December 25, 2010
Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Psalm 96 + Titus 2: 11-14 + Luke 2: 1-20
Everyone in this story from Luke’s Gospel is going somewhere. As it begins in an earlier chapter, Gabriel has come to Nazareth, then Mary has goes to the “Hill Country” to visit Elizabeth. Then Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem. Shepherds make a journey to find a child. Then they return glorifying and praising God. Matthew has visitors coming from the East, and eventually, the Holy Family are headed to Egypt. Everyone involved, experiencing the Incarnation is on the move.
The older I get, the more times I celebrate this day,
I become more and more convinced that the Incarnation
is etiher an idea with a theological explanation
or an experience rooted deeply in this life.
Now of course, it can be both, but without moving from idea to experience,
the divine purpose of this night is nothing more than an idea, a dream, a hope.
For those people who become characters in Luke and Matthew’s story,
that movement from idea, from dream, from hope to reality is taking place.
Their dream and their hope for a Messiah is moving from a hope and a promise
to an experience and a promise fulfilled.
“It’s really happening!” is their experience in Bethlehem.
Everything God promised, everything we hoped for, everything our prophets foretold
is unfolding right now!
And so, they begin glorifying and praising God.
Mary started the whole running off to Elizabeth with her great hymn: “My Soul Proclaims the Greatness of the Lord.
Elizabeth joined in with her response of priase with a leaping baby in her womb!
Now it’s not happening exactly the way they had imagined.
It is not exactly what they expected.
In the past angel messengers came to Moses, Abraham, Elijah, not to young women in Nazareth. In the past all the great things happened in Jerusalem not in “back-water” villages that no one who was anyone would claim or acknowledge as their own.
Yet because these people, all these marvelous characters in the Gospels were willing to get into the action, into the journey, the Incarnation was real and immediate.
In other words, spectators and speculators were left out:
left to think about it rather than celebrate it.
Some were angry about it like Herod because God’s plan threatened his way of life, his position, his privilege, his power.
Some were stubborn about it like Scribes and Pharasees risisting everything that did not match their expectations about how God should work and how the Messiah would be revealed, and what the Kingdom of God would look like and who would be inlcuded.
The fact of the matter according to the Gospel writers is that God’s ways would be gentle and peaceful, so Herod’s swords and violence were useless and only ended up exlucding him. The fact of the matter according to the Gospel writers is that the new Kingdom of God would include the tax collectors, sinners, street people, theives, and Gentiles: anyone who would repent and make the Journey to the New Jerusalem Jesus leads.
It was journey to service and sacrifice, not to privilege and comfort.
We must tell this story of Christ’s birth not because it is sweet and romantic made so by centuries of artists and musiscians, but because it is a story that includes us as well.
We can tell this story becasue we live it
because we have searched and searched for light, wisdom, and peace and find Christ.
We can tell this story because we have felt like outsiders, doing the jobs no one else wants to do, like shepherds, and we have suddenly become aware that messengers have come to us that did not come to Kings and Rulers like Herrod or Pilate.
We can tell this story because we have no home, no place to rest, and flee violence.
We can tell this story because we have gifts and are willing to go to any length to give them away to a poor child born in a manger.
We can tell this story because we can look at things that do not turn out the way we thought they would, and imagine that God can work wonders in surprising ways.
Yet those who chose to live as spectators in life will have no experience of the Incarnation. They will just tell this story year after year as though it were fairy tale.
Those who limit their knowlege of God’s Word to heresay or make it a study guide
without ever letting God’s Word guide their lives will always remain sitting on the outside looking in.
This day is about a journey that involves searching and discovery, looking and asking, seeking, and imagining. It is about a kind of openness that allows shepherds to look at a baby and see a King; about a dying thief who says: “Remember me in your Kingdom.” It is about seeing swadling chothes that will soon become a shroud. There is no way to understand and experience the Incarnation without embracing the fact that we have to get up and move, get up and risk, get up and ask, go looking. We have to be as wise as old Herrod and even consult the wisdom of the sriputres. We cannot be threatened or angry, disappointed or feel betrayed because God’s surprise and God’s plan might not match our own.
There is plenty of evidence in history that our plans for a Kingdom of Peace do not produce that Kingdom of Peace. We repress, we are violent, we are exlusive and protective. It isn’t working becasue it is not God’s way. Look again at the scene Luke proposes. Find yourself in the story becasue you have begun to live it, and you’ll go home glorifying and praising God like never before becasue this is real, and it is happening right now in our lives.