Christmas Eve 2016
Holy Storytelling
Tonight we hear the Christmas story from two different
perspectives: Luke and Matthew… from the shepherd and the magi. I invite you to consider how the stories each
have a different focus, but moreso, what it is that each of them tells us about
the good news of the coming of Jesus Christ.
Gospel 1:
Luke 2
1 In
those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be
registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was
governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph
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.
5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was
expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver
her child. 7 And 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. 8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch
over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and
the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the
angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news
of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of
David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you:
you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." 13
And 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!" 15 When 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." 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the
child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been
told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the
shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in
her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they
had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Gospel 2:
Matthew 2
2 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in
Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where
is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at
its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he
was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the
chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah
was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been
written by the prophet:
6 ‘And you,
Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of
Judah;
for from
you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
7 Then
Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time
when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and
search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so
that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they
set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its
rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw
that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the
house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid
him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of
gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to
return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
13 Now
after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and
said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain
there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy
him.” 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went
to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill
what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have
called my son.”
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise
men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around
Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had
learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through
the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “A voice
was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel
weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they
are no more.”
Grace to you and Peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ.
The children had set up the crèche in their sanctuary. It was one of those beautiful ceramic sets,
probably Italian, and the children had carefully carried the pieces over the
stone floor of the cathedral. The Mary,
the Joseph, the Shepherds, the sheep and cattle and oxen. This was one of those times where they even
put the Magi in place early, all of them facing towards the manger,
anticipating the coming Christ. On the
night of Christmas Eve, finally, after watching the empty manger for days, the
shepherds and wisemen were getting their due.
Finally, in comes the child carrying the baby Jesus… and on his way to
the scene, baby Jesus slipped from the small hands, falling to the stone
floor. The cracking sound, the
gasp. And baby Jesus’ head came
off.
The beautiful manger scene, with the light of the room
glancing off that white porcelain, awaiting Jesus on Christmas Eve…. was
broken. Cracked open to reveal the
gasping and faltering that we encounter in the Christmas Story.
Cracked open to reveal what we know, and what we don’t
know. Cracked open to reveal the pain of
the world.
One wonders about those cracks.
When we read these two stories side by side, one with
shepherds, one with wise men, both telling of the wonderful news of Jesus’
birth. We hear these two perspectives,
one with ordinary laborers doing the good work of daily bread for themselves
and the owners of those sheep, the other with bizarre sages from a far off land
bringing a message of political upheaval, both stories revealing cosmic
intervention. We see cracks in the story
that leave open questions for us and reveal brokenness, spaces, gaps where the
story lets us wonder… what is God doing here?
In Luke’s telling of the story, Mary is expecting a child. Mary, the story tells us, was an unwed
pregnant young woman. Probably 14 or 15
years old. You all knew that already.
But there are some big cracks in the story on either side of that
birth. Anyone who has ever visited a
baby in a hospital, or had a baby of your own, know there is a lot of story to
be told around a birth. How did the
labor start? How long was it? How difficult? And most of all, was anyone’s life in danger
at any point? A very young woman like Mary would have brought more concern to labor
and delivery, just as it would today. The sacrifice she made was to risk her life to
bring this child into the world. Were
there midwives attending? We can only
hope she wasn’t alone. Where was her
family? And really, people saw a 9-month
pregnant young woman and no one was willing to give up their bedroom? Really?
Really.
The story leaves out most of the domestic details, which
leads us to wonder about them. Especially when we are faithful people
seeking a story that resonates with our own experience. And through these cracks we wonder. We may never have been shepherds, but we have
been mothers and fathers. Yet, the
Shepherds themselves are focal because they represent us all. The shepherds are the common folk who hear
the good news! The shepherds are,
fantastically, the ones who come and see, and go and tell. The shepherds show us that the story is for us
and told through us. If you come here
seeking a story tonight because the realities of life for you are about
relationships and love and kindness and mercy.
Even if the church is a struggle for you because Christianity seems
preoccupied with institutions and meaningless rituals and abstract doctrines[i]. This is a story with cracks. A story about you and me, about an unwed
mother and her baby, about a guy who does the noble, foolish thing of marrying
a young woman who has a baby that is not his own. About the common people of the day, even
those at the bottom rung of the social ladder being entrusted with the most important
job – to tell of God’s wondrous work in the world.
In Matthew’s gospel, there are a lot of cracks around those
Magi. They can seem like such an
unexpected imposition on the story! (Especially
if we only ever read Luke on Christmas Eve.)
We wonder how those magi found him?
What was this miraculous star?
Such a story is this that even Thursday on NPR they were talking about
what phenomena this star might have been, planets aligned, comet bursts…?[ii] What was so strange as to lead men to travel
from their home country to a foreign place seeking a newborn king? It’s no wonder they ended up in the story with
their wonderings and wanderings like ours – wandering into Herod’s court,
specifically. Naturally! The epicenter of power is where one would go
to find a baby king. But instead of
finding him, the magi unintentionally set off the alarm. Herod the puppet king fears the threat of
this new king to his own power, and along with the chief priests and scribes,
murderous intentions lurk. It is a foreboding
scene, anticipating the political turmoil that will end Jesus’ life.
It almost ends right there.
The whole story of God’s great work and intervention for us almost stops
with the magi finding him. For as they
tip off Herod, any hope that this time it would be different is abolished. Any hope that our infant king might win the
world over with his tiny fingers and soft skin and cuddly packaging. Any hope that our God might simply melt our
hearts into good behavior evaporates.
Even God coming to earth does not stop conflict and political
maneuvering, and acts of terror.
We watch Rachel lamenting in Ramadah once again. Crack, the perfect story breaks away from the
“Perfect” we pretend is real. The cracks in these stories, the pieces that have
fallen out of the memory of history, connect like threads when we remember that
Rachel, Jacob’s wife, died here in Bethlehem, in childbirth. This can make us all the more grateful for
Mary’s safety, and aware of the danger she was in. Rachel had longed for children, and upon her
second child’s birth, she paid with her life for a son that she would never
nurse or raise. Her pain of longing for
children becomes pain of loss of children here when Herod’s evil slaughters the
innocents. The story makes it hard to
ignore the pain of our modern-day Syria, and the loss of its children. Acute this week, when we stumble across film
of a room full of children who have died, being marked with the sign of the
cross on their foreheads. With this holy
story of unjust death due to Christ’s birth, we commend them to God. And we wonder at the story when Jesus
survives childhood only because he is allowed safe-haven as a refugee in
Egypt. We wonder what the story asks us
to do with refugees fleeing violence like our Lord…?
The cracks left by the storytellers, allow us to see the
world as it is. Cracked and broken. Hurting and begging for healing. For wholeness. For peace.
And there is one more thing that the storytellers, with all
these open cracks, lead us into infinite wonder.
It is into this world the savior comes.
This cracked and broken world, where the beautiful things
entrusted to us regularly need to be put back together. Where the porcelain baby Jesus has glue
around his neck.
This world where the gift you gave to your family member was
met with a forced smile and longing for a stronger relationship. The world where the empty space in your heart
remains for the one you have lost, if not an empty chair at the table. This world where we let innocent children be
massacred.
We can wonder over the beauty of God’s response.
God comes to be with us.
God CHOOSES to come
into this busted up world. Over and over
and over and over and over and over again.
God chooses to be BORN. In
BETHLEHEM. The place where Rachel wept
and Mary pondered. The place from which
Jesus fled, and shepherds ran to the manger.
The place where Shepherds and Magi told Everyone the good news, every
day people and kings in their palaces. That Christ, our savior is born. God has come to us, and is coming to us, and
will come to us. Through every cracked
open life who longs for love. God is
there. God is HERE. Come to be with us in every crack, filling it
with the bond of love, filling it with the glue of community. Putting us together, over and over again,
broken and cracked pieces fit together into the one Body of Christ.
Amen.
