Day of the Church Year: Christmas Eve
Scripture Passage: Luke 2:1-20
Tonight, I’m in awe of the shepherds. While to us Mary and Joseph are the shining stars of the Christmas play, a young couple who have been immortalized in countless pieces of art, played by teenagers and adults dressed in cotton robes and head dresses, while to us Mary and Joseph are household names, to the common people of Israel two thousand years ago, Mary and Joseph are no one. On that dark, silent night, Mary gives birth in a town not her own, with Joseph and perhaps the local midwife at her side. Children are always a precious gift but this one named Jesus more vulnerable than most with unmarried parents hounded by scandal and born in the elements. No family, no friends surround the holy family. But when the angel appears to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night and tells them: “Good news! A savior has come! ...and the savior is a baby,” they don’t seem to flinch. They go and see the baby, the baby savior. A baby savior? The strangeness of the good news does not deter the shepherds. These hopeful shepherds go and see.
Tonight, I want to travel with the shepherds as they move with haste across the countryside. Their hope, their excitement, their joy. As they go, they already know a bit about what they’ll find. The angel tells them the savior lies in a manger, a feeding trough for animals. Though the messiah, the one meant to liberate humanity from all that binds us, the one who will defy death and evil and sin, this one lies in a manger, not even a bed, perhaps 21 inches from head to toe. Whatever they find in the manger astounds them for they go and tell the news of a savior born. They return to glorify and praise God for what they discover in the manger. Isn’t it just a baby?
The shepherds live in an occupied Israel with soldiers on the streets.
The shepherds live hand to mouth, hunger and poverty common among the ancient people.
The shepherds live in an age of instability, uncertainty, and violence we struggle to imagine in the 21st century.
The shepherds, along with all the ancient Jews, are eager to receive the messiah, the one sent by God, from the line of David.
But it’s safe to say a baby in a manger is not what they expect to end Roman occupation, hunger and poverty, violence and instability.
But they go anyway.
They go anyway when they hear the news from the angel.
They trust that there might be a different way.
They trust that God might work in ways they’ve never considered, in ways they don’t yet understand.
They go and then they tell and then they praise God.
To us, the good news of Christmas might seem obvious. Jesus is born! But the shepherds don’t yet know what will happen, and they will have to wait 30 years to find out, long enough that, by the time Jesus calls disciples, all of these shepherds will be gone. Yet the shepherds exhibit profound hope—that there might be a different way through the injustice and violence, hunger and poverty of their world, that God might be entering the world in a form they could not have anticipated.
For us, it’s been a year. Of highs and a lot of lows. A year of division and injustice. A year that began with an insurrection at the capitol. A continued year of pandemic. A year of natural disaster and refugee crisis in Afghanistan and at the Poland-Belarus border. A year of violence. For many of us, a year of illness and isolation and feeling not quite stable and grounded. It’s not just been a year of some highs and many lows; the world has changed. Most of us probably haven’t gotten our bearings. We may still be wondering when all this will end instead of accepting the change that is happening throughout not just our country but around the world.
Dear friends in Christ, on this dark, silent night, in a rapidly changing world, God is making a way, a new way, a way for hope and peace, joy and love. God is making a way into this world, perhaps a way God has never made before. The world is different, but God is still at work. The world, our lives, even the church is changing profoundly, but we are people of hope and peace, joy and love. God is doing something new even now, this moment, making a way out of what looks to us like no way. We don’t know what is to come, but we know God is here with us because God entered the world in Jesus. So let’s travel with the shepherds as they move with haste across the countryside. Let’s go and see what God is doing. Let’s spread the good news—of hope and peace, joy and love.
On this strange and unsettling Christmas, a baby savior still brings joy to the world and hope for a new way. Against all the odds, let’s go and see what God is doing—and then tell the world. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Amen.