Dear Friends in Christ,
Rather than give you a text to look at this week, I thought I would share my Christmas sermon with you, the fruit of my biblical study.
A blessed Christmastide to you and yours.
+Steven
Glory to God in the highest and peace among those whom he favors.
In the name of God: Father Son and Holy Spirit: Amen
Glory to God in the highest and peace among those whom he favors. We gather again this night to hear the angelic message spoken to the shepherds on the night of our Lord’s birth, a message that led them to the manager in a stable where he lay wrapped in swaddling clothes because there was no room for the child and his parents in the inn. We remind ourselves of this message when we celebrate every festival Eucharist and remember the incarnate one, born of the Virgin Mary, who came and dwelt among us, taught and healed, bled and died, rose and ascended that we might have life, true life abundant life. Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth.
And yet as I hear and recall that angelic proclamation another song rings in my ears. The third verse of a hymn which begins they cast their nets in Galilee well known to many of us. The peace of God it is no peace but strife closed in the sod, yet Christians pray for just one thing the marvelous peace of God.
These words serve as a backdrop to that angelic message for me this year. This is partly because I am recently back from my own trip to Bethlehem, not to be enrolled, but as part of a group of Christian and Jewish pilgrims that went from Milwaukee to the holy land. My own trip to that little town did not involve an empirical decree or angelic urgency but it was equally compelling and like the shepherds it is one I will never forget.
To travel to Bethlehem from Nazareth today, involves not a straight trek through the Judean wilderness, but a trip east, then south, through Jerusalem to the check point where one stops and leaves behind one’s Israeli guide (modern day citizens of Israel are forbidden to go to Bethlehem) and meets a Palestinian guide who leads you through a security fence that divides Israel and the Palestinian territories to another bus that wends its way through the urban blight that characterizes the modern city to manger square and the Church of the Nativity. Even in the stillness of the Sabbath morning on which I and my fellow travelers went with its paucity of tourists, the city of Bethlehem did not provide a still little landscape of deep and dreamless sleep with silent stars going by. Sadly, the town of our Lord’s birth and even the place where it is believed to have taken place stand as much as a witness to human brokenness and division as they do to the peace of God which passeth all human understanding.
Yet as I look back on it, that is somehow so very appropriate. Then, like now, the land of our Lord’s birth was a land in turmoil. Then, like now, there were wars and fear of war, economic distress, guerilla actions, pain and fear, sorrow and grief. It is to such world that our Savior comes, it is to such a people weary and oppressed, struggling and starving. Hallmark cards, and bucolic renaissance portraits do not need salvation. People do. Real people who hurt, and bleed, and die and struggle, people who suffer, who have lost loved ones to senseless violence, or the ravages of disease, people whom life has not given a fair shake., who are beat down by the changes and chances of this life, who wonder if it is all worth it. We need a savior. We need to know that our hope is not futile and our strivings are not in vain.
And that is God’s good news. To you is born this day, in the city of David a savior which is Christ the Lord.
We gather this night to celebrate that the God who made us from and for love, loves us so much that he sent his Son to be our Savior. The timeless God, before time and forever entered human history in a specific time, in a specific place, in a certain town in a certain country.
Luke the Evangelist wants us to know this truth. That is why he provides us with place, date, and time. He want is to know this is not some ethereal myth but something that took place in real time in a real place with real people. That is why from the earliest days of our faith Christians have prayed as I did at the sites where these events took place. But Luke wants us to know more. He wants us to understand the magnitude of what has happened even though by many it was unnoticed.
And he does it in one simple sentence, “to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Messiah, the Lord.” By this one simple sentence Luke sets forth the apostolic understanding of Jesus. In the city of David, (that is from the line of God’s chosen servant), God’s promised Messiah, the one who will bring restoration, God himself in a human being. The fulfillment of the prayer of the psalmist, Restore us, O Lord God of hosts, show the light of your countenance and we shall be saved.
But there is more. Luke wants us to know not only about the message, and the messengers, but about those who receive it. When we think of shepherds are minds are filled with pastoral images of verdant countryside lush with green and little lambs dotting the landscape. We call to mind a drive in the country or a scene on television from the land down under. For us sheep and shepherds are romantic. For Luke’s hearers shepherds were at the bottom of society. Shepherds were poor and many eked out an existence by means that were less than honorable as petty thieves. He foreshadows here Jesus’ first words in the synagogue at Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, “The spirit of the Lord upon me he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.”
That the message first came to the shepherds reminds us that God comes to speak to our poverty, to our brokenness. God cannot enter where there is no room, whether it be an inn or a human heart. God does not come in the comfort of the inn, but in the mess of the stable cave.
And he comes to bring peace, peace beyond our imagination and comprehension. When most of us think of peace we think of peace and quiet or the cessations of hostility. But God’s peace is so much more. It has been described, as the wholeness of life which God grants to persons and societies through a restoring of balance of all the forces of creation. Wholeness and balance when all works in harmony, when pain and sorrow are gone. When walls are torn down and locks and fences and guards are unnecessary. When the sin of the world is redeemed, when the wolf, lies down with the lamb and hurt and destruction are ended forever.
That is God’s will for us and that is his gift that begins this night. It is a gift that waits for us to open it through acts of kindness that show we Christ as entered our lives, through works of mercy that strive to bring about God’s justice for all most especially the poor and hungry.
It is our call to open this gift and give it. For we are the continuation of the angelic proclamation as Christ’s body the Church.
And it can start so simply, just as the incarnation did with a message to a young woman and a birth in a stable. Our sharing in the giving of God’s gist of peace can begin by setting aside a past hurt, striving to mend a broken relationship with family member or friend. By continuing our work as a community to feed the hungry, to share each other’s sorrows and joys.
So let us this night pray that our hearts will prepare him room confident that “where meek souls still receive him still the dear Christ enters in.” Let us commit our hearts to him of whose birth we sing who would not love thee loving us so dearly. And let us like the blessed mother give birth to Christ and his kingdom of peace by our actions of serving him this night and throughout the coming year.
