First Presbyterian Church
Crazy Stories
Sermon for Christmas Eve 2006
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Listen for the word of God as it is found in Luke 1:26-33.

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth , 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary.

28 And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."

29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

30 The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

This ends our reading of the word of God in Luke.

Anthem

Listen for the word of God as it is found in Titus 2:11-14.

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12 training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,13 while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. 14 He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

This ends our reading of God's word.

I remember that when I was little, we'd go see my grandmother for Christmas. She had a television with a remote. It was an expensive tv – it had a remote control. It was a big thing. I could easily hold it in both hands. I loved using it, but I didn't get to very often, because I had two sisters, who wanted to use it also. It seemed like magic to me.

A woman named Karen Schrage thought she had some real tv magic. Her tv was really old. It had been in the apartment when she first rented it. She was playing with a slinky she got as a gift, and her tv came on. You remember slinkies.

Karen invited her friends to try it. I expect they didn't believe her about the tv, until they tried the slinky. Her brother got so good at it, he was able to use the slinky to control the volume.

Was the tv magic? Was the slinky? Unfortunately, no.

It turns out that before 1980, TV remote controls communicated with the television using ultrasonic sound-- sound too high-pitched for us to hear. When you pushed a button on the remote, a tiny hammer inside the remote hit tiny metal bars. So tiny, humans can't hear the sound. It might have sounded a little like this.

Zenith introduced the first ultrasonic remote control in 1956. They got reports of kids switching channels by spilling pennies onto the floor from their piggy banks. We had also heard of people switching on TVs by jingling their keys.

Nowadays, the remote controls use infrared light, which is why anytime someone stands between you and the television, the remote doesn't always work. 1

So even though it's crazy, a slinky can operate a television. One of my favorite crazy stores is from when I taught preschool in the hilly city of Seattle in the eighties.

One day, a four year old came up to me and said, “Last night, we saw a house drive down the street in the middle of the night!” She was thrilled. I was a little confused. It turns out friends of her parents had bought an old house in downtown Seattle . They needed to move it to its new home. If any of you have been to Seattle lately, you know that it has a huge traffic problem, not just downtown. It wasn't much better in the eighties. So the friends had to move the house through downtown Seattle in the middle of the night, when there was less traffic. They had a huge truck and a bigger trailer to drive the house to its new lot. I read all about it in that afternoon's paper. So the four-year-old told the complete amazing truth.

This next crazy story is about a potato. A youth group in Asheville NC held a baked potato luncheon at the church on Nov. 12. Some of the youth attended a youth gathering at Montreat Conference Center , and learned about the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan . Some people are calling it genocide. Conditions are pretty terrible there. One refugee camp I read about doesn't have enough clean water, and people still fear for their lives. Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has been involved, trying to improve conditions. It's been so dangerous, international aid groups had a hard time getting in.

Caroline Wilson, a high school junior, convinced her youth group to do something to help. The youth served a baked potato lunch to the congregation as a fundraiser.

   While washing the potatoes in preparation for the meal, youth group member Nate Torrence spotted something extraordinary. Their youth pastor Aimee said  “All of a sudden out of nowhere there's this potato, out of the midst of the others, that had this smile on its face. They were like, ‘we can't cook him. We have to keep him.'”

They served dinner, and made over $2,000. The next day Pastor Aimee took the smiling potato to session meeting, and it was suggested that the potato might yield even more money for the cause if it were sold on eBay.

The winning bid, ironically, came from Grace Covenant's church choir. They bid $153.51. Smiley the potato can stay in Asheville , in Pastor Aimee's office. But people who heard about Smiley the potato sent in over $800 more. The youth group is sending all the money in to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. 2

We hear about terrible things that go on in the world, and adults have heard about them for so long time, many of us have moved from fear to discouragement to apathy. So we keep the news at arm's length. But youth don't have the luxury of age, and so they aren't discouraged. They have energy and a little bit of craziness, to see the smile in a potato. The pastor said the potato “was like God smiling on us and all our efforts.”

I tell you these crazy stories this Christmas eve because the story of Jesus is a little bit crazy. The elements don't add up. But God's arithmetic is much different from ours. Forgiveness, unmerited grace, and unconditional love are part of it. A child born into a poor family, in a backwater town in a backwater land, come to bring a kingdom of justice and peace to the world. He called people to feed the hungry and heal the sick and help the hurting. And we do so, not out of the need to be in control or feel powerful, but because in doing so, we glorify God. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace.

1 Adams, Cecil, “The Straight Dope” Chicago Tribune , 7/27/90 , http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_270.html

2 Hill, Toya, “The Smiling Spud,” 12/8/06 , Presbyterian News Service www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/06656.htm and “Smiling Potato fetches $153 on eBay,” 12/14/06 , Presbyterian News Service www.pcusa.org/pcnews/2006/06666.htm