Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
Christmas Eve December 24, 2015
Have you ever taken time just to observe life happening around you? Have you noticed? Life is noisy! Doors opening and shutting, phones ringing, and televisions on. Around the office, people engage in conversation and catch up in with the latest news, sometimes with background music playing, and you can hear the tapping of keyboards. In my office, we have the joy of listening to college students who stop by and preschoolers excitedly on their way upstairs to participate in their weekly rituals of Wacky Wednesday.
There is no doubt that, generally speaking, both the amount and level of noise, both visual and auditory, increases exponentially beginning somewhere around Thanksgiving. Whether through bold and colorful print, or commercials, stores loudly remind us that they are having a sale. Radio stations are playing “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”. Malls and restaurants are more crowded. Traffic increases as does its noisiness. The excitement of Christmas has Preschoolers more rambunctious. People seems to buy more food this time of year, and outside of the grocery stores, Salvation Army bell ringers ring their bells. Have you noticed? I say this without judgment, Christmas is especially noisy!
Commotion isn’t just external. Have you listened lately to what’s going on in your head? I don’t know about you, but for me, sometimes it sounds like a bad committee meeting going on in there. This needs to be done. Well, you’ve got to do this first. Don’t forget about the other thing. I don’t have what I need to get it done. If I hadn’t messed up so much, this would be a lot easier. Then we let the outside voices creep in, the “enough” accusations. You know the ones that say you’re not thin enough, you don’t have a big enough bank account, and your house or car isn’t enough. You haven’t bought enough gifts for enough people. Sometimes all the sounds around us and inside our heads don’t register with our brain until it stops.
What started my awareness of noise was our reading from Luke. The story that Luke tells is full of various noises. Luke relates to us that Joseph and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to be accounted for in a census. Because of a shortage of rooms, their newborn baby’s bed ended up being a feeding trough. I hear the animals expressing their discontent with this baby laying in their meal box. Once one animal starts talking, they all join in. Can you hear the symphony of bleating sheep, along with the donkeys’ braying, and the roosters’ crowing? Luke tells us that the rooms were full, and so I imagine that the conversations of all the people provided background noise. With a newborn baby, people and animals, there was anything but quiet.
Over and against all of this, we sing about the silent night. We sing about the stillness in the little town of Bethlehem, and silent stars. I am struck by the contrast, and I wonder if perhaps someone got it all wrong. But they didn’t. They didn’t because the silence testifies to our awe at our God who comes to us, not as a president or a king, not as a military commander, but as a baby. What do you say when you realize that in the birth of Jesus, the finite contains the infinite?
Tonight, in the presence of the baby Jesus, our theologies and our scientific explanations are hushed. The revelation of God in human flesh comes to us, and we breathe in whispers. It is as if the world has stopped, even for just a few moments on this most holy night. Even heaven and earth pause in awe and wonder. The God who created the stars and the moon, the waves and the platypus, daffodils and evergreens, the God who brought us into being by breathing life into dust, loves us this much.
By being born into flesh, God has made that which is ordinary holy. The sheep and the feeding trough, our work on the computer, food shopping, Wacky Wednesday –all of it is made holy through the the birth of God’s son. In our birthday celebrations, school graduations, and golf outings, God is present. In doctors’ offices and hospital rooms, in kitchens with empty chairs, in the darkness in the middle of the night, God is present. Nothing is ever the same again. If the Word can become flesh, anything is possible. Because the Word became flesh, everything is possible. And so in this moment, in the intersection of heaven and earth, hope is born.
This Advent season, our focus was on hope. As part of our expression of faith, we wrote our hopes on tags and hung them on a Christmas tree. You hope for good health and a clean room, and that friends would no longer harm themselves. You hope for good grades, for friends to realize how beautiful they are, protection for abused children and for them to know they are loved. There is hope for animals never to need to be rescued. Someone hopes that everyone will laugh everyday. Many hope for peace.
Tonight, our hope lies swaddled in the manger, in the mystery of the human and divine. In those chubby baby cheeks and tender skin, God risks everything for us. This infant will bring forgiveness to sinners, healing to the ill and love to the unlovable. In this wild, holy mystery, we can never again be certain where God will appear, or the lengths to which God will go to show us the depth of love God has for you and for me. How can our words express what God has expressed in this sweet baby? Even Jesus’ mother Mary was overcome, Luke tells us:
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.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this they made know what that been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
Tonight, we gather, treasuring all these words, and pondering in our hearts their meaning for us and for the world. Tonight Jesus comes, and his birth is not with the fanfare of fireworks but with the silence of a star. Tonight, this baby holds all our hopes and fears. In the presence of the World made flesh, the world is silent.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin