December 25, 2009
Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ– Proper II (Year A, B, and C)
(Christmas Day)
Isaiah 62:6-12; Psalm 97; Titus 3:4-7;
Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20
Luke’s gospel gives us the Christmas story we all love: the story of Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary journeying to Bethlehem, their finding no place except a stable in which to stay and where their baby is ultimately born. Luke in this gospel apparently exercised a little historical license, over which, except for the scholars who look for “truth,” I think very few of us are really going to have, as they say, a “hissy fit.” Maybe there wasn’t really a census decreed at that time by Emperor Augustus and maybe Quirinius wasn’t really governor of Syria until later – maybe Luke just wasn’t a careful student of history. So what if history has been a little skewed in the reporting; it is such a lovely story and the basis of many a Christmas pageant. And what is really important is not the exact time and place but the fact that Jesus was born!
Now, today’s reading is really the shepherds’ story, what they saw, what they heard, what they did. They are the ordinary folk in this story, and when you stop and think about it, it is to the ordinary folk that Jesus eventually takes his message, his message of love, forgiveness, redemption, justice, and peace.
But that is yet to come. Right now according to Luke we have an amazing birth taking place, and a mother and father who have had already some remarkable events happen in their lives, in particular angels telling them they are to be the parents of the Messiah. And now this night that has just passed, Mary has given birth to a baby boy. I wonder if at that moment either of them remembered the words of their angels. If they did, I think they would have been wondering, “How could this be? Here we are strangers in a strange town, even if it is our ancestral home; we are unwelcome and have no place but a stable for a roof over our heads and a manger for our baby’s bed!”
And then those ordinary folk, those shepherds, arrive, and tell the story they have been told, “to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. [And] This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. . . . And all who heard it were amazed!”
Then having seen for themselves, verifying what the angels had told them, and having told their story, the shepherds departed. “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”
“Pondered” – a wonderful word, not used too frequently today, meaning, according to Mr. Webster, “to think deeply about, to consider carefully.”
I have “pondered” a great deal in the last few days. It has been a difficult time. I returned home yesterday afternoon from England having attended on Wednesday the funeral and service of Thanksgiving for the life of my cousin, Peter. Peter and I were each only children; his father and my mother were brother and sister. I was six weeks older than he, in fact he was born on the morning after the day I was baptized. Growing up we saw a lot of each other; it was wartime and our mothers got together frequently or so it seemed, and so there was a special bond between us. We were in a sense like brother and sister because neither of us had any siblings. However, when my family relocated to this country, we obviously couldn’t see each other so much but there were visits throughout the years and there were important occasions: I did get to his wedding and a little over a year ago Bruce and I attended Peter and Angela’s 50th wedding anniversary. By that time he was suffering with Motor Neuron disease, but in spite of that, this past August he and Angela came up to London to be part of Bruce and my 50th. We parted the morning after, as indeed we had for several years, wondering, at least I know I did, and I’m sure he did, if this would be the last time we would see each other. And then – it seemed sudden, doesn’t it always? – on the morning of December 12 Paul, his son, called with that inevitable news. A few hours earlier, as he put it, “Peter had peacefully slipped away.”
Now, you may all be wondering why I’m telling you this, effectually giving a eulogy in a Christmas Day sermon. Well, Peter was a very devout Christian, Church of England, a little evangelical maybe, loved to pray out loud; his son Paul is a Church of England priest. We all fervently believe that this “earthly pilgrimage,” as we sometimes refer to life, is just that, a journey towards a new and a more spectacular life without pain, without sorrow, without the frustrations that Peter suffered because the disease had affected his speech from the early days and it was hard at times to make himself understood, a new life with Jesus, with the angels and archangels, and with all those who have gone before. Peter at least once said, “When I get to heaven, I will be healed!” Such was his faith!
And why do we all believe that? Because on this day some two thousand plus years ago, a baby was born to a poor couple in a stable in a small town in a remote corner of the Roman empire. Whether you believe the story as Luke tells it, that angels appeared to shepherds announcing this miraculous birth, that a star shone over the place where he lay, that wise men eventually came and worshipped, is really totally irrelevant. The fact remains that Jesus was born and grew up to teach, to preach, to live a life dedicated to a God whom he called Father, so that all who heard him or knew him found a new hope and a new purpose in life. His God, their God, was a loving, compassionate, forgiving, merciful deity who would welcome them into his kingdom of peace and justice.
I have been talking of individual death and birth but I realize that, yes, it’s much broader than that because with Jesus’ birth came the death to an old way of life. The two really do go hand in hand, death and birth or birth and death. Jesus’ birth was not just the birth of a little baby but rather the birth of a whole new way of life. That kingdom of God that had seemed so elusive, so bound up in rules and laws became something understandable, something attainable, something highly desirable, not, of course, right at that moment in Bethlehem. A few years were to pass before Jesus was to begin his ministry but when he did, the world became a different place as he preached of Gods love for his creation and his creatures.
So today we celebrate his birth, rejoicing in the story Luke has put before us, but knowing that the details are really unimportant. What is and what will remain forever important is that Jesus was born and that he dwelt among us and will forever more.
Amen.
Sonia F. G. Stevenson, M. Div.
Church of the Good Shepherd