Hebrew Scriptures – Isaiah 9: 2-71
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: 1-202
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.
“What’s God Really Like?”
Have you ever wondered what God is really like, or how it is that we’re able to recognize the presence of the holy in our midst? The people of the Ancient Near East who created the Bible had a lot to say about God. The prophet Isaiah speaks about the long-waited-for messiah – the Christ, the Anointed One – who will sit on the throne of David forever. The vision is captured and repeated by Luke in his story of angels and shepherds come to Bethlehem.
But hold on a minute. If we’d look just a bit closer we might find that some things don’t seem to fit here. The wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the prince of peace isn’t born in Rome, not even in Jerusalem, but in some obscure village of Judea. And the birth isn’t in a palace accompanied by royal physicians. It happens in a hovel, really, surrounded by stinking farm animals without so much as the help of a midwife or doula. It happens in a stable. As far as the herald angels are concerned, their song couldn’t have been all that impressive. Nobody seems to have noticed it – well, except for a few obscure nomadic herders who were always looked on with disdain and suspicion by respectable members of society.
Does this tell us anything important about what God is really like and how we might encounter that same sacred presence in our own lives? Is it possible that in this very room, in the painful whimper or delighted coo of a child, in a huddled encampment under the First Street bridge next to the river, or in the hushed serenity of moonlight on snow, we might find God? Is it possible that we need to begin looking in unlikely places for a glimpse of the holy? It seems to me that this is what the scriptural witness keeps saying, over and over and over again – especially about Jesus of Nazareth, not only at his birth but at practically every point in his life.
Unaccounted for after a Passover pilgrimage at the age of twelve, Jesus is supposedly found in the temple questioning the most learned religious leaders of his day. At thirty-three he’s on a hillside just outside the city – but near that same temple – hanging from a cross. Who would’ve thought to look for him in either place? In between these two events what he did was utterly unpredictable and, by conventional standards, outrageous!
A single story could sum it up for us. Jesus was found one day at a public well holding an intimate conversation with a Samaritan woman. Having had five husbands she now lived with a man to whom she wasn’t married. That Jesus dared to speak with a Samaritan, and in public, offended Jewish sensibilities. But that he was speaking, not only to a woman, but this woman, was scandalous to all of the other men of his culture! The fact that he conversed and hung out with just anybody – but especially with those who led questionable lives – was an affront to all of the pious people of his time. Yet there he was!
Throughout his entire ministry there is this inescapable consistency. Emmanuel – God-with-us – is with all of us, showing up in the strangest places, in all humility, and often hidden to those who are too careless to notice.
So we don’t need to take a trip to the Holy Land to find Jesus. The Lord of all life is right here among us, just outside those doors. Wherever there is human need and an opportunity to care, there the Christ is – as if in a feeding trough made for animals: in a manger. The presence of the holy, the spirit of the sacred, may go unnoticed by those who look for God only in the spectacular, and yet it’s revealed to anyone who understands what Bethlehem is really all about.
So this incognito Christ isn’t only to be found at Christmas. He’s within easy reach at all times and seasons for those who can come to recognize the holy in the ordinary. And just so our vision of God doesn’t become veiled in the pushing and shoving of daily life, Christmas happens once a year to remind us of how things are. And so we all come this night hoping, longing for a new way of seeing and recognizing God in the midst of us.
Take time to ponder the
“Unexpected” message on the back of your bulletin:
Even
now we simply do not expect
to find a deity in a stable.
Somehow
the setting is all wrong:
the swaddling clothes too plain,
the
manger too common for the likes of a Savior,
the straw
inelegant,
the animals, reeking and noisy,
the whole scene too
ordinary for our taste.
And the cast of characters is no
better.
With the possible exception of the kings,
who among them is fit for this night?
the shepherds? certainly
too crude,
the carpenter too rough,
the girl too young.
And
the baby!
Whoever expected the advent of God in a helpless
child?
Had the Messiah arrived in the blazing light of the glory
of a legion of angels wielding golden swords,
the whole world
could have been conquered for Christ
right then and there
and
we in the church – to say nothing of the world! –
wouldn’t have so much trouble today.
Even now we simply do
not expect
to face the world armed with love.3
We do know by now (Don’t we?) that the true gifts of this day are not the brightly decorated packages around the tree – important as they may be in conveying our love and care for each other. The true gifts of Christmas are the ability to discover the divine in our own lives, and the willingness then to turn and offer it to any of God’s sons or daughters to whom we can bring encouragement, help, beauty, strength, tenderness. When we have received this gift of seeing God in others and in the landscapes of life all around us, and have learned how to tend the holy in those places and in those people, then Christmas in all of its fullness will have arrived.
* * *
1 Isaiah is describing a political victory here – a new king, a new descendant of David, to rule Israel and to conquer all of Israel’s enemies. Isaiah’s vision, for all of its powerful and poetic imagery, describes a bloody conquest – what he believes will be a victory of God’s chosen nation and the installation of a powerful king by divine right. Christians came to interpret these verses as a prophecy about Jesus.
We would do well to reconsider that this “messianic promise” here is mainly about the brutal and revolutionary work of a powerful divine warrior – the stuff of which holy wars are made. As Isaiah depicts him this warrior is not at all like the Messiah that we’re invited to contemplate here at Christmas.
2 This is the traditional account of Jesus’ birth. The most interesting feature of the narrative, though, is when and where it was supposed to have happened. The reference to the census is meant to give the birth a worldwide setting; the birth in a rural town (some biblical scholars still say it was Nazareth, not Bethlehem) in the backwaters of the Roman empire is also significant. There are a number of problems with this scene, though. There was no “world-wide census” at the time of Caesar Augustus (at least as far as we know), nor was there a census that required people to return to their ancestral cities. What’s more the census under Quirinius was only for the region of Judea and didn’t affect Galilee.
The scene narrows to a manger and to a child wrapped in strips of cloth. The Greek word for manger (phatnē) can refer either to an animal’s stall or to its feeding trough. Luke calls attention to it by repeating it three times (vv. 7, 12 and 16). In verse 12 he calls it a sign – the reference is to Isaiah 1: 3 in the Septuagint: “The ox knows its owner, and the donkey knows the phatnē of its lord, but Israel has not known me, my people have not understood.” I think that Luke is suggesting that the situation has been reversed here: this baby is recognized by the shepherds; the child in the manger is the messiah who will one day be recognized by his people. The titles that Luke gives him signify that his realm is universal; the good news will bring joy to all people, not just a few.
In this way Luke is stressing the enormous impact that this birth is to have on the whole world: it is to bring the peace of God and accomplish what no human being ever could – before or since – even one as great as the Roman emperor. In the presence of a small child, peace is already a reality, because God has announced it and made it so.
3 Ann Weems, “Unexpected,” in Kneeling in Bethlehem (The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1980), p. 45.