A KING AND A BABY

Rev. Julie Woodson knew this was going to be another strange Christmas Eve. Elvis was in the building, but apparently the baby Jesus had left.

The congregation arrived early for the family Christmas Eve service. The sanctuary was usually almost full 20 minutes before the service began. Then began the flurry of activity as ushers tried to find places for the people standing in the narthex, many of whom were craning their necks to see if they could spot any empty seats.

Rev. Julie was usually her own flurry of activity. She had to check with the people lighting the Advent candles. She had to make sure the microphones were all working. She had to mark the passages in the Bible she would be reading from during the service.

And she liked to spend some time in the narthex area, wishing Merry Christmas to people as they came in.

Christmas Eve was one of those services which had created new traditions for some families. Ushering was one of those traditions. Tom and Helen Merton had been ushering at the first Christmas Eve service for nine years. Eleanor Danson, who was the member of the Worship Committee with responsibility for finding ushers, knew that Christmas Eve was reserved for Tom and Helen. She couldn’t forget, because Helen and Tom started reminding her sometime in October.

“You can put us down for ushering on Christmas Eve again,” Helen had said to Eleanor on Thanksgiving Sunday.

The other family who were ushering had joined the church the same year Tom and Helen had begun their Christmas Eve ushering run. Philip and Meredith Berwick came to the church to request baptism for their daughter Ashley and had been coming ever since. Ashley was helping usher this evening, handing bulletins to people and greeting everyone with a big smile and an enthusiastic “Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to Jesus.”

Rev. Julie was glad Ashley was greeting people. There were often many visitors at the Christmas Eve service, and you couldn’t ask for a friendlier welcome that the one Ashley offered.

Rev. Julie decided to weave her way through the throng of people in the narthex to reach Ashley and tell her what a pleasure it was to see her there.

As she approached, Rev. Julie noticed that Ashley was chatting with and handing a bulletin to a man in a white sweatshirt. On the back of the sweatshirt were printed the words “The King lives!” Rev. Julie paused and stared at the words.

‘How appropriate for a Christmas Eve service” she thought. She wondered if their might be a nativity scene embroidered on the front of the shirt.

As the man turned to face Rev. Julie, she couldn’t help directing her eyes to the front of the sweartshirt. The front also contained words which read “Elvis is in the building.”

“This is Rev. Julie, our minister.”

Rev. Julie heard Ashley’s voice introducing her as if she was a celebrity. Rev. Julie raised her head, and immediately hoped that her face didn’t display the surprise she felt.

The man in the sweatshirt was Elvis – well, okay, not exactly, but there was a resemblance, and judging by the sideburns and hairstyle, it was a resemblance this individual had cultivated.

“How do you like my sweatshirt?” the person Rev. Julie was already thinking of as Elvis, asked.

“I’ll admit I’ve never seen one quite like it in church,” Rev. Julie replied.

“Did you see what it says on the back?” Elvis asked.

“Yes, I did,” replied Rev. Julie.

“The king lives,” he said. “It’s kinda of religious, huh?”

“You look a little like him,” Rev. Julie said.

“Like the king?” the man asked?

“Like Elvis,” Rev. Julie responded.

“Well, I hope so,” he said. “I’m an Elvis impersonator – I play birthday parties, office parties and every couple of weeks I’m the entertainment at the Nostalgia Restaurant downtown.”

“”I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of our services before,” said Julie. “Do you live in this area?”

“I’m in the new development just north of here,” he said. “My name’s Mike.”

“Well Mike, we’re glad you’re with us this evening,” said Julie.

Mike’s eyes seemed to grow a little misty.

“Well, as Elvis might say, it’s kind of a blue blue Christmas for me. Sometimes you just feel like goin’ to church.”

Mike turned and made his way into the sanctuary. Julie didn’t have time to think about what Elvis Mike had just said, because she could feel Ashley tugging on her hand.

Rev. Julie looked down into to see an animated and intense looking Ashley looking back at her.

“Has baby Jesus got here yet?” Ashley asked.

Julie wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that question.

“Jesus is always present when we worship,” Julie said, while a little voice somewhere in her head was saying ‘that’s not a particularly useful answer’.

“But he’s not here yet,” insisted Ashley. “Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and wise men are here, but not baby Jesus.”

Ashley’s voice carried such a note of concern, that Rev. Julie knew this was no small matter.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Because I looked at the manger, the one up by the pulpit, and baby Jesus isn’t there.”

Now Julie understood. In front of the pulpit was a table. On the table was a crèche, a manger scene. There was a wooden stable and in the stable were ceramic figurines of the well-known characters of the birth accounts from Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels.

The Worship Committee had put the crèche out four weeks ago when they had decorated the sanctuary for Advent. They had hung the Advent wreath, strung lights and garlands, put up the mitten tree and set up the crèche scene. However, since the birth of Jesus was not celebrated until Christmas Eve, it was their tradition NOT to put the ceramic baby Jesus in the manger until December 24^th.

Rev. Julie clearly remembered being handed the ceramic baby Jesus by Justine Waters, a member of the Worship Committee.

“You’ll look after Jesus again,” Justine had said with a smile.

And Julie had. She had taken the ceramic baby Jesus into her office and placed him on top of the tower of her computer, where he would be clearly visible and she would remember. With all the activity this evening, so hadn’t remembered to put Jesus in the manager.

“Jesus is here,” said Rev. Julie. “He’s in my office. Would you like to come with me and put him in the manger?”

“Love to” Ashley answered.

Rev. Julie and Ashley walked down the centre aisle of the sanctuary and through the doorway located next to the pulpit. Julie’s office was just around the corner of the hallway.

Anyone unfamiliar with Rev. Julie’s office might find it rather disorienting to enter her office. The first impression it gave was that someone had ransacked the place. Books and papers and periodicals were stacked on desks and tables and even chairs. Only the fact that piles of paper seemed suspended in the air testified to the presence of a desk underneath.

On the desk was a computer screen beside the computer tower. Julie looked on top of the tower where she had placed the ceramic baby Jesus, and felt the bottom of her stomach descend to some great depth.

Baby Jesus wasn’t there! Trying not to look too panicked, Rev. Julie moved to the desk and looked around. She lifted some papers. She opened drawers and looked inside.

Ashley watched, a look of horror slowly dawning on her face.

“You lost baby Jesus?” she asked.

“He’s here somewhere,” said Rev. Julie. She could tell that some memory was trying to climb out of the recesses of her brain, but try as she might she couldn’t bring it into focus.

‘I must have put him somewhere,” she thought.

Her rising sense of panic was broken by the sound of someone tapping on the office door. It was Helen Merton.

“Excuse me Julie, but Brenda Orten is here with her aunt who is in from Calgary. She said you had told her you would say hello to her aunt before the service.”

Rev. Julie remembered that Brenda has spoken to her after the Sunday service a few weeks ago about her aunt being here over Christmas, her aunt for whom they had been praying during her battle with cancer the past year. Brenda said it had meant so much to know the congregation was praying for her and that she wanted to meet the minister and thank her when she was able to visit.

Rev. Julie sighed. Finding baby Jesus would have to wait.

Ashley looked at Rev. Julie, then cast a glance around the office.

“You’re going find him, aren’t you?” she asked anxiously.

“Of course I will,” said Rev. Julie, “but I promised to say hello to Mrs. Orten’s aunt. I’ll come back and get baby Jesus before the service starts.”

Even though she had no idea where the ceramic baby Jesus could be, Rev. Julie certainly intended to come back and find Jesus. She hoped she would suddenly remember where she had put the ceramic figurine.

Intentions do not always lead to actions. Rev. Julie welcomed Brenda Orten’s aunt and received her repeated ‘thank yous’. Then the Higgins twins a few pews back called out to her to tell her that they thought Santa was bringing them a puppy for Christmas. Then someone handed her a paper on which was written the license plate of a car blocking part of the back lane, so she had announced that the owner should please move it…it seemed that everyone had something to say to Rev. Julie, so much so that she totally forgot about looking for the ceramic baby Jesus.

She forgot about it until she was reading the birth narrative from the gospel of Luke, and she could see Ashley standing on the back pew trying to see over everyone in front of her. Ashley wasn’t looking at Julie, or at the choir. She was trying to see if Jesus was in the crèche.

Ashley turned to her parents and whispered, “He ‘s still not there. Rev. Julie lost Jesus.”

Mike, the Elvis impersonator in the white sweatshirt with the words “The king lives” written on the back, was sitting in the pew just in front of Ashley and her parents. He heard Ashley’s comment. He swallowed hard.

Then he stood with the rest of the congregation to sing the announced hymn.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan

As they sang, Mike’s thoughts were of his brother. He hadn’t explained to the minister his comment about a blue Christmas. His brother had died nine weeks ago. Memory and words flowed together:

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Mike could feel the tears starting to run down his face. His shoulders began to heave. He sat down.

At the usher workshops the congregation held periodically, it was always stressed that ushers were the shepherds of a worship service. They should be aware of what was happening during the service. If someone was in distress or needed a glass of water to stop a coughing fit, the ushers should be there to help.

When Philip Berwick saw the man in front of him start to cry, his usher instincts kicked in. He rose and went to the greeting area where there was always a box of Kleenex. Well, there was supposed to be a box of Kleenex. He looked on the shelf of the closet and on the table beside it. No Kleenex.

Philip slid back into his pew and whispered to Meredith, “There are no Kleenex back there.” Ashley said, “There’s a box in Rev. Julie’s office. I saw it. I’ll get it.” And with a look of determination she climbed over the back of the pew and dashed up the side aisle.

Rev. Julie saw Ashley leave, and figured that she was going back to the office to continue the search for the baby Jesus. Julie decided that confession might be good for the soul, and she’d rather people heard from her that she had lost Jesus than have Ashley tell everyone as they were leaving.

Leaving her sermon notes aside, Rev. Julie began:

“Every Christmas Eve we gather here in this place which has been so beautifully and worshipfully prepared for us, with candles, and garland and banners and lights … and a nativity scene here at the foot of the pulpit. However, tonight, there is something different about this nativity scene. Tonight the baby Jesus is missing. I have to confess, I have misplaced Jesus. The baby Jesus which should be in this nativity scene is somewhere in my office. I put it there to be safe until this evening, but I’ve put him in such a safe place that even I can’t find him…but maybe that’s a parable about what has happened to Jesus for many of us at Christmas. Maybe we have misplaced him, lost him amongst the busy-ness, amongst the shopping, the getting. Misplaced Jesus and all that he means to us…”

During the sermon. Ashley returned with the Kleenex box from Rev. Julie’s office. The man in the white sweatshirt with the words “The king is alive” on its back, didn’t seem to be crying so much now, but she still reached over the pew and handed the box of Kleenex to him.

Mike smiled and whispered ‘thank you.’ He could tell from the weight of the box that there weren’t many tissues left in it. There wasn’t one protruding from the slot in the top, so he reached his fingers inside. He paused. He had encountered a tissue, but it wasn’t lying flat as it should be. It seemed to be wrapped around something more substantial than a tissue.

He pulled the object out of the box. He unwrapped the balled up tissue and there, in his hand, was a tiny ceramic baby Jesus. He glanced up at Rev. Julie, then turned to Ashley and held out his hand with the baby Jesus cradled in his palm.

Ashley’s eyes grew large and round.

“You found him,” she said. “We have to take him to Rev. Julie.”

Ashley leaped into the center aisle and grabbed Mike’s hand. He didn’t know why, but he got up and went with her. Ashley and the Elvis impersonator walked up to the pulpit. Rev. Julie stopped preaching.

“Mr. Elvis found Jesus,” Ashley shouted. “He was in the Kleenex box.”

Julie’s memory came into focus. One day she had almost knocked the ceramic Jesus off the top of her computer. She looked for a safer place and saw the Kleenex box. It seemed to her the closest thing she had to a manger, so she had carefully wrapped Jesus in a tissue and laid him inside the box.

Mike handed the ceramic baby Jesus to Rev. Julie.

“I guess,” he said, “it’s not that surprising to find Jesus in a place where he knew people with tears would go.”

As Mike and Ashley returned to their pew, Julie stared at the baby Jesus in her hand.

“Everyone comes to the stable,” she said. “Children come, and even kings come, even the king of rock and roll. Thank you Ashley and thank you Mike for helping all of us find Jesus. Mike told me earlier that he is an Elvis impersonator. He tries to act like the king…and maybe that’s part of the message of Christmas and of this baby Jesus who would be called king. Maybe we’re all suppose to act like the king… to act like Jesus in the way we love God and love others. Maybe we should be found in the places people go to when they have tears in their eyes. Maybe that’s where we always find Jesus.”

Rev. Julie invited everyone to sing the hymn Away in a Manger.

During the last verse she carefully descended from the pulpit with the baby Jesus in her hand and the words of the hymn seeming to guide her:

Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask you to stay

Close by me forever and love me, I pray

Bless all the dear children in your tender care

And fit us for heaven, to live with you there.

“Welcome back Jesus,” she whispered, as she placed the ceramic baby Jesus in the manger.