Creator God, on this Holy Night, still our frantic pace and calm our anxious minds so that we might experience the miracle and wonder of Christmas. Send your Spirit to pierce the shadows of these uncertain times, rekindle our Hope for the future and guide us, by The Shining Star of Bethlehem, to the humble manger where your love made flesh awaits. Amen.
The birth story found in Luke's gospel is not a diary of historical events as they happened. It is not biography, nor is it the prose of history remembered; but is rather the poetry of faith. Sadly, in our generation, we have confused factuality with truth. The fact in this story is that a baby boy was born named Yeshuia. That is it. All the rest is myth. Not fairy tale or fantasy but myth. Well, what is a myth? A myth is a profound truth that can only be communicated in a story. Genesis - the Creation story - is not history - though some would have it so - it's a myth. Luke 2 is a myth - A beautifully crafted gift to the Christ child.
And so, we break open the narrative to hear the truths Luke's community in Antioch, hearing this story about the year 80 C.E. would understand.
Gauis Octavius was Julius Caesar's nephew and adopted son and heir. He became the first emperor of Rome having defeated Marc Antony and others who claimed the throne. He sought to consolidate an empire that stretched from northern Britain to Asia to North Africa. Building new cities, paving roads and planting milestone markers, having the military police the highways and thus establishing a Pax Romana, a Roman peace- based in wealth and raw power. It was said of him that he found Rome brick and left it marble.
The Senate gave him the title Caesar Augustus- Caesar sacred. He was called "Son of God." Roman coins proclaimed him savior of the world. And yet, the deified Emperor, as powerful as he was, it was Caesar Augustus whom God used as an instrument to get the Holy Family from Nazareth to Bethlehem. To the City of King David - by Caesar decree. Jesus will proclaim a kingdom that is mightier than Caesar's, one that is unbound by the sands of time or the arbitrary boundary lines of tribes. One that is eternal and which proclaims a peace not based in power but in love.
The Jesus story is about a world saved not by a man who, by self acclamation, became a God but by God, in emptying himself became a man.
Arriving exhausted in the little town of Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary are summarily turned away at the door of the caravansary. There is simply no room in the inn. “If you had only come earlier ", “If I but knew you were coming.”
In truth, the innkeeper is you and me. How often is the metaphorical Inn of our hearts, our lives, simply too full? We are distracted and overwhelmed with too much to do and too much to worry about - when the Holy draws near to us we miss it. Not out of spite or indifference but simply because in the busyness of life, we miss God who comes to us incognito - in a hurting friend, a discouraged coworker, an anxious mother with a difficult child - or a travel weary family on the doorstep, late at night, fearful and alone.
Or was there no room because this couple was obviously poor and were strangers- tattered and patched, unwashed and with a Galilean accent. How easily we dismiss God who comes to us in the guise of the poor. For the tribute, the taxes needed to build palaces and armies, Caesar declared that all shall be registered. A populus on the move including the sick, the infirmed, even a pregnant peasant girl. But there's no room at the Inn and so God comes into our world beyond the reach of the God Emperor. Address-less, unregistered , undocumented - incognito God comes hidden in an unused stable- by Eastern tradition, a Cave. Animal dung is hurriedly swept aside and animal saliva is wiped from the feeding trough to be used as a makeshift cradle- a boy child comes.
The birth announcement is made by an angel chorus. In Hebrew cosmology, the earth is a flat disc with Shoal- the underworld of shadows- underneath. Above the flat earth was the firmament - firm indeed was the great earth covering metal dome. The stars being holes in the dome through which celestial light shines through. Each hole was guarded by an angel lest humankind, as with their tower of Babel, again attempt to storm heaven or mischievous angels attempt to visit the earth without God's leave. It was they who sang the Messiah' s birth. The Jewish people hearing this would be mindful of the question God asks Job,
" Who laid the earth's cornerstone when all the stars of the morning were singing with joy?" The stars witness the 1st creation and now sing with joy at the re- creation in the birth of God's anointed one.
An angel appears to sheep herders. We romanticize these men. Kids scramble to be wise men first with shepherds a close second in the Christmas pageant. But shepherds were a despised group, a lower class than tax collectors and prostitutes. Widely viewed as thieves and drunkards- because they were- and given to an unspeakable lust with the animals they guarded, which they hated themselves for; shepherds were men who had lost land and herds to the rich and powerful; wise men had given up on God who had given up on them. They were filled with hatred and envy; prone to violence and despair.
And yet-and-yet- it was the shepherds in a field that an angel appeared in a vision saying quote I bring you- you! -good news of God's Shalom, meaning peace, well- being, contentment to you and all humankind because God is well pleased with you. The singing stars were heard in the crowded inn and in the homes in Bethlehem. The citizens there cursed at the noisy drunk in the night probably those damn shepherds again. The stars were heard in Jerusalem, in King Herod’s Palace and among the self-satisfied aristocrats, who turned over and snuggled more deeply under their luxurious covers for the winter night was cold.
But the shepherds were naive enough to listen to the angel’s promise and went in haste because they so desperately needed a God who cares. The lesson of the shepherds - men who hadn't bathed in months, who were not uncomfortable with the smell of an animal's stall, who some of them, may have been born in a stable themselves; men who had no address and no names in Luke's story; living in the fields, in the emperor's world yet outside it, unregistered and unrecorded. The lesson of the shepherds to us is that it is the frightened, unloved and despised part in us that can lead us to the presence of the Holy. What is the profound truth of the incarnation revealed in Luke’s myth?
Where once God was thought of as distant and indifferent or revealed in terror and awe. As seen dimly in the low-lying clouds of Sinai mountain or in the dreadful silence behind the curtain of the holy of holies in the temple, accessible only to the high priest and even then, on only one day in the year - on the day of atonement when lesser priests would tie a stout rope around the high priest's waste lest God behind the curtain would strike him dead for the sins of the people and they could pull on the rope to recover his smoldering corpse. The Incarnation is the story of God drawing near to human life as a vulnerable baby, born of a people unregarded and ridiculed. The subversive promise of Christians is just this: that God comes to privilege the unprivileged and to show us a way. God comes intimately to enflesh God's dream for us - A world-filled with Justice mercy and compassion. A friendly people under a friendly sky in harmony with a friendly God - and that hope, that great dream of God - is reborn again, each Christmas, on this Christmas, in each one of us.
This poem is by Ann Weems:
Each year the child is born again
Each year some new heart
finally hears, finally sees, finally knows!
And in heaven There is great rejoicing!
There is a festival of stars!
There is a celebration among the angels!
For in the finding of one lost sheep,
the heart of the shepherd is glad,
and Christmas has happened once more.
The child is born anew.
And one more knee is bowed!
From Kneeling in Bethlehem