. That baby is here. Shepherds, animals, the cattle are lowing (not exactly a silent night), and the poor baby wakes! The other stations now have crews on the scene; they’re setting up their live shots around the perimeter of the stable; they’re clamoring to get some tidbits of information that the other stations dont have. (“Do you know what I know?”) Some of the stations are on the air, yapping away, inaccurate information notwithstanding (you know how TV news is!), missing the main story. They don’t have that yet, but they have plenty of strange “sidebar” stories that they’re hearing about. Like the one about a inn-keeper who had a no vacancy sign out… so he turned away the traveling pregnant woman and her husband… and then he saw that the birth was of some newborn king…so now he’s just kicking himself because all the news trucks are down the street….and his place could have had all the free publicity. And some have the sidebar story about the little boy who played a drum solo for the baby. All kinds of crazy rumors are swirling – way out, unconfirmed stuff – about a fat guy traipsing around in a red suit… a snowman that dances… and a tale about someones grandmother getting run over by a reindeer. Crazy stuff. What do they have to do with the baby story? (Turns out that would be a question asked for centuries.) And of course this points up a key duty of a reporter: to figure out which things are peripheral, and which things are central to the story, you know? You want to keep the peripheral things from distracting from the heart of the story. And the heart of it – which I’m sure those news crews would eventually find out – is a real event, an event without which we would have no Christmas. We might have end-of-the-year parties, and family gatherings....but no Christmas. We wouldnt have the carols....the cookies...the wreaths and the presents and the lights. We wouldnt have Santa, or the great music, or the red and green, or the warm-festive feel. The kids’ great sense of excitement and wonder – we wouldnt have that. All that Christmas means to us, all the ways it fills our memories and imaginations – all of that would be lost. And the reason we have all this, and enjoy it so, is that something happened in a little town – “the town of David” – in Israel. BC turned into AD..... because of the good news the angels sang: “Christ is born in Bethlehem.” We sing: “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see / hail the incarnate Deity.” God condescends, and descends, in human flesh; all of history changed; and now, as we look at all this from 2,000 years distance, we are filled with wonder and thanks. In the original Christmas account, an angelic being told Joseph that he should call Marys child Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. He would rescue his followers and fix their broken relationship with God. And so we sing: God and sinners reconciled. Thats the good news that erupted in the little town of Bethlehem. They are called herald angels for a reason: they came with NEWS! A message. You listen to it. And, if you choose, you believe it. As we sing: Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in. Merry Christmas!
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 19:42:02 +0000
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