Christmas Eve, 12/24/2019

Sermon on Luke 2:1-20, 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, in 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 the 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 among those

with whom he is pleased!”

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see his thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version,

PONDERING WITH MARY

Christmas cards picture the scene(s) described in the words of Luke, the text for this evening hour’s worship in living color and / or in the words of Matthew, less in detail but equally evocative of that birthing time and place in Bethlehem on this night long ago.

Christmas carols in a wide variety of languages recount in joyful song what took place in that Judean cattle stall substituting for a full-up inn.

Creches of wood, stone, or other material placed in a variety of sizes and color under the Christmas tree or on a mantle or in front yards of homes or in the courtyards of churches are vivid in their many-faceted depictions of the birthing place of the infant born of Mary, newly arrived in Bethlehem after a long, hard journey from Nazareth, along with statuettes of angels and shepherds and magi.

Live depictions abound in church yards or other select places every Christmas with real, living people, sheep, cattle and camels moving about or standing around or sitting in pious awe before a make-believe manger with a fake baby lying therein.

None of that should be belittled or made light of, for such presentations are well-meaning and, perhaps, even consequential in the faith life of many who see or sing or participate in such events. But, for all the devotion that is poured into such arrangements, none of them are adequate to truly and fully envision what the Christmas accounts report to us.

Who Can Fully “Live Into” What is Reported To Us?

I have, myself, seen and participated in some of these representations of the Christmas story, but every time I do so – or even more – every time I see or hear these depictions, I only wonder the more just exactly it WAS like to have literally been there!?! I am always aware that the temptation – and the real likelihood, in fact – to over-sentimentalize the scene is a constant danger in such efforts. The reality of the scene was undoubtedly so far from being fully available to us that it is impossible to even imagine what it was like to have actually been there.

We do the best we can to re-present it, but it is never even close to being “enough” or to be “really real.”

After all, Joseph and Mary must have been exhausted enough when they arrived in Bethlehem that they did not hesitate to take just any old place that was available for them in which to rest and to give Mary a place for giving birth to her baby so evidently at hand. So it turned out to be a stable with all the smells and inhospitable sights and sounds that went with it – even assuming that it was a very well-kept stable cared for by loving hands. Still . . . it WAS a stable! And our crèches and singing and seeing would be better presented in a local stable in order to even BEGIN to truly hear and imagine the telling of the story!

Moreover, the baby has already been born (both then and also now) when we sing and see and hear these accounts. But the incredible story that both Mary and Joseph knew to lie behind the very pregnancy itself, now culminating in an actual birth of the one promised to Mary nine months earlier, was hidden in their hearts and minds, for none other than they had been so really a part of this scene. The months of carrying the child in her womb; the day and hour of the birthing itself; and the male child now lying in the hay of a manger – all that was part and parcel of this singular moment, not to speak of the agony of the birthing pains that preceded this child nursing at her breast! This was part of an ongoing scene only briefly reported by Luke and Matthew while the larger continuing event is left to our imagination.

To KNOW all that is very different from actually having been there – or, even more – very different from being the people whom we are told were actually living the narrative out in real time and place!

CAN YOU IMAGINE ALL THAT? I know quite well that I, personally cannot really do so. All I – and you – can do is to hear and do the best envisioning possible to our poor limited minds in order to catch the full reality of what happened there! One wonders, in fact, it even those who were there and part of this birthing scene really understood what was taking place around and through them.

So What To Do?

The apostle John, undoubtedly recognizing the impossibility of making all these things truly “come alive” for a reader, did the next best thing he could figure out to do under the influence of the Holy Spirit. He interpreted the event in marvelous words we all have heard many times over. He began his summary of what was happening in that stall behind the Bethlehem inn by writing, (ch. 1, vv. 1-18) “In the beginning

was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God,” going on to say a short time later, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men,” adding a short time later still, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God’s very presence had been “made flesh”! That alone was enough to move the reader almost beyond belief even apart from any description of how / when / where that “being made flesh” took place!

That wasn’t all that he wrote in those eighteen verses, of course, but he doesn’t ask us to “imagine” a birth or attempt to “imagine” what it was like there in that stall of Bethlehem nor try to “live into the birthing time and place,” but he told us WHO was being born, WHAT he had come to do, and assuring us, when all was said and done, that “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” In a nutshell, we find in those words what Mary and Joseph saw and heard and held and comforted and quieted as they looked upon the child that Mary had sheltered in her womb for nine months before this.

Pondering With Mary Is All That We Can Do Also

Is it any wonder, given the impossibility of describing what John sensed to be beyond any descriptive words, that Mary, the mother HERSELF, “treasured up all those things, pondering them in her heart”?

To “ponder” is, according to the dictionary, “to weigh in the mind; to meditate; to deliberate,” and surely Mary must have been doing all that and more as she saw, held, and cared for the newborn child! She in whom and through whom this birth was taking place in a most exceptional and unusual way never, in all likelihood, ever understood those things happening in and through her.

Nor could she have understood, comprehended, or in any other way been completely aware of the timeless nature of this child now nurtured in her own arms. And if that weren’t enough, it must have been absolutely mystifying to her thirty years later why the heavenly Father would seemingly stand by, not lifting a finger to call a halt to the proceedings, when this one whom he called his Son born from her body was stripped naked, listed among and crucified as a criminal thirty years later. In her deepest and most concentrated ponderings she could not have imagined this future for the newborn nestling in her arms.

We, along with Mary, can only ponder what was happening there and what would happen thirty years later. We cannot, alongside Mary, understand or have any real comprehension or awareness of this scene’s eternal dimension. Our earth-bound eyes can only see so far; our human limitations cannot get us past a mere worldly vision of a child entirely dependent on an earthly mother’s care; hear only a crew of shepherds report that a heavenly band of angels had appeared, “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’” That is all that we can see or hear just as it was all that Mary and Joseph could see and hear as they looked into the animal feeding trough in Bethlehem.

Seeing Beyond All This

But what a glorious thing this must have appeared to be when viewed in the heavenly realms, in those spheres far beyond our vision or our ears. There the word was out that the whole world that they had seen so disturbed for so long a time, so terribly chaotic under the rule of sin, had come under attack by the Son whom they had seen at the right hand of the Father from all eternity. He had taken on human flesh; had given himself into submission to all that had so agitated the world; had made himself available as the warrior who would do battle with the one who had claimed to rule over the creation of God by eviscerating that adversary, driving his power of death into oblivion by liberating life from the grasp of the grave.

All this those in the heavenly spheres could see already as they, along with the humans, stood watch over the cattle stall in which a helpless child lay. That is the vision which we must have when we look into this little childbed. It is this mystery beyond our understanding that we, with Mary, are to ponder every time we look into this would-be cradle of God’s Son made flesh. It is he, this same Son of God made flesh, who offers himself to us in bread and wine.

Here in this earliest appearance of him who would break the back of Satan’s power we both see by faith who is there and, at the same we time, we are brought to an awareness of what we cannot see, that which is the greatest mystery to which the world has ever been exposed – God in the flesh, enthroned in a manger, the firstborn son of Mary, the eternal Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

With Mary we can – and must – merely “meditate and deliberate deeply” over what all this means for us and for the whole world as we “treasure these things while pondering them in our hearts.”

O come, let us adore him, for he is Christ the Lord.

Ordained but Retired Minister of the Gospe Hubert Beck
Austin, TX 78749
E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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