Reader #1:

I do not believe the old saying “familiarity breeds contempt” is an accurate statement. However, familiarity does tend to make us insensitive.

Reader #2:

The painting that caught our eye and moved us so deeply that we spent more than we should have to purchase it, seldom catches our attention when we enter the room where it hangs. It is merely part of our household belongings, and we seldom give it much notice unless some visitor entering the room for the first time says, “I really like your painting. Tell me about it.” And then, if we are in the right mood, as we tell about the time we bought it, we may even feel some of the excitement we once felt when that painting was first ours. But most days, we come and go, seldom even noticing it is there. 

#1: Familiarity with the painting does not breed contempt for the painting; it is just that familiarity has made us insensitive to its presence. How easy it is to be insensitive to what is familiar. How easy it is to take for granted all that we call “ours.” This is true whether we are talking about our painting or our friends or our family. Those persons and things we see and deal with on a regular basis, we tend to take for granted. They are so familiar we are insensitive to their value. 

#2: Grandmother tells a story from her childhood, a story we have heard her tell a hundred times. It is the story about her first great adventure, the story about her traveling on the train—by herself—to visit her relatives who lived in the big city of St. Louis. We have heard it all before: her telling about the box lunch her mother made for her to take, the kindness of the porter, the rudeness of the man in the seat across the aisle, the sunrise seen out the train window. On and on the story goes; we have heard it all before, and even before she gets to the part about the beautiful sunrise out the train window, our minds are thinking of other things. Familiarity does not breed contempt as much as it causes us to be insensitive to the truth and significance of what we have seen and heard many times before. 

#1: This is the challenge before us. Can we see, can we sense, can we discern the truth and significance, of what this service is really all about? Can we become aware of the significance of the truth we are celebrating, a truth, a story so familiar? Or will our attention to this well-worn story we always tell this time of year be like our attention to the story Grandmother is telling us for the hundredth time? Is our polite silence merely a mask disguising the impatience we feel and our longing to get on with it, so we can move on to other things we are more interested in? Are we so full of the importance of our own agendas, are we so weighed down by what we think is the importance of our schedules, that there is no room for something as familiar as this story? 

#2: “No room.” That is a significant part of the story, this story that is so familiar we seldom listen when its told. There was no room in Bethlehem; there was no room for Joseph and Mary; there was no room for a baby being born; there was no room. Is this what Luke is telling us? Is Luke holding up a mirror for us to see ourselves and the way we respond to the coming of Christ, the way we respond to all that Christ would have us be and become, say and do? 

#1: There is no room. This is a very real problem for most of us. Our lives are overcrowded. Our schedules are overloaded. We are trying to spin so many plates some are falling to the floor. There is no room. 

#2: Are we so familiar with the story, we can no longer hear this truth that is intended to call us to reevaluation of what we are doing with the limited time we have on earth? There was no room in the inn. Is this still true for us? Is there no room in our lives for the gift and the demands that come through the Christ child? 

#1: The lives of the folks like us in Bethlehem were too crowded; the demands of taking care of all the customers who had come by demand of the government were too great; their lives were in such overload they did not notice what was really happening there. There was no room—not merely no floor space available; there was no room in their overcrowded, overloaded lives. 

#2: But a place was provided; not a maternity hospital, not even a home with a bed, but a place shared with cattle and sheep. Jesus was not born among the likes of us with all our financial advantages; he was born in a place similar to the places of deepest poverty we can find in East Austin or the barrios of South Texas. Into the aroma of barnyard manure and hay, this baby we have come to call the Prince of Peace and the King of Kings, was born into the world and placed in a feed trough. Can we listen to this all too familiar story and hear what the story has to tell us about our priorities and the priorities of God? 

#1: Who were the first people to get a birth announcement? Shepherds. Shepherds were at the bottom of the social ladder. It was not just their poverty and the smell of sheep in their clothing that placed them at the bottom; the so called better people in society looked down on them because they were not only unclean from a lack of baths, they were unclean because their work prevented them from participating in the religious services and rituals the better people observed. They were not persecuted as outcasts. They were simply the ignored, working poor, doing a work that society needed done, but not paid well for their labor and not recognized, much less respected, for what they did. It was to the shepherds God sent the first birth announcement. Can we listen to this part of the story and really hear what it is telling us? 

#2: And what was their reaction? What was the reaction of the shepherds when the special messenger from God arrived and they found themselves caught in the floodlight of God’s radiance? Finding themselves the center of God’s attention frightened them. They knew who they were. They knew their place in the scheme of things; the people they lived among had made it clear; they were shepherds—merely shepherds. They were the overlooked, over worked and underpaid people of that society. The only time they got special attention was when they were accused of doing something wrong. Life had taught them that when they got special attention, they were in trouble. Finding themselves in the light of God’s presence frightened them. Has the familiarity of this story made us insensitive to the messages it contains? Can we hear what it is trying to tell us? 

#1: The first words of the birth announcement are the words the shepherds needed to hear. Perhaps they are the words any of us need to hear when we are aware—truly aware—that the floodlights of God are focused on us personally. “Be not afraid,” the messenger from God proclaimed. “Don’t be scared. This message is not an angry listing of all that you have done wrong. This message is not a declaration of the punishment you deserve. The message I have for you is good news. It is good news that will bring great joy, not just to you but all people everywhere. The Savior, the one who will make it possible for life to be as God intends life to be, has been born. The Savior, the Messiah, the Christ has come to heal the divisions—the divisions between you and God—and in that healing, also the healing of divisions humans have made between one another. The Savior has been born. And you can go see him. He’s in a feed trough in Bethlehem.” And as soon as the messenger stopped talking, there was a huge choir singing to those startled, stunned shepherds—singing an anthem praising God and declaring healing, wholeness, peace to all who will receive it. 

#2: We have heard it all before. The question is: can something so often repeated, so familiar that it is commonplace, can this familiar story invade our living with the startling significance of its messages? Can we listen to such a familiar story and become so aware of its significance for our lives that like the shepherds in the story we too go searching for what God is doing? Can this all too familiar story send us into the Bethlehems of our lives searching for the birth of God’s grace in the ordinariness of the feed troughs of life? 

#1: Can we get past the barrier of familiarity so that we are able to discover what this story has to say to us today? Can we get past the barrier of familiarity so we can discover once again God’s grace coming into our lives, but once again not coming when or where or how we thought it would be coming? Can we so listen to this story many of us can recite from memory that we hear more than what we have heard before? Through all the familiarity of this story is it possible for us to hear the Word of God speaking to us personally and telling us what we, what each of us, needs to hear about God’s grace coming alive among us—but not exactly where we would expect it—and laying claims on our living we had not planned on, or maybe even wanted? 

#2: In this service that is so familiar it is almost routine, through this story that is so familiar we are tempted to stop listening because we are so confident we already know all it has to say, can we get past the barrier of familiarity and hear what God is trying to tell us? 

#1: God, help us break through the barrier familiarity builds around this story, so that the Gospel truth in this story is set loose in our lives. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer:

God, in the midst of our celebrating that Jesus was born a long time ago, help us be alert to the ways Your grace is coming into our world today. On December 25, as we give one another gifts and clutter the floor with torn Christmas wrappings, help us be sensitive to the presence of Christ. God, we need Your help because it is easy for us to become so focused on being good hosts or good guests that we forget the primary and profound reason for us being together. Others of us need Your help because we will be alone on Christmas, and it is easy to miss the gifts of solitude because we are absorbed in the negative feelings of loneliness. God, whether we are in the midst of a crowd of folks or celebrating December 25 by ourselves, help us rediscover the meaning of this special day and in that to experience the joy that comes through faith.

God, please enable those who are going through difficult or painful times this Christmas to be aware of the presence of Your love in their lives. As they deal with whatever they are facing, give them that extra measure of faith that enables them to draw upon all the resources of Your grace. Even in the midst of their troubles, enable them to experience the profound joy and peace of knowing they are precious in Your sight.

This we pray in the name of the one whose coming has given us new birth. Amen.