The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA

Christmas Eve, December 25, 2005

Scripture Reading:

 

Hebrew Scriptures – Isaiah 9: 2-7[1]

 

      2The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.  3You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder.  4For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.  5For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.  6For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  7His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.  He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.  The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

 

Gospel – Luke 2: 1-20[2]

 

     1In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.  2This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3All went to their own towns to be registered.  4Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.  5He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.  6While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

     8In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  9Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  11to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  12This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”  13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

14“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

     15When 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.”  16So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.  17When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.  19But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.  20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

 

 

 

 

“Do You See It?"

 

          As most of you here know, I spent the first eighteen years of my life on the island of Aruba.  Our family lived in a small company town on the southeast coast of the island, far away from any city lights.  Except for the occasional rain storm, the perpetually summer night sky was always undimmed by artificial light.  And on a moonless night the stars were especially brilliant; you could literally "see forever."  I remember, quite often, lying on my back on such nights and simply staring in awe at the display.[3]

          Nowadays it's hard even to imagine the degree of darkness that used to descend on the earth as soon as the sun went down.  In primitive human settlements there might be fires and lamps, but these gave small light compared to the vastness of the surrounding dark.  Caught out on the roads or in distant pastures at night, people of the ancient Near East might have to get along without any light at all.  Under those circumstances people knew, very viscerally, the reality of physical darkness in a way that few of us do anymore, living as we do in a world saturated with artificial light.

          So, for us to understand the good news of Christmas, maybe we ought to make the attempt to imagine ourselves back in the era before electric lights.  Imagine what it would be like to be out on some road in the country long after sunset, completely at the mercy of a moonless or even starless night.  Then imagine seeing a small light way off in the distance, and knowing, with infinite relief in the depth of your soul, that this Godforsaken darkness is not the final word in the story of your life.  Christmas morning is meant to be like that first glimpse of trembling light that, while it's still far from complete dawn, confirms for us that we have not been abandoned forever to the darkness.[4]

          Unfortunately, for more than a century the marketplace has expressed the meaning of Christmas.  Hallmark cards have covered the full spectrum from religious piety to simple messages of warmth and holiday good wishes.  Most of us still wait for a gift to come to us at Christmas, but our waiting is very different now from what it was for the people of the ancient Near East.  A generic Jesus, the Christ-child of crčche scenes – an image filled with modern sentiments – threatens to completely bypass the profound vigil-keeping that we're invited to keep tonight.

          In spite of all that's still wrong with the world, though, our waiting isn't some kind of existential anguish – we're not waiting for Godot, who never comes.  But neither is our waiting just passing the time, like being bored to death during a graveyard shift.  This waiting can be profoundly rich and deeply moving.  It is a waiting meant to reconnect us with our ancestors in the faith:  the people of ancient Israel.  It's a waiting in the night for the coming of a new light.

          We are waiting tonight for nothing less than a divine light, something that will at least last from here to Epiphany.  When we gather together on a night like this to wait for the coming of the dawn, when sickness grips people that we love, when we anticipate the arrival of friends or family members driving in cocoons of solitude called cars, when we walk the floor wrestling with our night terrors and sleeplessness, we often find that we simply can't wait any longer for the light of a new day to infiltrate our darkness and transform it into something else – something new and filled with hope.

          With "all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood" that is the reality in Iraq at this very moment, I find those words from our reading from Isaiah tonight to be poignantly prophetic.  It is a breathtaking vision of peacemaking in the midst of war.  But this shalom isn't to be accomplished through brokered treaties, arm-twisting negotiations or brute force, but by the in-breaking of a new way of being, by the gift of hope for new life represented in the birth of a child.[5] 

          Ultimately, of course, we celebrate Christmas because Jesus wasn't just an ordinary baby; we celebrate because of who he was as an adult.  So our experience of God's presence in our lives tonight is a constant interplay of paradoxes.  At Christmas we embrace and enter into the presence of God in the vulnerability and innocence of a tiny child – in the pain but eventual rejoicing that is the act of giving birth.  We're reminded tonight, like no other night, of the presence of the Holy in our most vulnerable moments:  in failure, danger, starvation, darkness and, yes, in the violent death of war.  Here on Christmas Eve, just like the moment of sunrise at Easter, we celebrate the gift of God's ongoing promise of new light at the very place where all of our hopes – past, present and future – come together.

          So this is our Christmas vocation:  to be that tiny trace of goodness, that glimmer of sacred light, in the face of whatever form of darkness we might find ourselves walking through.  Our particular place of darkness – yours and mine – is probably as near as our own home, our place of work, our neighborhood…our own family.  It may not be our gift – it may not be in our power – to fill the whole place with light.  Instead, the invitation to us tonight is simply to be that small ray of something different, to be that little wink of light that lets others know that even when the darkness might terrify them with its persistence, the Light of something Holy still lives quietly in the midst of us.

Do you see it?

          "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place."[6]

 

* * *

 


[1] This messianic oracle is often interpreted in relation to the enthronement ceremony of a king (A parallel worth noting is Ps. 2: 7, "You are my son; this day I have begotten you" – suggesting the adoption of a Davidic king by God.  So, unlike the highly popularized conclusion of conservative Christianity, these verses are not a prediction of the birth of Jesus (That's not the meaning of any of the so-called prophetic pronouncements of the Hebrew Scriptures.).  Isaiah's statement that "a child is born to us," along with his description of this person, point to a king who the people hoped would fulfill all of Israel's hopes.  The prophet's poetic imagery vividly depicts the transformation of the people under this new king.  All who are depressed, fearful and lost in darkness will rejoice at the discovery of light, the universal symbol of the presence of God (cf. Isaiah 10: 17 as well as Pss. 27: 1 and 50: 2).

   In the ancient Near East titles were often bestowed on a ruler at his accession to the throne.  Those spoken of here (9: 5) were thought to designate the characteristics of the reign of the Messiah:  wonder-counselor (someone with exceptional wisdom and the gift to plan wonders), a god-hero, a father figure, an enduring and concerned leader, a prince and channel of shalom, indeed the very representative of God on earth.  It's no surprise, then, that as the nascent Christian community began to explore their scriptures in search of an explanation of the life of this man, Jesus, that they should find profound meaning in passages such as these.

[2] This narrative of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem is so familiar to Christian ears that we hardly even listen to it anymore.  The average lay person doesn't know that Luke is employing for purposes of his story a census that didn't actually occur until some ten or twelve years after Jesus' birth (at the very earliest somewhere around 6 or 7 CE).  By calling this a "first registration" Luke indicates that he knows the problem.  The census that we know of implicated the people of the south and not Galilee.  Luke's intention is to make Octavian, then – the Caesar forty-two years in power who took the throne name Augustus – the agent of God, just as Deutero-Isaiah did with Cyrus (see Isaiah 45: 1a).  The point, finally, is that Luke very much wants to stress the Davidic ancestry of Jesus (Ironically, this can only come through Joseph, though, who's not supposed to be the "real" father!), so somehow he has to get Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

[3] Only those of you who have hiked or backpacked in the mountains may be able to understand just how spectacular a clear night sky like this truly is.  To this day I miss the sight of the constellation known as "the Southern Cross."  It's not seen in the latitudes this far north of the equator.  Some of my first glimpses of the enormity of God came during star-gazing nights such as these.

[4] For this reason I've often thought that we ought to have a Christmas Sunrise Service sometime, and not just one on the morning of Easter.  Both make a powerful proclamation of the victory of light over darkness, of new birth in the face of death.

[5] We should not, however, dwell on the notion (as people of the ancient Near East did) of a firstborn son as a great occasion for rejoicing in a decidedly patriarchal family, and certainly not on the birth of a male prince as some sort of ultimate military conqueror.  Such imagery continues to be the death of us.

[6] Luke 2: 15b.