Christmas Eve 2022
Christmas Eve 2022
12/24/22 St. John’s
Luke 12-21
We have heard the words of this beautiful story so many times -read in churches, acted out by children, them spoken in movies, written in picture books. yet we keep coming back to them and turning them over like smooth stones and we treasure every image, every phrase. Because we know there are truths in this story about our faith, truths we can’t quite grasp with our minds, we can only try to understand it in our hearts because they are too deep. We only open our hearts on a night like this, and we listen with our hearts, and like Mary we ponder these words in our hearts-the precious words to this little story.
For example words like the ones that begin the story: Emperor, decree, census. Have we noticed all these historical type words before, these power words? This in not basically a historical story, but these history words at the beginning, have a purpose. They tell us “yes but this really did happen.” This is not a “once upon a time” story – a myth or a fairy tale. Luke the storyteller is saying, yes Jesus really was a person. He was born into a specific time in history, a tumultuous time when Quirinius and Augustus into a family of real people who were subject to the whims of emperors and governors – big shots who thought they were in charge when really God was in charge. Collecting taxes and making laws and in this case moving people around – making people go back to their home towns to be registered for this census. But we’ve read this story before, but we know that underneath all these current event type things, God was at work, working through them, even these emperors and governors. God was coming to earth and be born into the family of poor nobodies. A family like so many others that was being pushed and shoved around by the so-called great people of history.
So Joseph and Mary went to the city of David called Bethlehem – those are important words too. The savior had to come from the line of David, who had been the greatest king of Israel. That’s what the prophets had said, that the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem, because that’s where David had been born.
And so God chose Joseph to be Mary’s husband and Jesus adoptive father because he was a descendant of David for one reason – so when people looked back, after this baby had grown up and taught in the temple and walked all throughout Palestine with huge crowds following him, healing people and forgiving their sins. After he had been betrayed and crucified and buried, and after he had risen from the dead on the third day, and shown himself to his disciples, people like Luke and Matthew the Evangelists would remember and say: this was that baby born in Bethlehem that night. Oh, yes, he born in the city of David called Bethlehem, just like the prophets had said he would be. So you see, he really was the savior.
So you see how each of these words is a treasure. There were shepherds living in the fields Luke tells us. Three little words – living in the fields – Luke tells us that for a reason; they are part of the treasure in this story. Why were they were living in the fields? Apparently because they had no other homes; these guys were the migrant farm workers of their day. The bottom of the ladder, living in the fields, struggling to make ends meet and they got no respect from anybody, except maybe the sheep.
But these guys were the ones who got the message – that God was living among us. These were the ones who had room in their lives for the immensity of that truth. What else did they have – lying on a hillside that night? Only trust in God. They got it not in spite of the lowliness of their status but because of it. The glorious message from the angels, the heavenly host. Who said “do not be afraid”
But of all the treasured words in this story “there was no place for them in the inn.”
We’ve heard those words so many times, it’s just a throwaway line by Luke almost, goes by so quick. But they are so important because, as James Finley says, they signify simply that God will not take no for an answer. God will come into our lives even when we don’t have a place for God. There was no place for them at the inn, OK fine then the savior will be born in a stable. No crib, fine, there’s a cattle trough. No one to help with the birth, here’s an ox and an ass. That’s how this child is going live and to die – rejected and despised just like he was born. But that will not stop the God coming into the world in this child and loving us, suffering for us even unto death and showing us the way to eternal life.
Just look around at our world tonight – we try reject God on a regular basis. We give up on God – we hurt and hate each other, we destroy creation rather than taking care of it. But this story we’ve heard so many times reminds us one more time tonight that God will not give up reject us – even if though it means being born in a cattle stall and dying on a garbage heap.
God has come among us and is here to stay. God is here, God is in the world, and God in and among us. In emperors and shepherds and angels and will not take no for an answer.
So all these precious words that we hear again tonight- let’s once again ponder these words in our hearts, like Mary, and maybe like the shepherds, when we leave here let’s make know what has been told to us about this child. Return to our homes tonight and our families and places of work, and ponder, and then like the shepherds, through all we do and say, glorify and praise God in the highest heaven for all we have seen for the precious good news we have heard this night.