Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
Christmas Eve, 12/24/2012
Sermon on Luke 2:1-20, by Luke Bouman
Luke 2:1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. 8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 14 "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Messing up the story
I was scolded some years ago by a member of one of my congregations. She was angry because my Christmas Eve sermon was too "real". She told me that she came to church on Christmas Eve to hear about the sweet baby Jesus. I had talked about all the bad things in the world and I had mentioned that the story of Christmas is not only about God doing something wonderful and amazing, but that the most wonderful thing of all was that God did it to deal with the mess the world was in. I had disturbed her Christmas. "Think of all the children!" she nearly screamed at me over the phone.
I understand her concern. The world is indeed a cold and dangerous place. She wanted, at least for one evening, a respite from that. I'm sure we could all use a bit of the same. The news this past week was devastating to everyone. 22 young, beautiful children, slaughtered, along with some of the adults charged with their care. We would all like to pretend that this never happened. We would all like to forget the images of the stunned and lost parents, classmates, and siblings; of the whole community of Newtown, CT, weeping for its loss, not only of life, but of innocence and the illusion of safety. We would all like to be able to point fingers at the culprit, as we advance our visions of salvation from such nastiness: "Too many guns!" "Not enough guns!" "Better mental healthcare!" "More Safety precautions!" "Getting God back in our schools!" The list goes on and on. Yet, for many of us, the reality of another future tragedy on the horizon is both unthinkable and nearly certain. We cannot escape, this year of all years, the understanding that the world is a messy place. Death and images of death surround us. Christmas joy? We can fake it for a while, but it doesn't last long. Images of people helping, performing acts of kindness, of course give us some hope. There is no denying there is a lot of love out there. But there is also an inescapable thought that creeps across our awareness. We are all living with a death sentence upon our heads. The price of birth and life, in our broken world, is pain, death, sorrow. There is no refuge that can hide us from this reality for long, not that we don't try!
Sanitized Christmas
Over the years we have sanitized the Christmas story, made it something for children and the young at heart. But it is far from the story in the bible, and perhaps, because of this, far from the "good news" that it could be for all of us. Here are some examples: The shepherds, keeping watch, would likely have been a group, gathered around a fire, probably taking turns on the watch with the rest sleeping. They may have been hired hands (see later contrasts in the New Testament with the good shepherd) and quite possibly represented the lowest levels of society in and around Bethlehem. Those who spent time with the animals would not be quite so well behaved in polite society as we command our pageant shepherds to be. We imagine a quaint manger scene in a cave or grotto for the animals. But we usually neglect to imagine the animal manure, and its accompanying smell, in our minds eye. And of course, few of us actually dare to imagine Mary as really pregnant.
In some corners of our world, the birth of Jesus has been sanitized right out of things, replaced by red nosed reindeer and Santa Claus, not to mention shopping until we drop. In fact, in the retail world, whether you call it the Christmas Season, or the "holiday season" the meaning is still the same. Make as much money as you can by attracting as many people as you can and offending as few as possible. Where is God in the middle of all this?
It offends our sensibilities, after all, for God to come in the middle of a messy world, where shepherds sleep on the ground after drinking too much around the fire, where animals do what animals do, and where women who have babies are not called "great with child" for nothing. We think that God demands and deserves better than this, so no matter how Luke writes the story, we rewrite it to suit our understanding of God. We place God in this story in such a way that we can continue to protect the "Godness" that we need, the immunity that God has from the depth of our humanity.
God in the middle of the mess
But when we do this, we fail to understand the depth of what God is doing in the incarnation at all. God chose to be born into our world, with all of its faults, and foibles, in fact because of them. God chose to come not into a palace, but into the squalor of humanity's injustice and cruelty to one another, with a family that wanders homeless, announced to shepherds in a pre-dawn stupor, in a place normally reserved for the animals. God chooses to be in our mess. Only we choose to keep God out of it. But then, God has a history of being in the mess. He chose Israel, an enslaved nation, to be his people to enlighten the nations. He endured the complaints and disobedience of his people over thousands of years. God suffered with them in bondage in Babylon, and rejoiced with them in coming home.
Jesus' birth into this world is also a death sentence. Mary hears the chilling words of Simeon, that a sword will pierce her own heart too (read the next story in Luke 2). In Matthew 2 we have the terrible story of a king so threatened by this child's arrival that he attempts to kill Jesus by killing all of the children of the same age in and around Bethlehem. Jesus enters a messy world and his entrance does not seem to make it "tidy" in and of itself. Of course we know that Jesus eventually will grow up to be killed on a cross. When God enters our world of pain and suffering, there is no hesitation! God enters it completely, even the messy parts, even the pain and death that seem all too real this holiday season.
Our world, fractured by sin, limps along with an image of a distant and vengeful God. In our attempt to preserve God's place as "holy" we imagine that God comes to pluck all of the sinners out of the world that he can before destroying it with fire from "beyond." Look at how some of the very religious people of today responded to the violence in Newtown. It didn't take long for the worst opportunists among them to declare that this human act of violence and tragedy was in fact God's judgment on all of us for... and here the list of sins, real or imagined, can be inserted at random from their rants of the past.
Interestingly, the very notion of Christmas, the very thought of a God incarnate speaks against this understanding of what God is up to. The message of Christmas places us on a very different path. It says that the God of creation is not distant but intimately connected to the creation. It says that the creator God is made so vulnerable in the act of creation and the love for what is created that he enters into that creation precisely where it is fractured and broken. Placing Christmas squarely within the dirt and grime, the pain and suffering, the very human and worldly stuff of pregnancy and childbirth, helps us to understand the length to which God will go for all of creation. God's birth at Christmas is intimately and inextricably connected to God's death on a cross.
In the midst of life, setting us free FOR life!
God comes in the middle of things. He comes in the middle of history, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a complicated world, so that from the inside out he might set us free from our notions both of what God is like and what we need to be like. For as we see Jesus, even as a baby, no longer can we see God as something separate, distant, apart. When we see in Jesus the very image of God in our midst, no longer can we view being human as something to escape or apologize for.
Instead God gives us a way to see life as we were meant to live it. Not only for ourselves but for all people, including wandering couples like Mary and Joseph, including poor shepherds on a lonely hillside, including mothers mourning for their lost children in Bethlehem or in Newtown. God is for them all. God is for us all, including people who live in fear rather than faith, including people who struggle without homes from natural disasters, including parents who struggle with the illness and untimely deaths of their children, including people who are oblivious to the presence of the poor and suffering in our very own communities. God is born for all of us. And in his coming he invites us to open our eyes and our lives. We, too, hear the angels announce that God's power is greater than all the powers that be. We, too, learn to live for others rather than ourselves.
For God has hallowed all creation with his presence and asked us to care for each other and his world as a consequence of our redemption. God came in the middle of a dying world to bring life, and we are sent into the middle of a dying world to announce God's presence and life. That's why we sing with joy this night of all nights. For God transforms our whole existence and reclaims us as his creation once again. Just as he dwells in the world in Jesus, so also is his presence experienced by his whole church, broken and made whole in Christ.