A burglar was creeping noiselessly through a darkened home, filling his bag with various valuables. As he reached his hand out to a box of jewelry, he heard a voice say, "Jesus is watching you."

Shaken, the burglar stopped. For a full minute he didn't dare breathe.

Finally, he switched on his flashlight and carefully played it around the room but saw nothing. Convinced that it must have been his imagination, he turned off the flashlight and continued in his quest for another person's wealth. He was busily unhooking a stereo set when he again heard, "Jesus is watching you."

This time he nearly jumped out of his skin. Beads of sweat popped out on his face, and as he switched the light on again, the beam shook violently from his terror. He looked about the room and noticed a birdcage in the corner. Upon closer inspection, he discovered a parrot in the cage.

"Are you the one that spoke to me just now?" asked the man.

"Yes, I am," said the parrot.

"Why did you say 'Jesus is watching you'?" asked the man.

"Because I thought you needed to be warned," replied the parrot.

By this time, the burglar was over his fright and was more than a little irritated that this smart-mouthed parrot had scared the living daylights out of him.

"What's your name?" asked the burglar. "Moses," the parrot replied.

"Hah," the man said. "What kind of people would name their parrot Moses?"

"The same kind of people who would name their Rottweiler Jesus."

Christmas is about the unexpected. You and I have heard the story, sung the carols, lit the candles so many, many times, and yet every year it is filled with moments that bring tears to our eyes, that make our hearts leap, that fill our throats with songs, even if we sing badly. We don't expect its thrill, its awesome song, its joy. Even if we have come to Christmas cynical and unforgiving, something can break through even our stoutest defenses on a night like this.

Same thing was true for those peasant/shepherds in that field near Bethlehem that first Christmas night. The early church out of which the Gospels came struggled with how to tell the story. It was customary in the Roman Empire for poets and orators to declare the benefits of peace and prosperity attendant upon an emperor's birth. The church, however, told the story differently. The message of the angels came not in palace halls but in the fields, not of an emperor but of the One called Savior, Christ and Lord (verse 11), not to kings and senators but to shepherds, those on the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder. In fact, most startling of all, even Mary and Joseph have to hear about the angels' song from the shepherds. The parents are so busy with the chores of childbirth on a cold night in a dark cave that they hear God's message from these odiferous, unkempt men who live in the fields and fight off wolves.

The Christmas lessons are the same each year, and while I've been preaching from them for more than four decades, I don't ever have to scurry for something new or different. The texts for this night are rich enough for a lifetime of preaching. Luke says that when the shepherds went to Bethlehem, their story created wondering and pondering (2:17-19).

We live between those two words, wondering and pondering. Especially at Christmas.

Have you been watching the evening news during the recent rush-hour snowstorms? Now, admittedly, it's hard to come up with a new angle, but don't you get tired of some reporter standing at O'Hare and telling us what we already know: that dozens of flights are delayed or cancelled and passengers are unhappy or that the wind-chill factor on the Michigan Avenue bridge is pretty dismal? My personal favorite, however, is the pretty TV reporter standing on, say, the Randolph Street bridge overlooking the Kennedy to tell us that traffic is backed up. Hello?

The December Atlantic Monthly carried an article about traffic jams on major American expressways. "The Physics of Gridlock" looked at who studies such things. Practical-minded American traffic engineers use computer simulations of traffic flow on multi-lane highways. The mathematical models indicate that when traffic jams occur, they are the result of bottlenecks (merging lanes, bad curves, accidents) which constrict flow. Thus, to solve a traffic jam, all you have to do is find a way around the bottleneck.

Germans, on the other hand, look at traffic jams under the heading of "chaos theory." In any complex interacting system with many parts, each of which affects the others, tiny fluctuations can grow in huge but unpredictable ways. German physicists have come to believe that traffic congestion can arise spontaneously without external causes. Anybody who has driven on the Kennedy or the Eisenhower or especially the Ryan agrees with the Germans.

A rough analogy is a dozen dogs standing on a water bed. If one dog moves, he starts the bed sloshing around, which causes another dog to lose his balance and shift his weight, which sets up another wave of disturbance, until true chaos is reached.

I don't know about you, but I come to Christmas Eve fully endorsing chaos theory. But consider those shepherds out there in the fields near Bethlehem that night two thousand years ago. Angels singing, lights shining, instructions given in holy, sepulchral tones. Talk about chaos! Or consider Joseph and Mary having come from the Galilee down to Bethlehem on a very long, difficult journey. She's pregnant, Joseph is unsure about his paternity, and he dare not tell his family or friends that the baby is not his but God's. They get shunted into a cave where she gives birth without anesthetic, doctors, midwives or any relatives nearby. And shepherds show up to tell them that angels are singing about their little boy. Talk about chaos!

Wondering what our lives mean, wondering what the Christmas story is about, wondering what the future holds, wondering why things have happened this year that in a number of cases have devastated our lives and virtually destroyed our self-confidence ‹especially when your colleagues are telling you that it's your own damn fault and giving you no credit even for trying, wondering when God is going to make clear the divine plan for us‹we come to Christmas Eve.

And pondering. I used to love Anna Quindlen's essays when she wrote for the New York Times, and I have gone back to re-read Living Out Loud several times. Her novels haven't done that much for me, but one thing she has done well lately is use some of the best titles: One True Thing, How Reading Changed My Life and recently A Short Guide To a Happy Life. That last book is based on some of her late mother's philosophy and, frankly, the book is pretty short indeed - has a lot of drawings. But that's appropriate - at least from my point of view. Because I don't believe there is such a thing as a short guide to a happy life. After all, it takes the Bible 66 books to tell us a bit about a happy life.

Nonetheless, that's what we come seeking tonight, isn't it? A short, simple guide to a happy life. If we could find that, we could forget all the other, lesser Christmas gifts, couldn't we?

I hope you will watch the PBS ten-hour series, "Jazz," beginning on January 8. It's another in the series by Ken Burns and Geoffrey Ward like "The Civil War," "The West," and "Baseball." All notable and all worth watching. Messrs. Ward and Burns almost apotheosize Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong as the saints of jazz - a thesis with which I heartily agree. Louis Armstrong is one of the true geniuses this country has produced in any field of endeavor.

One day in 1928 when Louis was at the zenith of his musical ability, he and Fatha Hines were walking on Chicago's South Side on the street now called King Drive. As they approached the corner at 35th street, a group of young musicians were playing "West End Blues." Fatha and Louis stopped. Louis admonished the musicians, "You're playin' that number too slow." "How would you know, Pops?" one of them challenged. "'Cause I'm Louis Armstrong and that's my song!" The young men were in awe! When Louis and Fatha came by the next day, the young musicians had a sign in front of their group. It read: "Students of Louis Armstrong."

Want to know the secret to a happy life? Pick the right teacher. His name is Jesus of Nazareth. He teaches anyone who would follow about love and grace and forgiveness, but also about sacrifice and discipleship and giving to others. And about life's biggest secret of all: trust in the One who never forsakes us, never gives up on us, always pursues us, always wants us to come home. And about another secret: we don't have to be afraid, because even death, our greatest enemy, has been conquered through his resurrection.

One of our generation's most insightful writers is Kurt Vonnegut, a good Methodist who lives on Long Island. His novel, Slaughterhouse Five is based on his reflections on the horrible devastation bombing with which the Allies needlessly destroyed Dresden at the end of World War II.

Billy Pilgrim is the hero of the novel. He has experienced the horror of those fire bombings. It shattered his life. Later, Billy watches a movie about World War II. It is run backwards. Remember how they used to do that with 16 mm. Projectors? They would get to the end of the spool, then put it on rewind. (If you were born after 1965, you have to trust me on this one.) You could watch the movie backwards.

Billy did that. He watched the war movie backwards. It provided a vision of the way things should be. It's a vision for Christmas Eve, for every day of our lives, for every hurtful blow. Every destructive act becomes a healing.

The bombers took off backwards from England, full of holes, shattered, full of wounded, bleeding men. They flew over Germany, where they met German fighting planes that sucked the bullets out of the American planes and out of the crew. The wounded were healed, and the planes were restored instantly.

The planes that had been shot down and were destroyed on the ground were all of a sudden reassembled and lifted back into the formation to join their buddies. As the planes ascended, the flames that had devoured them were extinguished.

Then the planes flew over German cities that were consumed by fire. The bombers now whole and the crews now healed. They sucked up the bombs from the ground and extinguished the flames that were devastating the cities.

The bombs came up through the bays in the bottom of the planes, and the crews took them and placed them on the racks. The planes continued to fly backward to England.

When they landed, the bombs were unloaded and sent by rail to factories where women took them apart and reduced the parts to minerals. The minerals were shipped to the far corners of this world, where men put them back into the ground and covered them up where they would never, never, ever hurt anyone again.

It's the song the angels sing. "Peace on earth, and God's love to all." Are you listening?