Do
not be afraid! I proclaim good news of great joy!
Luke 2:1-14
The real
Christmas story is far from sweet and sentimental, no matter what Hallmark
Cards has to say! If one reads the story of the birth of Jesus carefully,
without all the embellishments, a pretty pathetic situation is
presented. Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph, but not yet married, found
herself pregnant. Joseph almost left her because of it, before he had the
chance to understand the facts. Mary came due at the very same time that Joseph
was required by law to register in a Roman census that was taken every 14
years. It meant they were forced to travel 80 miles, across country on
donkey-back, to a far-off town. All this, so that the foreign government
occupying their country could collect more taxes! Away from home and unable to
find a place to stay, with no family or friends to help her with childbirth,
Mary delivers her child in a barn and places him in a box, out of which the
animals ate. Luke could hardly have painted a bleaker picture if he had ended
there.
However, Luke knew
that if this event had taken place back home, the birth of their son would have
been an occasion of great joy. In accordance with their tradition, when the
time of the birth was near at hand, friends and local musicians would have
gathered near the house to await the news. When the birth was announced, the
musicians would have broken into music and song, and there would have been
universal congratulations, singing, and dancing around the house.
Luke, the teller
of this story, looking at it with eyes of faith, takes this pathetic situation
and has the savior of the world welcomed by a surrogate family and musicians:
simple shepherds and choirs of angels. Luke paints a pathetic human situation
and then has heaven wrap its wings around it and sing to it! And so, God
becomes flesh in the humblest of situations.
We know all the
details of the Christmas story quite well, but we also need to know the point
of the story. We need to know what it means. Luke is not just reporting facts
here. He has a point to make. The story of the incarnation is a disarmingly
simple story about God kissing the earth and every human being on it. By
sending his Son, Jesus, into the world in this way, God is saying to us that
heaven is involved in our lives, even in the most pathetic and unlikely
situations, even when things seem hopeless and God seems absent. By sending his
Son, Jesus, into the world in this way, God is saying that he loves us, all of
us, every part of us, including the weakest and most vulnerable of us, even
those of us the world considers worthless.
The story does not
end here. This God-child grew up and, in his ministry, Jesus reached out to
reconcile heaven and earth. Jesus chose especially the poor and sinners of
society to give them a sense of their own dignity. Jesus brought the news that
all are considered royal persons, whether they are born in a barn or in a
palace. Being poor and rejected himself, he was sensitive to the pain of the
oppressed and insists that no one can rob them of their divine dignity, no
matter how desperate their situation. By embracing broken and sinful humanity,
he wraps the wings of heaven around it, redeeming it.
What does this
incredibly loving God want from us for all this? What kind of response does God
want to these incredible gestures? In a nutshell, he wants to be engaged in our
lives. He wants our hearts. My friends, on this Christmas night, we find
ourselves caught in the embrace of an incredibly loving God. Our God does not
demand that we be perfect. Our God does not demand that our relationship with
him go smoothly all the time. Our God does not even demand that we be free of
failure or that we get it right all the time. Our God does, however, insist
that we do our best to respond to his love. Our God understands, that far more
important than the perfection of response, is the fact that we continue to
respond no matter how strong the discouragement and how many the failures.
Our best is good
enough for God, no matter how pitiful our best may be some days. Our God wants
us to live fully, passionately, and to radiate toward each other a bit of the
graciousness that he radiates toward us. In giving us his Son, God has given us
his heart. He wants our hearts in return. He wants a relationship with us. He
wants us to have a relationship with each other. Christmas is that simple and
that difficult.
Most of us know
his story by heart. But what does it mean? It means that God so loved the world
that he bent over backwards to prove it. He took on human flesh, experiencing
everything we experience, but sin. His whole life became one great “show and
tell.” By word and deed, he showed us the secret to happiness, how to live our
lives and how to treat each other. To top it off, he laid down his life for us,
dying like a common criminal, rejected and scorned, loving us anyway! Then he
left us with this challenge: “Now love one another as I have loved you!” It's
that simple and that difficult! In other words, now that we have heard the
Christmas story, we are called to “do likewise.”
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