December 25, 2009 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Psalm 96 + Titus 3: 4-7 + Luke 2: 1-20
I doubt that they stayed long, the Shepherds that is. Leaving the sheep even for a few minutes would have not been a good idea for whatever reason .Trying to explain to the owners of their flock that angels had sent them to Bethlehem would probably not have been a very convincing or acceptable excuse. To this day, there are some amateur astronomers who play guessing games about that star. They talk about a conjunction of planets and various other theories float around which might be a conversation that entertains imaginations, but the fact of the matter is: Who cares? and What difference does it make? The star is gone. In fact if you don’t even believe in an actual physical star you are in no immediate danger of heresy. There was no intent on the part of the writer to create a historical chronicle. Yet the story tradition give us says that the Wise Men went home, and like the shepherds they probably did not hang around long. It wasn’t a particularly hospitable place. Bethlehem was a poor town.
I doubt that there was an Inn, Hilton or otherwise up to their standards. My point is, none of this lasts very long.
All of these people went home, back to work, and back to the normal routine of their lives. Even the angels who are so busy popping into dreams disappear back to their heavenly home. The song they sing comes to an end and the sky is dark again. It’s is not hard to imagine that they were simply worn out from a noisy night in the fields,
from chasing a star that’s there one minute and gone the next to waking up people to invite them to Bethlehem or warn them of trouble or one more angelic choir practice to get that four part Gloria just right for Christmas.
Within 24 hours in some homes Christmas trees will be down, decorations back in boxes, and stores will have Easter decorations on the shelves. At some point in all of this before we do it all again, we might ask ourselves why and maybe start to remember what the real work of Christmas is, because our faith insists that this is beginning of something, and getting ourselves exhausted over the beginning does not leave much for completing what God has just started with the birth of God’s only Son.
We have finished our period of “waiting” only to discover that there is more to this than waiting for Christ to come into our lives if for no other reason than because He has already come. Now God is waiting for us to figure it out. Victims of injustice are waiting for the “Just One.” The hungry are waiting for their place at the table not the scraps. The homeless are still waiting for a room in the Inn – not homeless shelter. The broken wait to be healed. If we celebrate the coming of Christ we will finally have to ask why Christ has come. To simply say that Christ came to save us from our sins is just that: simple when the truth is: it is not simple. It is challenging. It is awakening. It is troubling. It is not simple.
For some it may mean leaving the sheep and risking the displeasure of those who own us one way or another. For some it may mean picking up our gifts to give them away to a foreigner who is unknown and we may never see again. For some it may mean waking up the sleepy, or disturbing those whose lives seem all planned out and settled. Whatever the case, in just a few hours or a day or two, we all go back to what we were doing before Christmas. Guests will be gone. Or if we’re guests we will be back
home again. If we have failed to move deeper into the mystery of what this is all about and what it asks of us, it is all in vain on God’s part and ours as well.
When all the feasting is over, the wrapping paper cleaned up, and the notes of gratitude written, it will be time for the real work of Christmas to begin. It’s time to make peace and make music in every human heart. No one else can do it, and God waits for us to finish what God has begun.