“How Does This Birth Story Transform You?” Christmas Eve, 2008

(First read the text for this sermon: Luke 2:1-20)

Ah, the candles! The decorations! The carols!

It is easy for this to become an evening of nostalgia. I remember Christmas Eves past. As a child, I remember the special excitement of singing in the Celeste-Boys Choir. (That was the merger of two choirs from the golden days of the 1940s in that downtown church. The “Celeste Choir” had been for girls. The “Boys Choir” is self-explanatory.) We practiced after school once a week (something that would be absolutely impossible to schedule today). During worship, we wore red cottas and white surplices, with red sashes at the neck. The girls’ sashes were tied in bows; the boys’ in a square knot. We sang throughout the year, of course, but Christmas Eve held special magic for this small child. In our old gothic church building, with the 67-foot center aisle, there were candelabras at the end of each pew, with real candles burning throughout the service. I remember, in later years, getting to be one of the acolytes who got to light all those candles! I remember also, while college-age, spending the early part of Christmas Eve with dear friends of the family, and then going to the 11:00 PM service. What somber majesty – coming out of the church after midnight into the cold darkness of the first hour of Christmas!

You could share your own nostalgic remembrances, couldn’t you? You remember your own childhood traditions, repeated each year. And you who are adults have constructed your own annual Christmas traditions. When this Christmas is “not as good as” last Christmas – because of a death, or because of family members being absent, or because of travel – then the celebration seems diminished.

You recognize the kind of Christmas celebration I’ve been talking about, don’t you? I’ve been treating Christmas as if it is an annual celebration; as if the importance of this feast is that we do it each year, and so this year we have to keep up the traditions we’ve established. Of course, Christmas does come each year (when God gives us another year of life). But there is much more to it than that. There is a hunger that we have brought tonight, a hunger that cannot be satisfied by the effort we put into making “this year’s Christmas” as magical as last year’s was!

And so, I want to use the story we read on Christmas Eve as more than an exercise in nostalgia. This is more to this story than something we simply pull out this time of year, to make us feel warm and fuzzy inside; which we then pack away with the rest of the Christmas ornaments, until we pull it out again next year.

I want to ask: How does this story of Jesus’ birth transform you?

Look at all that’s happening in this story from Luke. Look at the suffering that’s endured. Look at all that’s confusing and amazing and even terrifying. Look at all of the assumptions that are turned completely upside-down.

For instance, there is nothing warm or fuzzy in the fact that Joseph and Mary are two people living in an occupied land, at the mercy of the governing authorities, who are forced to journey away from home for a tax-revenue-driven census, even though Mary is due to give birth any day. Sure enough, we read: While they were there [in Bethlehem], the time came for her to deliver her child. 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. Those words have become beloved to us. But put yourself in Mary and Joseph’s position! How would you feel, having to put your newborn into a feeding trough for animals? This is homelessness at its most impoverished.

The next scene in the story, of course, is out in the fields, where a group of unsuspecting shepherds are keeping the night watch over their sheep. Imagine the scene. Every shadow looks like a sheep-eating predator. There is danger in the darkness. Suddenly: Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid.” (You remember that the first words from angels in the Bible are always “do not be afraid?” In the Bible, angels are always terrifying!)

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: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"

Good news? Joy? Is that what it would have seemed like to you – had you been one of those shepherds, out in the field? For myself, I suspect I would have reacted in the same way as I do on those rare occasions when I walk into a Circuit City store: there is so much noise and flashing visual images and lights and movement, that I am nearly immobilized by the sensory overload!

I wonder how long it took the shepherds to recover their wits when the angels had left them and gone into heaven? They finally do. And then they decide to hurry into town, to see if any of this could possibly be true. (Do they just leave their sheep, at the mercy of the wolves, out in the darkness? Just wondering.) When they find Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger, they repeat what they have been told about this child. And do you remember how the listeners react? We read: all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.

“Amazed!” Does amazement mean disbelief? At the very least, what the shepherds are repeating is turning everything upside down. At the very least it’s going to take a great deal of processing – which is what Mary is doing. Remember? But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

If this is simply a story that we pull out this time of year, to make us feel warm and fuzzy inside, then we will only pack it away in a few days, with the rest of the Christmas ornaments, and forget about it until next year. But what does the story do to us, when we truly enter it – this story of God, fleshly present with an unmarried pregnant couple powerless in the face of the ruling authorities, at least temporarily homeless, giving birth and putting the baby in a cattle feeding trough?

In this story, God is calling Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the bystanders way beyond their comfort zones; way past their assumptions of what is possible and impossible; of how the world works.

What about you? How does this birth story transform you?

For instance, what does this birth story do to you, in the midst of the economic transformation that we’re experiencing as a nation? The never-ending news reports of economic uncertainty have shattered our illusion that we can become secure through material comfort.

And so – could this birth story from Luke transform you and me to see that this shattering is a good thing? Could it be that Christians in Africa and Central and South America are correct about us Americans: that our material comfort makes it difficult for us to be disciples of Jesus? Could it indeed be true that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God"? (Matthew 19:24) These are dangerous things to ask, if we’re only interested in nostalgia on this night.

Tonight we read a birth story of a baby who is to be named Jesus (which means, “God, help!”; or “God saves”), who is born in the midst of utter poverty and in utter dependence. How, then, does this story transform you with the message that God is born, not among people like you and me, but among people who are destitute? And so we would find the Christ child carried tonight by a mother and father who have full-time, minimum wage jobs, but who have to take advantage of the PORT housing shelter in Newport News because the minimum wage does not buy housing. We would find the Christ child carried by mothers who visit the United Way Information and Referral office in Williamsburg for emergency help, because their heat is about to be shut off.

Have I ever told the story of a Christmas Eve: when I had returned to be pastor of that gorgeous downtown gothic church I was talking about earlier – with the 67-foot long aisle and all the candles burning at the ends of the pews – and I was standing in the back with the choir, ready for our magisterial procession, and our organist was making the room shake with that magnificent organ, beginning to play “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” when a young woman who occasionally worshiped with us appeared at the very last moment. “Excuse me,” she whispered. “Sorry I’m late. I’ve been working at the homeless shelter.” And she squeezed past to find a seat.

Here’s what I thought to myself: “Why are you apologizing? You should be preaching the sermon tonight!”

Certainly, there is something magical in what we are doing tonight. This is, indeed a joyful celebration in our liturgical calendar!

But I do ask you to pay attention to what is in the story of Jesus’ birth, from the gospel of Luke. It’s a story of God entering into the most hopeless circumstances of poverty and helplessness – to transform those circumstances; to redeem them!

If God can do that, God can transform anything.

So – How does this birth story transform you?

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia