Love Has Come
This is the message I shared with St.Timothy Lutheran Church and St. Mark Lutheran Church on Christmas Eve, 12/24/15. The scripture text is Luke 2:1-14.
"It's beginning to look a lot
like Christmas, everywhere you go..." Do we really miss the snow? Ray's
hoping for orange trees to start sprouting in the front yard of the parsonage
any day now.
This is such a wonderful time of
the year as we gather with family and friends. We love the music and the food
and all those nostalgic things that make this time of year Christmas.
Bethlehem and all its excitement
with Jesus' birth seems far removed from our reality. We live in a world of
materialism in which Christmas advertising begins around Halloween. By the time
Christmas has arrived, we are already Christmased out. But don't let that stop
you. There is good news here for us in tonight's gospel reading.
Mary and Joseph too went home--they
went to Bethlehem because of a decree issued by the Roman Emperor Caesar
Augustus. This decree mandated that each person was to go to the town of his
family origin, be counted in a census and pay a tax to Rome. Bethlehem was Joseph's family's original
home. Caesar had spoken and go they must, despite the fact that it's around 100
miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem and it would take around 34 hours to travel by
foot.
Let's face it, this was not a
joyous occasion. April 15th is not a day we look forward to here in the US.
Imagine being told that not only do you have to pay your taxes, but you have to
go to the city of your family's origin to do it! Yet this sets the scene for
the Christmas story. Mary and Joseph are miles away from home, she's pregnant
and when they get to Bethlehem, all the places one would stay are filled. So,
they end up in a stable with cattle and horses and hay and other stuff we won't
mention. This is not really the place that you would expect the Son of God to
be born in. But our God is a God who loves to turn things upside down. where
instead of going to the rich, he goes to the poor, instead of proclaiming
things with big trumpets and fanfare in the city of Jerusalem to the rich and
powerful, the Angels appear to shepherds, in a field, in the middle of nowhere
and they are told to go and see a wondrous sight in the big city of Bethlehem.
It's almost like having Prince William born in a stable here in Mayville!
The scene at the manger in Bethlehem
is anything but imperial. God's power is revealed in weakness, and the people
who count include the lowly, despised shepherds who were watching their flocks
by night.
Luke, the author of tonight's
gospel presents images of the poor--those oppressed by the Roman government,
women giving birth in a place that houses
barn animals, newborns wrapped only in strips of cloth, including the
socially despised and religiously unclean shepherds. Where the commercialism of
Christmas today suggests unrestricted spending and continual feasting, this
image of the poor is striking because for most people of the 21st century, the
poor and homeless don't exist.
God comes down to be with his
people. This good news of great joy is for ALL, including dirty shepherds and unwed
mothers. The angels declared to the shepherds, "to you is born this
day,,,a Savior. A Savior has come, God almighty in the form of a baby has come
to be with all of his people.
The angels gave the shepherds a
sign, except that baby Jesus is wrapped as any other baby would be, lying in a
manger. There is nothing unusual about that! God's son was as vulnerable as any
other infant, subject to the conditions under which all babies live. He fully
identified with every human's need for love. Yet he lies there without trumpet
or drum roll and without a place to lay his head.
And the angels sing "on earth
peace among those whom he favors." How do we know if we are favored or
not? A better translation of this would be "on earth peace among all
humankind, with whom God is pleased. Peace is for all--not just a certain
special few who dot all the i's and cross all the t's. It is a peace that is
too immense to be contained in an inner experience and too personal to be left
to the affairs of nations.
The birth of Jesus is the story of
the reign of God spilling over the boundaries set by the powerful people of the
world and into those who are marginalized. God declares a new standard for
power, a word of hope, "good news" for all who are fragile, weak,
overlooked, despised, abandoned, homeless, all who are hovering between life
and death. It is a story of reversal--earth is not looking to heaven for a
sign, but heaven came down to earth and gave a sign. The extraordinary points
to the ordinary and says, "See, God is with you."
But how do we incorporate this
ancient story of shepherds, angels and a baby born in Bethlehem into our lives
today? This happened so long ago. It's a nice story, but what does it have to
do with the stress, frustrations and fears we experience today?
Besides that, the opening verses of
tonight's gospel sound strange in our ears, with all those names of people that
sound so unfamiliar and are so hard to pronounce. What if we put God's coming
to us in contemporary terms we can better understand? It might sound like this:
"In the year 2015, an executive order when out from President Obama that
all the citizens of the United States should be registered. This was the first
registration and was taken while Andrew Cuomo was governor of the State of New
York and Marty Bova was the mayor of Mayville and Arden Johnson the Supervisor
of Ellery."
The message for us as it was to the
shepherds is "Do not be afraid." Our world seems so different from
that of the time Jesus was born. In some ways yes, but in other ways no. As
there were things to be afraid of then, so there are now. They just have
different names.
We do not need to fear because of
the good news of great joy for all the people. God has come down to be with us
here in New York in the 21st century. God wants to be with us in every aspect
of our lives---in our fear of terrorism, in our concern about data breaches, in
our sorrow over loved ones who have died, in the joy of a newborn baby.
The message is clear. To us is born
a savior who is Christ the Lord. The announcement was made to common people,
people like you and me. Jesus was not born into a wealthy family that had it
easy, but rather into a poor family with Mary an unmarried mother, in a place
for animals.
The reality is we can't be rich
enough, nice enough, smart enough or anything enough to make our way to God.
However, God is the God who always comes down to us. Whether we are poor or
rich or struggle with addiction, are uneducated or very well educated-- To US
is born a Savior.
Like the shepherds, God gives us a
very ordinary sign--a wrapped baby in a crib. God keeps coming to us--to
cleanse us through the waters of baptism and to feed us through the bread and
wine of the Eucharist, and through each other.
Amid our broken world the prince of
peace is born among us and for us. God comes to us in human flesh--in Christ's
body and blood, so that we may have hope and share that hope with our world.
Jesus took on human form to show us just how much God loves us. Our
responsibility as we leave this place tonight, can be summed up in the words of
the African American spiritual, "God tell it on the mountain, over the
hills and everywhere that Jesus Christ is born!!"
Amen.
Resources
Fred B. Craddock, Preaching
Through the Christian Year C
Sundays and Seasons, https://members.sundaysandseasons.com/Home/TextsAndResources#resources
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