Sermon by:
The Very Rev. Pamela Dolan
Sermon for Christmas Eve December 24, 2024
“Refugia”
I was in fifth grade, sitting in a classroom in Aikahi Elementary School in Kailua, Hawaii, when I heard about the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Like most of my classmates, I thought I already had a pretty good sense of the power of volcanoes. We had all seen eruptions and lava flows, either in person or in pictures, as part of learning about our home state’s ecology, culture, and history. But I don’t think anyone was prepared for what happened in Washington state that spring day in 1980.
For those of you here who are too young to remember it, you should know that the eruption of Mt. St. Helens was truly massive and devastating. It began with an earthquake that triggered “the largest landslide in recorded history.” The eruption itself “scattered ash across a dozen states” and the force of it blasted “1,300 feet off the top of the volcano…flattening forests, melting snow and ice, and generating massive mudflows. A total of 57 people lost their lives in the disaster.” Eyewitnesses reported an eerie sense of apocalypse as they were menaced by clouds of ash so dense that day seemed to turn into night.[i]
Writer Debra Rienstra noted that the destruction of the area around the volcano appeared so complete that “everyone assumed life could return to this apocalyptic death zone only very slowly, maybe over several human lifetimes.” Instead, though, new life began to appear within a few short years. Today, “the mountainsides are covered with lush grasses, prairie lupines, alders. Critters scamper, streams flow.”[ii]
The primary reason for this amazing restoration is something that biologists call refugia, or hidden pockets of life in otherwise desolate landscapes. In the case of Mt. St. Helens, it seems that some of the trees that fell during the landslide actually created little shelters that the ash and mud and whatever else just washed right over, allowing the life underneath enough oxygen and space and light to survive and ultimately to spread. That life was often just a patch of moss or a family of voles or some similarly humble, ordinary creature. And that is exactly how refugia work. As Rienstra puts it, “From out of these small sanctuaries, life re-emerges, and the world is renewed.”
The Christmas story, as told in the Gospel of Luke, also features a small, hidden sanctuary out of which the world is renewed. The story focuses on humble people, shepherds and peasants living far from the centers of power and influence, who nonetheless live under the thumb of empire. They must have thought it would take many long generations before any hope of liberation and new life would come to their nation.
Among these simple people are Mary and Joseph, an ordinary couple, far from home, buffeted about by the whims of the powerful, when the time comes for their baby to born. There was no special birthing suite, no midwife or doctor, no gender reveal party documented lovingly on Instagram. The high point of this story is almost ridiculously mundane: an ordinary, vulnerable baby is born to ordinary, humble parents. One of the details we all remember for its poignancy is that they have to place their newborn son in a manger, a feeding trough, because there was no room for them in the inns of that out-of-the-way, one-horse town.
That manger, though—what a hidden miracle it sheltered! What a sanctuary, a refugium it turned out to be. In a world overwhelmed by the ashy darkness of war and oppression, there was finally a place for the hopes and fears of all the years to find purchase and shelter. For a people whose every move, every decision, took place under the long, dark, cruel shadow of empire, that tiny flicker of light from within a stable was enough to keep faith and hope alive.
Even on Christmas Eve, though, we don’t linger too long at the manger. Like all such refugia, its ultimate purpose is not to be a permanent place of retreat, but rather to be a starting point, the beginning of something bigger. And so, before long we have shepherds and angels and even wise men coming to see the baby and share in the miracle of hope lying in a manger. Small and fragile and seemingly ordinary as this child was, word quickly spread that because of him the world would never be the same.
In speaking of refugia, Debra Rienstra says that God “loves to work in small, humble, hidden places.” The Christmas story is a powerful reminder of this truth, and more. It was out of love that God chose the little town of Bethlehem, and it was out of love that God chose the humble family of Mary and Joseph. It was out of love that God sent his messengers the angels to share the good news of great joy to shepherds, who were some of the poorest and humblest people around. And it was from God’s deepest and truest love that God chose to be born as one of us, an ordinary, humble human being.
When we celebrate Christmas, we are not only celebrating this great deed from the past, a miracle that happened 2,000 years ago. We are also celebrating the gloriously impossible reality that God’s love of the humble and ordinary is still at work in the world today.
Friends, I imagine that many of us identify with the words of the prophet Isaiah: we know what it is like to walk in darkness, and even to dwell in a land, a time, a world of deep darkness. You may be going through your own landslide of grief or avalanche of fear and anxiety. You may not be feeling especially faithful, joyful, or at all triumphant! You may be here for no other reason than a nameless longing in your heart, or a restless feeling in your soul. And I am here to tell you that that is enough, and more than enough. God loves humble, hidden places and ordinary, uncertain people. God, in other words, loves you, and me, and all of us.
On this holy night, I want to invite us all to see this church, this gathering, as a shelter, a refugium, a little circle of light and safety where we can rest our weary souls. Tonight is the night to soak in the sounds and smells of Christmas, the twinkling lights, the taste of bread and wine. We can hear the truth of the old songs and stories, and let them settle into our bones, knowing they are a gift meant for us and for the whole world. Like Mary, we can and should take the time to treasure it all and ponder it in our hearts.
The world is a better place because we have these refugia. When we pause here for a moment, even for just this one night, our hearts are better prepared to become a sanctuary for God and a place of refuge for others in need. For tonight, we only have to look to the margins, to the small, humble places, to see where God is at work, and trust that our work, our purpose, is there, too.
For tonight, that is enough. Or, as that beloved hymn about the tiny, hidden town of Bethlehem puts it, “Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
[i] Much of this comes from a wonderful May 2015 photo essay in The Atlantic by Alan Taylor. See https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/05/the-eruption-of-mount-st-helens-in-1980/393557/
[ii] This quote, as well as the example of Mt. St. Helens and the theological importance of refugia come from Debra Rienstra, Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth (Fortress Press, 2022).
