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Christmas Eve, 12/24/2008
Sermon on Luke 2:1-14, by Hubert Beck
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those
with whom he is pleased!"
(English Standard Version)
THE CHRISTMAS GIFT
Harold was his name - not Herald as in "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," but "Harold, the Neatness Nut."
He couldn't stand for anyone to mess things up - and he, himself, certainly was a model of the old adage "a place for everything and everything in its place." There was no room for anything remotely resembling untidiness or clutter or disorder.
He even stored away presents of any kind - especially Christmas gifts - because unwrapping presents always creates a mess, and Harold wanted nothing to do with such disorder. Who, pray tell, would speak of "storing presents," though? Only Harold! And therein lies the heart of this story.
Although many considered Harold strange in any number of ways, his strangeness was never more clearly evident than at Christmas. Everybody knew that he kept all his Christmas presents in orderly piles wrapped as neatly as the day they had been given him . . . not only for months, but even for years!!! He would keep them all appropriately placed around the room until it was time to take them to his heated and air-conditioned attic (he knew very well that they would deteriorate in lesser climactic conditions!) where he kept them in orderly fashion year after year, covered carefully lest they become dusty, and marked annually with a new indication of the year in which he had received them.
He always sent thank-you notes, being careful to observe how nicely wrapped the gift had been or how thoughtful it had been for the giver to have given it to him. "Your thoughtfulness is very much appreciated," he would write. Or "How very beautifully the gift you gave me was wrapped," he would say. But, of course, he never mentioned the gifts within the wrapper since he never opened them.
One may think that people would stop giving him presents after a while since it was apparent that he never opened them . . . and, of course, some people did stop their gifting.
But mothers and fathers and friends are funny that way. It just seems right to give presents on special days - particularly when Christmas comes around - and certainly to a son or a close friend.
So they kept up the façade in spite of the fact they knew he never opened their gifts. They eventually bought worthless little trinkets as remembrances, wrapped them nicely, gave them to him with warm hearts, and added to Harold's piles of presents year after year after year after year.
Why he would not open them was never known. Maybe even Harold himself did not know. He just liked to see the room all neat and tidy - and the wrapped presents were decorative additions to his room. But opening the gifts apparently threatened to create a clutter he simply could not cope with.
He never thought of himself as needing anything anyway. Perhaps that is why he was never particularly concerned about what was in them. He was pleased enough to have them as seasonal ornamentations every year until he put them away. For he did, at least, sense that the givers thought them important enough to give, and he at least wanted to honor their willingness to give.
You can well imagine, then, that he had accumulated quite a store of gifts by the time he died. There they all were, carefully laid out in his attic, pile after pile, all neatly noted, but all unwrapped and unused and really, one may as well say, unwanted because of his self-satisfied way of life in spite of the good intentions of those who had given them to him.
A Foolish Story for Christmas Eve?
Why, you may ask, would one tell such a silly story on Christmas Eve, this most holy and blessed evening of the year? Should we not be speaking about angels and shepherds and Mary and Joseph and, above all, the baby Jesus?
To tell the truth, we have been speaking about them in spite of appearances to the contrary.
Was not the child born of Mary the most precious Christmas gift ever given . . . and was he not wrapped in a most precious bit of packaging . . . a human form? Was he not a gift sent from heaven, a bequest of the Father to his children on earth . . . to all the Harolds who have ever been born?
The child wrapped in human flesh was, in turn, wrapped in the swaddling cloths within which the human care and protection of Mary and Joseph had to be exercised. To think that God wrapped his child in the human flesh encircled for nine months in Mary's womb, entrusting his son, still further, to the guardian arms of a human father and mother! Is this not a great and marvelous wonder?
And when, eventually, the child's life was in danger God intervened through a dream to move those same human parents once again to protect this child from danger by a hurried flight to Egypt. Are not the strange ways of God seen in this story? God, the Giver, gifted human parents with a little boy that had to be cared for by human hands while God stood watch over the whole scene.
It is all so stunning that one needs to hear and then hear again, imagine and then re-imagine over and over again the wonder of it all - to "treasure up all these things in our heart" as Mary had to do in her heart after she had seen twelve years of her son's life pass by her eyes. (Luke 2:51) Just as she had to stand in awe every day watching this boy grow into young manhood, so we, too, must stand in awe year after year as we rehearse over and over again this breathtaking account of Jesus' birth.
He surely is a gift to be esteemed!
But A Gift Is Not Truly A Gift Until It Is Opened!
Unfortunately it is all too easy - and one sees it with some regularity in a wide variety of Christmas celebrations - to "keep the child under wraps"! Oh, there is considerable sentimentality expressed surrounding this child - how remarkable the baby (or any baby, for that matter!) is, how quiet the stall, how kind the innkeeper, how lovely the message of the angels, how bright the star, etc. But sentiment is only a wrapping. Christmas is about the content of the gift, not the wrapping of the gift.
The angelic message of "peace on earth" is quoted freely as a hope that the coming year will see a reduction in violence, as though the elderly Simeon had never told Mary eight days after his birth at the time of the child's circumcision, "Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed." (Luke 2:34, 35 ESV)
When unwrapping the gift Simeon saw clearly that the life of this child would be always lived in the shadows of death that would eventually show itself to be the major reason for the child's coming! The sword that would pierce Mary's soul would pierce the body of this child grown to manhood.
The "glory to God in the highest" of which the angels spoke would be unwrapped in the shrouds of his death clothes. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth," John wrote. (John 1:14 ESV) Those words were interpreted thirty three or so years later by none other than Jesus, himself, who prayed on the evening before his death, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed." (John 17:1b-5 ESV) Even his own disciples still could not understand those words in terms of the cross upon which he had set his eyes when he spoke them.
Nor did the events of the next day seem to "reveal his glory" as his suffering and dying seemed to dash all the hopes they had placed in him.
It took three days to fully reveal the "glory to God in the highest" first spoken to the shepherds from the heavens on that first Christmas night. In his resurrection they saw the Christmas gift fully unwrapped! Then, for the first time, they began to recognize how precious the gift was that they had been aware of only in a partially unwrapped form the three years previous. This gift was an offering that had come from eternity in order to open all eternity to them and all who received him.
Gifts are typically hidden by their wrapping - and only in the unwrapping does one find the gift!
Therefore Let The Gift Be Opened!
So we are back again at Christmas Eve!
If it has begun to sound as though we were speaking about Good Friday and Easter instead of Christmas Eve, it is because we have been speaking about them as part and parcel of the blessed event we celebrate tonight. For, after all . . . . . . . .
A child of Bethlehem who is never crucified is not at all the child announced by the angels as "a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."
To "find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger" as the gift of Christmas is no gift of consequence unless one unwraps the swaddling cloths, removes the child from the manger, walks with him through thirty years of anonymous living until he begins the revelation of who he, the child in the manger, truly is.
Even then, if, after those thirty years, he proves to be nothing more than a shining example of godly living, a moral instructor in the most exalted ways to live, or merely a human whose striving toward God reached a higher level than any other human has ever reached . . . if that is all we ever discover about this child of Bethlehem, then we have missed the point of this evening altogether.
There is no "good news of great joy that will be for all the people" if we merely stand at this manger scene, o-o-o ing and ah-ah-ah ing over the beauty of it all and then leave with hearts warmed by its serenity with nothing more than the hope that someday, if we try hard enough or succeed well enough or establish a world securely protected enough, we may experience peace and tranquility exemplified by this child cradled in its mother's arms. That is no "good news at all." It is merely unfounded optimism!
If, however, we kneel in awe before this manger and see here God's saving gift to us and to the world, we must, at the very least, join with Mary, who, after the shepherds had come and "made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child," (Luke 2:17 ESV) coupled with the angelic visits she had received earlier, "treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart." (Luke 2:19)
What does all this mean? Even Mary must have had difficulty comprehending just what kind of gift God had given her in this child. She, too, had to follow Jesus to the ultimate bitterness of his cross to find the end to which her pondering had taken place! The gift unwrapped will never reveal what lies beneath the wrappings. We may shake it and feel it and examine its shape, but until it is unwrapped it remains unknown.
"All who heard [of the shepherds' experience] wondered at what the shepherds told them," Luke tells us. (Luke 2:18) We must wonder also.
At this point "the opening of the gift" takes place. By looking backward from the cross and resurrection and ascension of our Lord we have the vantage point that even Mary did not have, much less the shepherds or the innkeeper or the Magi! By going to the end of the story we see what the beginning of the story is all about, for it is there where the gift is completely unwrapped.
Is There A Harold In All Of Us?
Now we must ask ourselves if Harold, the Neatness Nut, of whom we spoke at the beginning of these reflections, seems so strange as to be unbelievable, are we, perhaps, his brothers and sisters?
Are we so taken by the quiet idealism surrounding so much talk around Christmas that we fail to see the needs within us for which this child was born? Are we, like Harold, so self-satisfied with our lives, so self-centered and unaware of any deep inner need for this gift of Christmas, that we find it quite enough to sentimentally admire the wrappings made visible this evening, using it only as a nice ornamentation of our lives and then returning to a self-fulfilled tomorrow with no place for the gift other than in the attic of our lives?
Do we mainly see nice wrappings that we, ourselves, have placed over this scene - a romantic picturing of a stable where all is warm and light - letting such imaginations lead us to a false optimism about how things would be if only all humanity would put its mind to truly striving after peace on earth?
Do we hear the angels speak of nothing other than calling on us to bring out the best within us so that peace may prevail among us?
Do we fail to unwrap the sin within us that so desperately needs a saving action in its behalf, looking instead upon nothing more than a nice, peaceful setting born more of our imagination than with the reality of the birth-moment - permitting this fantasy that if we only unwrap the best within us instead of unwrapping the swaddling cloths of this child all will be well? Do we sense that a sword will pierce any and all who are willing to follow the child to the bitter end of all to which sin leads - and the glorious beginning of new life?
Sad to say, it is far too easy, like Harold, to simply admire the wrappings of "the Christmas spirit" without any serious consideration of the child whose birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection are what is to be found when we unwrap this one singular Christmas gift. All too often we, like Harold, are not really interested in nor do we sense our deep need for the gift to be found in this unwrapping, for we are all too easily consumed by our own busy-ness and self-importance.
Ever so many Christmas cards are little more than the friendly expressions of well wishes, greetings exchanged primarily as generic extensions of feelings generated by the season: "May Joy, Love, Hope, and Peace like candles light your holidays and every day of the New Year." "Wishing you joy at Christmas and every happiness in the New Year." "When this season comes it brings to mind friendships tried and true and mixed in with those fond memories are many happy thoughts of you." "Hope your Holidays are Happy Days."
Where is the gift in all this? The gift, presumably, is the friendship expressed and the warm wishes extended. That is all well and good. One can be thankful for all that. But there is so much more!
Let this Christmas Eve, therefore, be more - far more - than momentary warm feelings, a mere sense of awe and wonder at the marvel of a baby apart from God's purpose within and behind the birth.
The Holy Spirit unwrapped the marvels of grace bestowed upon us in our baptism when our lives were joined to the life of this child of Bethlehem. Through words proclaimed and then joined to bread and wine he unwraps the glory of his Son before our very eyes and ears and hearts this evening. He makes it possible and invites us to see beneath the wrapping of Christmas, finding "in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord," wrapped in the swaddling cloths of this earth!
Do not simply receive this gift as a beautifully wrapped ornamentation in your life and then store it in the attic, piling it neatly and preserving it in its nicely air-conditioned and heated place, thinking that thereby you can still honor the Giver without opening the gift, as Harold did. Do not see the bow and ribbon of human flesh without seeing the divine intent discovered only by opening this gift and letting him live in your heart and life through your journey with him to the cross.
Oh, and, by the way, be sure that your life is unwrapped, in turn, before those around you who seek a gift without knowing where to turn or what they really want, simply recognizing that, without the gift that truly counts, their lives are in shambles. The gift you unwrap here on Christmas Eve is the very gift that you can give, in turn, to all those among whom you live and walk! When you unwrap the swaddling cloths of the child you have swaddling cloths with which to clothe others who need them!
After all, the Gift given and the Father who gives him and the Spirit who gladly unwraps him is not interested in being put into the climactically controlled attic of your life to be stored as a gift whose great worth you neither sense nor desire. He wants to be opened - and to be passed on to others!
Harold was a strange person, to be sure. But there are far too many Harolds who will stand before the manger this evening gladly receiving the gift without ever unwrapping it!
Let it not be said that you are one of them!
Rather . . .
May the peace and joy of the child whose goal was the cross through which all true peace and joy are found fill your hearts and minds, open to the full indwelling of the same Holy Spirit by whom this child was conceived to be born of the Virgin Mary. Amen.