Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve 2017
It is as if time is standing still here on this most holy of nights, the night of our dear Savior’s birth. All that has been, all that there is, and all that will be converge on this night in this place. We are transported to Bethlehem, with Mary and Joseph. In the dark of the night sky, the stars sparkle brightly. They look to be so close that you think you could reach out and grab them. The baby Jesus is soon to be wrapped up tight, and sleeping in the manger. All is calm, all is bright. Right now, right here, this night is perfect. Maybe.
When we got into our car tonight to come to church, a lot came with us. Our thanksgivings, our hopes and dreams jumped into the car when we opened the door. Perhaps it is the excitement about gathering with family, or the dream of a hoped-for gift. Some of us bring more than that. We also bring our burdens that we carry with us almost everywhere we go. Grief can be a constant companion, especially during the Christmas season. I am certain that when we put our coat on to come to church, it went over top of concerns about medical insurance and money. We stuffed into our pockets our worries about our loved ones. When we parked the car, we had hoped to shut the door on broken relationships, if only for an hour. Tonight, memories of Christmases past showed up, for good or for bad. And then there are our expectations and hopes for Christmas. What did you bring with you tonight?
A friend of mine posted on FaceBook her hopes for Christmas. She writes:
Every Christmas you always hear people saying what they want and bought. Well this is what I want: I want sick people to be cured. I want children with no families to be adopted and parents who want babies to be blessed with them. I want people to never have to worry about food, shelter, & heat. And cliché or not, I want world peace, too.[1]
Perhaps this is why we come tonight, if only for an hour, to a place where all is calm, and all is bright. We come to live out, if only for an evening, peace on earth and mercy mild. But the trouble is that all those things that we carry around with us didn’t stay outside in the parking lot when we came through the church door.
We came through those doors with both thanksgivings and sorrows. We come on this holy night to hear the story of God among us. But while Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth looks like the front of a Hallmark Christmas card, Luke left out the messy details. Truth be told, while we envision our Lord and Savior quietly fast asleep, at some point he woke up cold and hungry, and this holy baby’s cries were loud enough to for the shepherds to find him. I picture Mary, who had just given birth, without any pain relief measures, and lying on cold, stiff hay which was poking her in her back, turning to Joseph and saying in that voice he dreaded, “This is YOUR hometown. Where are all your friends? Where is your family? Why couldn’t they put us up for the night?” And then she began to cry. Poor Joseph—all he wanted to do was to comfort his baby and his wife, but he felt responsible for their circumstances and so he, too, began to sob. The sounds of everyone crying were not in harmony with the donkeys’ braying and the sheep’s baa-ing. It was anything but quiet that night.
This is the birth of the holy child, born in flesh and blood, both wholly human and wholly divine. This is the babe in the manger, the King of Kings, who, with his borning cry, smelled the sheep and heard the cows moo. In this low estate, with chickens clucking and goats chewing, came our savior, called Emmanuel, God is with us, in the middle of the noise and things that poke us in the back.
Theologian Edmund Steimle writes, “For what other message on Christmas Eve is worth listening to? What peace? What hope? If it is simply a forgetting—when we can’t forget, really—then we’re reducing the Christmas story to a bit of nostalgia and indulging ourselves in the sentimental orgy that Christmas has become for so many, or we are reduced to the deep depression that grips so many others on Christmas Eve.”[2]
How did we get here, writing on FaceBook about our desire for a perfect world and at the same time, celebrating God’s birth in Jesus’ human flesh? When God hung the stars in night sky, and sent water crashing onto shores, when God orchestrated the dance of the peacock and the ballet of the platypuses, God declared it good. When God created male and female in God’s image, God blessed them. On that sixth day, God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good.[3]
And then came Adam and Eve, formed in God’s own image, Cain and Abel, David and Bathsheba, and all our fears and jealousies, our prejudices, our egos. Our sin rose up. But God responded with grace and mercy. When God’s people were enslaved in Egypt, God led them out of bondage into freedom, even providing bread for them on their journey. Through Moses and the Ten Commandments, God again entered into a covenant to help us live as God’s people. God spoke to us through the prophets, telling us what is, and what God wants things to be. God’s grace is given to us over and over again. And we broke our part of the covenant over and over again.
Then God sent his son. On this holy night, In the town of Bethlehem, the Son of God, was born of Mary to be among us. The one whom through our sins are forgiven comes with flesh and blood, and tears and crying. God was willing to risk everything for us, that we might know how much God loves us.
This most amazing event, this first Christmas morning, in that little town, tells every one in every place, and in every time, that it is God’s will to come to us, to be with us. To be with us in our living and our dying, in our hunger and in our feasts. God is enfleshed in the middle of all that is sweet, and I all that is sorrowful, to be with us in birth and death, and love and heartbreak. Jesus was born to be here with us tonight, in our praying and our singing. To be present for us in a piece of bread and a sip of wine.
God promises there will be a time when there will be no famine, no war and no tears. My friend’s prayers for Christmas, for healing, for the blessing of children and families, for the homeless and the needy will come to pass, for God has given us that promise. But until then, it is here, now, in the midst of our fleshy mess, that God choses to meet us in Christ Jesus. Through this baby, God blesses broken hearts, and newly found love, the birth of newborns and the loss of partners. Through this child, laying in swaddling cloths in the manger, God is present in our goodbyes, and our hellos, in our marriage and separation, and in our healing and reconciliations. God is with us in the middle of our wars and our peace. Through this holy child, we are given hope, and the resilience of our human spirit.
God did this extraordinary thing in a most ordinary manner and in a most ordinary place. And perhaps that’s central to the message of why we gather and celebrate tonight – that this God, who is beyond anything we could imagine, is bound up with our everyday ordinary lives. There is no place too nasty, too painful or too sinful for the grace of our Lord to enter. There is no darkness that exists which can overcome the light of Christ. Christ is in the midst of it all, making all things holy in his name, and giving us peace that the world cannot give.
And so, we come here on this holy night, waiting to hear the sound of the newborn baby’s cry among the bray of the goats, and the beating of our hearts. We come in darkness, to bathe in the light of Christ, and to sing with the angels. Thanks be to God.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1] Used by permission.
[2] Edmund Steimle, “The Eye of the Storm.” Chorus of Witnesses. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994. 241.
[3] Genesis 1:31