This non-preaching worship was written for use the Sunday after Christmas, but really could be used anytime in the 12 Days — or event Advent, I suppose. It calls for 5 readers plus the leader/narrator, but is adaptable. Credits and sources follow; copyright permissions are really important.

Leader: Welcome to worship on this First Sunday of Christmas. Christmas has 12 days, and we try to observe them all!

The First Sunday of Christmas is typically for us at Woodside a service of lessons and carols, one more time to hear the familiar stories, sing the familiar songs and pray for peace in the new year. This year is a little like that but a little different, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

For now, let me say welcome! If you’re new with us, we are especially pleased to welcome you and hope you find food for your spirit.

So believe me when I say: whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome at Woodside Church.

Let’s worship.

SONG: a stable lamp is lighted
Reader 1: Christians have celebrated the birth of Jesus for about 1600 years or so. You thought I was going to say 2000 years, didn’t you?

Nope. For the first 200 years after Jesus’ death, no one really talked about his birth, and not until the year 336 of the Common Era was December 25 established as the official date of birth — established by Constantine, the emperor.

Whenever the state dictates religious practices, it is safe to assume they have an ulterior motive; in Constantine’s case, the ulterior motive was certainly the goal of co-opting Christians to his imperial purposes.

Leader: (Constantine set the date, but much later they say it was Charles Dickens who would give us the philanthropic Christmas we know today — or perhaps the fine people at Coca-Cola, because capitalism is just as ruthless as empire at twisting sacred things for exploitative purposes.)

Reader 2: Only Matthew and Luke among the gospels include stories of the baby Jesus: Luke with the shepherds and angels and manger and whatnot; Matthew with astrologers from the east when Jesus was a toddler. If these stories are legend — and let’s be clear, they never were the central aspect of faith for the earliest Christians — then, we have to wonder what else Matthew and Luke meant to tell us in these stories.

Reader 3: Matthew’s story of Asian astrologers worshipping the baby seems to suggest a desire for “global neighborhood” at the core of the Jesus story.

Reader 4: Luke’s story is filled with challenges to the supremacy of Caesar and takes pains to include the poorest outcasts as central characters in the story.

Leader: So, with global neighbors and vulnerable people, plus the way Luke’s angels and Jesus’ own life seemed to thumb their noses at empire in every way they can, we have set as our theme for Christmas this year, not so much the “birth of Jesus," but “the Birth of Resistance.”

Reader 5: Or maybe the “rebirth,” since we know the prophets have been trying to tell us this all along. Nevertheless, we’re going to try today to hear something a little different in these stories and songs, along with the words of the prophets and other poets who continue to remind us of the need of our world for salvation, for transformation – who continue to remind us to hope.

Leader: So, I invite you to listen, to sing, to pray, to reflect on Jesus as the one we worship who bears for us God’s ancient vision of a new way. A way of non-empire, non-exploitation, non-competition and non-acquisition. This is Jesus, the one born to save us from our own worst impulses, the one born to save us from ourselves. Let’s pray.

God of light and love and imagination: We gather in this sacred season to refresh our memories, to renew our spirits, to remember the moments when you show us something else. Bless us in this worship, and let our hearts and minds and moods be shaped by hope and love and purpose. Gather us in the resistance you desire. Make us your people again. Teach us to love. amen.

SONG — Isaiah the prophet has written of old, v 1-3

Leader: Luke is the story we know best, of course. So let’s read it again, but this time, maybe just the subversive parts…

Reader 1: In those days, Caesar Augustus published a decree ordering a census of the whole Roman world…. Joseph went to register with Mary, who was pregnant. While they were there … Mary gave birth to her firstborn…. There were shepherds in the area living in the fields and keeping night watch by turns over their flock. The angel of God appeared to them, and the glory of God shone around them…. The angel said to them …

Leader: (interrupting) Remember: these were people who never got any news first. No one ever bothered to tell shepherds anything. And yet…

Reader 1: The angel appeared to them and said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’

Leader: Savior? Lord? But only Augustus was savior and lord. Somebody trying to stir up something? Who is this child, who is this writer, stealing Augustus Caesar’s miracle birth story?

Reader 2: Furthermore, only Augustus was the bearer of peace. And only Caesars had the power to do anything to affect the “whole world.” How could world peace, Pax Romana, come from anyone who wasn’t at “emperor” level in the org chart? How could god’s favor possibly rest on anyone who wasn’t a Caesar?

Reader 3: and if God could be present in this child, what about other children, children living on the margins, outside of polite society? Children without room in the inn, without a place to come home to after school, without a school,

Reader 4: children without a country, children in foster care, children in detention centers without papers… Children who also traveled with displaced families and lived at the whims of the people in charge…

Reader 5: Are cages worse than mangers? Could God be born other places, too, in other people, other children?

Leader: In this next reading, BH Fairchild offers a glimpse…

Reader 2: madonna and child, perryton texas 1967

A litter of pickups nose into Sancho's Market south of town late Friday night rinsed in waves of pink neon and samba music from some station in Del Rio spilling out across the highway.

Sancho's wife dances alone behind the cash box while her daughter, Rosa, tries to quiet her baby whose squalls rip through the store like a weed cutter, shredding the souls of the carnal, the appetitious, indeed the truly depraved,

as we in our grievous late-night stupor and post-marijuana hunger curse the cookie selection and all its brethren

and Al yells at Leno – lost among the chips, beef jerky, string cheese, bananas for chrissakes – that if he doesn't stop now and forever telling Okie jokes he will shoot his dog (who can't hunt anyway so what the hell),

but the kid is unreal, a cry ascending to a shriek,

then a kind of rasping roar, the harangue of the gods, sirens cleaving the air,

gangs of crazed locusts or gigantic wasps that whine and ding our ears until the air begins to throb around us and a six-pack of longnecks rattles like snakes in my hand.

And then poor Rosa is kissing its forehead, baby riding her knee like a little boat lost at sea, and old Sancho can't take it either, hands over his ears,

Dios mio, ya basta! Dios mio,

so Rosa opens her blouse, though we don't look, (and then we do,) the baby sucking away, plump cheeks pumping,

billowing sails of the Santa Maria in a high wind, the great suck of the infinite making that little nick-nick sound,

Rosa smiling down, then Sancho turns off the radio

and we all just stand there in the light and shadow of a flickering fluorescent bulb, holding our sad little plastic baskets full of crap, speechless and dying a little inside

as Rosa whispers no llores, no llores, mija, mijita, no llores,

and the child falls asleep, lips on breast, drops of milk trickling down, we can even hear it breathing, hear ourselves breathing, the hush all around and that hammer in our chests

so that forty years later this scene still hangs in my mind, a later work, unfinished, from the workshop of Zurbaran.

Leader: Luke was just one of the stories of Jesus, though, and everyone of the gospels had to start someplace. John, the poetic, mystical gospel, starts in a sort of puzzling way, describing Jesus as something other than a baby, other than a revolutionary man.

Reader 4: So here’s how John’s gospel begins: In the beginning was the Word… without whom not one thing came into being. What has come into being in this Word was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen its glory, the glory as of a parent’s only child, full of grace and truth.

Reader 5: Word, light, glory, grace, truth. That would be a lot to pin on one baby. But this is not a baby story. John begins with Jesus the grown-up man, choosing disciples, turning water into wine, defying expectations, confronting the authorities. Twenty chapters of John, and all these things happen even before we get too deep into chapter three. Sick and tired of normal, demanding justice, tossing tables, promising to tear it all down.

Leader: Which reminds us of another poem, this one by Frank X Walker, something he in the summer of 2020, during the racial justice uprising, the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd protests — protests which are constantly, continually, painfully relevant and fresh. Listen:

Reader 1: Combustibles, after Amiri Baraka.

Who already sick and tired of the planned new normal?
Who want change, now?
Who demand justice?
Who know they lives matter?
Who die the most at the hands of cops?

Who speak riot?
Who “loot” and be made to look less righteous?
Who set police cars on fire?
Who grieve with bricks and water bottles and fire?

Who eat pepper spray, flash bangs, and tear gas?
Who say fuck the PO-lice and they curfew?
Who burn the Target and the precinct down?

Who ready to be the next hashtag?

Leader: Jesus. George. Breonna. So many others. Elijah, Sandra, Freddy, Michael, Philando, Rayshard, Ahmaud, Atatiana. How much can a society bear, how much can a parent’s heart bear?

SONG: of the parent’s heart begotten v 1, 2, 4

Leader: The one whom Prophets foretold. That’s what we say about Jesus. But that’s a big claim. Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, this one is different? This one matters in a special way? That’s what we say. But what did the prophets say? That God will restore peace, shalom, salaam, namaste, well-being. God will send someone — or someones.

Reader 2. God always intends that we not be left to our own devices, that we not forget the message or ignore the various messengers. That we not abandon the work of peace and well-being.

Reader 3: Maybe some will tell us that peace is just for some chosen few, that God’s dream is exclusive, that the reign of god is a gated community.

Reader 5: That’s a lie. God intends all people, all nations, all the world, to share the peace, the comfort and joy, sabbath, enough.

Leader: So God sends messengers still. Ones who tell of a new way, a way to resist, to break free, to be different. Like this little bit:

Reader 4: from Isaiah, chapter 52:

How beautiful upon the mountains

are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,

who brings good news,

who announces salvation

who says to the people, ‘Your God reigns.’

Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,

together they sing for joy.

Leader: Or this, from Palestinian poet Naomi Shihab Nye:

Reader 5: for palestine

How lonely the word PEACE is becoming,
missing her small house under the olive trees.

The grandmothers carried her in a bucket when they did their watering. She waited for them in the sunrise, then fell back into reach.
Whole lives unfolded.

The uncles tucked her into suit coat pockets after buttoning white shirts for another day. Fathers, mothers, babies heard her whispering in clouds over Palestine, mingling softly, making a promise, sending her message to the ground.

It wasn’t a secret.

Things will calm down soon, she said. Hold your head up. Don’t forget.

When Ahed went to prison, we shook our tired hands in the air and wept.

Young girl dreaming of a better world!
Don’t shoot her cousins, my cousins, our cousins.
Wouldn’t you slap for that? It was only a slap.

The word Peace is a ticket elsewhere for some.
People dreamed night and day of calmer lives. Maybe Peace would be their ticket back too.

They never threw away that hope.

Karmic wheel, great myth of fairness kept spinning…
I dreamed of Ahed’s hair.

When I was born, they say a peaceful breeze lilted the branches — my first lullaby.
The temperature dropped.
A voice pressed me forward, told me to speak.

Being raised in a house of stories with garlic gave me courage.
Everything began far, far away. Long, long ago.
And everything held us close.
Is this your story, or mine?

Olive oil lives in a dented can with a long spout.

What happen to Peace when people fight?
(She hides her face.)

What does she dream of?
(Better people.)

Does she ever give up?

Sometimes she feels very lonely on the earth.
She wants to walk openly with children.
Live the way they might.
Have a party with white cookies on simple plates.
Lots of them. Nuts chopped fine.

She wants everyone to share.

Reader 4: Palestinians, People of Color, Native Americans, Rohingya, Uyghurs, Sudanese, Afghans. There is genocide around the world, hopelessness, hunger, occupation, oppression. God’s imagination is tattered, but intact. But what of our ability to dream?

Reader 1: Sam Cooke was an activist and musician, a Black American, who somehow kept hope. Among so many other songs, he gave us an enduring anthem of civil rights, written in 1963, shortly after he was arrested in Louisiana for disturbing the peace — disturbing the peace when he was turned away from a Holiday Inn that didn’t welcome black guests.

Shortly afterward, he was murdered – perhaps because of his vision, his expectation. Because he was too black, too strong, said one writer. He was 33, same age as Jesus at the time of his death. Does that mean something?

Leader: So the question lingers: can dreaming really start with a baby born in a stable – or born in a tent?

SONG: change is gonna come

Reader 2: Mary, facing the most difficult time of her life, a socially problematic pregnancy — Mary sang. The song she chose was also the song of Hannah, another mother facing a difficult time. It is a song of power and hope, of expectation that God will be God, manifest throughout the generations in poets and artists and activists and musicians and teachers and dreamers and builders and peace mongers and diplomats and …. children. We call this song the magnificat:

Reader 3: here it is from Luke:

My soul proclaims your greatness, O God, and my spirit rejoices in you, my Savior.

For you have looked with favor upon your lowly servant,

and from this day forward all generations will call me blessed.

For you, the Almighty, have done great things for me, and holy is your Name.

Your mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear you.

You have shown strength with your arm; you have scattered the proud in their conceit;

you have deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places.

You have filled the hungry with good things, while you have sent the rich away empty.

Leader: And maybe we sing it like this, the Canticle of the Turning. Meaning, of course, the turning around, turning over, turning inside out. Such is God’s imagination.

SONG: canticle of the turning

Leader: We hope, we wait, we work. If Christmas is the birth of resistance, perhaps Christ is born in us today. Because God just keeps trying.

Thank you for joining in worship today. Merry Christmas. Peace. Salaam, Shalom, Namaste. Be well.

Let’s join in the benediction:

God bless us and keep us

God’s face shine on us and be gracious to us

God look upon us with favor and give us peace.

Amen.

SONG: Isaiah the prophet has written of old, v 4. (audio only)

Roll credits.

________________

CREDITS— The Birth of Resistance: a service of songs and readings. 12/26/2021.

Music and poetry was included in the original production of this worship by permission of the publishers, or under licenses through OneLicense or Christian Copyright Solutions. If you expect to produce this liturgy, you should likewise obtain permission from the publishers.

LITURGY: Unless otherwise credited, narration and prayers are by Pastor Deborah D Conrad. Permission for use is granted, with acknowledgement: ©Deborah D Conrad. Used with permission.

MUSIC:

Isaiah the Prophet has Written of Old. Words: Joy F. Patterson. Words © 1982 The Hymn Society in the US and Canada Admin. Hope Publishing Company. Music arranged by Sydney Carter © 1964 Stainer & Bell Admin. Hope Publishing Company.

Of the Parent’s Heart Begotten. Words: Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (4th century) translated by New Century Hymnal staff 1993. Hymn Tune: DIVINUM MYSTERIUM harmonized by C. Winfred Douglas 1940.

Scripture readings

The Inclusive Bible: the first egalitarian translation. By Priests for Equality. Sheed and Ward, 2009.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University, 1996.

Additional Reading:

For Palestine. Naomi Shihab Nye. From The Tiny Journalist. BOA Editions. 2019.

Madonna and Child: Perryton, TX, 1967. BH Fairchild. From Usher. WW Norton. 2009.

Combustibles. Frank X Walker. From Masked Man, Black. Accents Publishing. 2020.