Christmas Eve Sermon

Robert Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

December 24, 2006

Luke 2:1-20

Not many stories are as well known as this one. Every time I hear it, I remember the bathrobe dramas that I participated in as a child---a practice that has continued, thanks to the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. You and I may hear the story as we would a fairy tale, a blessed respite from daily distressing bad news. Or we may tune it out because we have heard it so often, even almost daily since Thanksgiving.

 I will not spend time complaining over the commercialized Christmas spirit which this story, in its many variations and embellishments, imparts to our troubled lives. As I see it, anything which evokes human kindness and charity should not be discouraged. But we, as stewards of the mysteries, can and must read and remember this, our own enchanted story, and ponder it again and again.

This is the right name for what we do, I think. To “ponder” means to weigh in the mind, to meditate, to deliberate. The Christmas story is not simply descriptive. It is not merely information which we can learn and then save on our hard drives. It is a story which inspires the imagination: through it God opens new vistas---wisdom about living and dying, about the ways of God in the lives of ordinary people.

We are standing with the shepherds in the field. It is a night like many others---with work to do. Shepherds are nothing special. They are farm “hands” (a descriptive word: they are valued for their physical labors and their hard-won experience. And suddenly we are all visited by an angel and surrounded by the splendor of the Lord. And we are terrified. We may not be up on divine matters, but we know that to be in the presence of the “wholly other” is dangerous business! The Creator God, who made the heavens and the earth, is no “chum” who shows up to amuse us. When the glory of the Lord descends, we may be simply swept away, like a bug on the ground.

But to our amazement, the angel shushs us, as a mother would her children who awake from a nightmare. “Do not be afraid,” the angels says. Are there more welcome words than these? We swim in a sea of fear much of our days: fear of disease, of accidents, of terrorists, of those who would harm us; fear of the future and fear that our pasts have doomed us to be unhappy, always pushing that same rock up that same hill, again and again for as long as we live.

So we are astonished to hear that in God’s presence, we do not have to be afraid. “Perfect love casts out fear,” we are told (I John 4:18). The angel has good news, not bad news. We and the shepherds are familiar enough with our sin, our failures to live up to the high expectations of the commandments; we would assume that if God would show up, the first word would be judgment, not mercy; condemnation, not forgiveness. God would have a list, and would be checking off all of the ways we have been naughty.

But instead, the angel says, “good news: a deliverer, a savior, has been born…..to you. A great joy is coming to you and to all people.”

“To you is born this day a Savior.”

The news that the angels announce is not of an event that we might hear about on the radio, but which has no impact on our lives---like the visit of a foreign diplomat, or the acquisition of company A by company B.

The news that is announced is also not a generalization, a “to whom it may concern,” or a letter addressed to “occupant.” And it is not addressed to “humankind.”  It is addressed to us, standing out there in the field. It is not addressed only to the power brokers, the rich, the especially righteous, the priests and preachers. But here, God chooses to announce the messiah to….us. . It is as if the actors in the drama look out toward the audience (us) and say, “Robert, or Fred or Mary, to you is born this day a savior.” And we are drawn into the drama ourselves

It may dawn on us, standing there with the shepherds and taking all of this in, that we---- even if we are rich or powerful, upstanding or nice---- we really belong with the shepherds. For, when we are honest with ourselves and God, we are simply supplicants, struggling mortals, just like they are. And terrified and relieved, just as they are. If we are not poor, we know poverty of spirit and soul; we know what it means to hope against hope.

“ For your sake, God was not content to be God but willed to become man; for you he emptied himself that you might be exalted; for you he gave himself that you might be lifted up and drawn unto him… For your benefit the Christmas story happened.”
 (Karl Barth, “Unto You is Born This Day a Savior,” from Deliverance for the Captives, 1961, italics added)

You and I may say: “But we didn’t place this order, we did not expect this gift.” True enough: we usually do not know enough to ask for what we truly need, a gift that will endure and even grow more valuable the older we get.

We may say that we do not understand the message, or we do not believe it. Regardless, the message is meant for us, too.

 So, with the shepherds, we go to see.  As we travel to the manger, all our distinctions disappear. Bankers and lawyers and teachers, old and young, nimble and slow-moving, bright and dull------we are one people now. And we realize that the angel really was speaking in the plural form of “you,’ which Texans, happily, have a word for: “To ya’ll this day a Savior is born.” We are all “y’all,” recipients of good new and great joy.

As we travel together to the manger, we all wonder if it  true, this good news. So many hopes dashed, so many plans to make ourselves and our world better, so many hopes for freedom from want. So often peace is interrupted by the clash of armies or the knock on the door. A deliverer? Could it be true?
 
We may think, at times, that we need only an advisor, a trainer, a consultant, a coach, a fixer, a problem-solver. But the Christmas gospel is that God has given us a liberator, a redeemer, a rescuer, someone to stand by us in this life and next. God has done for us that which we could not do for ourselves. God, in Jesus, has done an intervention. God, in person, has come to save us: to live among us as servant and healer and truth-teller, and to die and be raised, for our sakes. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,” is the way the Apostle Paul puts it. Jesus is not just like God; Jesus is God’s Word made human flesh.

An old Hasidic story, adapted. You are in the woods, lost, and darkness is coming upon you. So you find a big rock, crawl upon it and fall asleep. The next morning, you are awakened by the rescue party, and your first words to the rescuers are: “I am so glad I found you.”
 
Augustine wrote: “Pass by him, the man [Jesus], and you will come to God. Do not seek for any other way to come to God; for if he had not vouchsafed to be the way, we should have all have gone astray. Therefore, I say: do not seek the way: the way has come to thee. Rise and walk.” “All we are asked to do is stretch out our hands, to receive the gift, and be thankful.” (Barth)

Arriving at the manger, we and the shepherds see that things are just as the angel said: there are Mary and Joseph, and the baby, sure enough, wrapped in swaddling cloths, nested in the manger. We tell Mary and Joseph, and others (who!) about the sheep and the angels and the announcement, and the heavenly chorus and the glory all around. And they are all astonished. This night has been a night of astonishment.

We are told that “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered over them.” What does this all mean? Who are the shepherds? And why shepherds as the first visitors? What comes next?

And we have been pondering too, all these years. The baby whose birth we celebrate grew up. He had a hard time of it, we know that. But what we have also come to know is this: Jesus is God’s good news for us, and for all. The story of God’s faithfulness and mercy, lived out by Jesus, is now our story, too.

We join the angelic chorus:

“Glory to God in highest heaven,
And on earth, his peace, for all people on whom his favor rests.”