Christmas Eve A
24 Dec 2022
Christmas: it is upon us, arriving and finding us not quite ready and taken by surprise, like the owner of the house who when the thief came. This is no thief who comes to us; however, this is Love.
What is it we celebrate this night? I have come to believe it is the impossible made possible, the omniscient made immanent, or, as John put it, the Word made flesh; God coming to pitch a tent in our neighborhood. Yes, our neighborhood. Mary and Joseph may or may not have been in a barn; it may have been that the pair were staying with extended family, but due to the census and the number of family members they had to sleep outside the usual living area. It doesn’t matter whether it was a family compound or a stable or a cave. What matters was where Jesus was NOT born: in a palace or even in an upper-class home. He was not born a Roman citizen, but rather in a place occupied and controlled by foreigners. The whole story defies all expectations of what a ruler, a king, should be: a family from the margins staying in a place not really suited for people and attended by folks from the working class and later by foreigners. Shepherds were not exactly first on the social scale of the day. And the magi, however many of them there were, were from a far country and of a different religion. They could have been Hindu or Zoroastrian. They were probably astrologers and not kings at all. The audacity of the story is that God was born as an undocumented person. These were people who had no online presence. The shepherds lived off the grid. Jesus not only avoided coming into the world by being born in Herod’s palace or as a child of Caesar, he came to a family that no one in authority would have noticed. God made a political statement (yes, Christmas is about politics because politics is all about what kind of world we want and the kind of world that God wants for us.) The first to hear of the birth and the undocumented agricultural workers of the day, those who lived in the hills and who did not go anywhere to be registered; bypassed were Augustus, Quirinius, and Herod in being the first to hear the good news. The news went to those who needed to hear it. God is announcing just what kind of a world we can build. It is to be a restoration of creation as God intended in Genesis but which humans, in their desire to be like God, corrupted.
Augustus and his minions wanted total control of their subjects, and so a census to register, count, and of course tax, was ordered. . Tax to pay for armies and weapons, for a life of luxury for the few, for power and control. This is where God is to be born: in the midst of a cruel and domineering state. But even then, Jesus is born outside of the grasp of Augustus and of Herod, hidden among the animals. The shepherds see one of their own and tell others about him.
Later the travelers from the East arrive, looking at millions of stars and being informed by God of this wondrous birth. The star was not seen by Romans or the locals; the knowledge was imparted to foreigners. From his birth, the good news was given to the least among society and to those who were not even Jewish. They were not looking for a personal savior, but one who would inspire universal peace.
We must not lose this message of radical, societal and life changing Good News. Yes, it is all about the way we live.
Christmas comes just after the winter solstice. It is in the northern hemisphere the time when we know that darkness has been defeated. Advent has taken us into the darkness; Christmas brings us out with the Light coming into the world and dispelling the darkness.
The story of God becoming human is a poem, for the word poem is the word that in Greek means to create. God risks everything that comes with pregnancy and birth to continue the poem that is creation. It is a beautiful poem, for it is a love story. The love of Mary and Joseph for a tiny baby, their love of God and willingness to do what seemed impossible. It is of the joy of the shepherds knowing that God cared for the least of God’s people, the people living outside of the margins and in poverty. It is a story of the joy of the magi in being called to worship a king when others who lived near were not. Joy is for everyone; it is not a feeling inside of us but a state of being outside of our selves. We are surrounded by the joy of the nativity, by God’s continuing poem of creation. God is right here, now, with us. We don’t need to dream of or go to far away places. God is walking down the street with the homeless; God is in the hospital rooms and in the places where people are lonely. God is with those who must travel, those who have friends and loved ones in harm’s way.
This is what we have been awaiting: the joy filled poem of Christmas, of God becoming vulnerable and taking on all the risks that becoming human entails. He came to save us from our sin, from our human attempts to be like God, and to restore the world to one where all humans live the life that God originally intended for us: to be caretakers.
That … is the unrecognized mystery of this world: Jesus Christ. That this Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter, was himself the Lord of glory: that was the mystery of God. It was a mystery because God became poor, low, lowly, and weak out of love for humankind, because God became a human being like us, so that we would become divine, and because he came to us so that we would come to him. God as the one who becomes low for our sakes, God in Jesus of Nazareth—that is the secret, hidden wisdom… that “no eye has seen nor ear heard nor the human heart conceived” (1 Cor. 2:9)…. That is the depth of the Deity, whom we worship as mystery and comprehend as mystery.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. God Is In the Manger . Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
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