SETTING THE CONTEXT

The story of Jesus’ birth is actually very short. We have to combine the stories from two different Gospels, Matthew and Luke, to get the traditional story we’ll read Christmas Eve. Luke’s account includes what we read last week about Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem. The description of Jesus’ birth takes up just two verses.  Surely Mary’s labor lasted longer than that! The passage we are about to read ends Luke’s birth story. He doesn’t have any wise men in his story. The next event is Jesus’ circumcision and naming eight days later and life goes on.

There is significance in the angel’s message that we might not pick up today. “It was customary in the Roman Empire for poets and orators to declare peace and prosperity at the birth of one who was to become emperor.”^[i] The early listeners of this birth story would have heard that echo in the angel’s pronouncement. God’s messengers were making such a declaration.

Read Luke 2:8-20

THE SERMON

I have a collection of nativity scenes; I keep some out all year and others I only bring out at Christmas time. I’m actually getting to the point where I have to rotate them year by year because I have run out of room for them. Each set has a different look and a different story behind it that speaks to me as I carefully unwrap it and set it up. The story of Jesus’ birth captures the imagination with these lovely statues in their various colors and styles. I do realize though when I stop to think about it that my lovely nativity sets don’t quite tell the whole story.

You can tell it was a man who wrote this birth story because we women would never describe a birth in one single sentence. We have a tendency to put in a lot more detail! And it sounds so clean like my nativity sets that show a serene Mary and an attentive Joseph neatly displayed. Luke says, “The time came for her to deliver her child and she gave birth to her firstborn son…” It sounds so tidy and easy doesn’t it, like blink and there he was. We know though that birth involves pain usually excruciating pain and it is very messy. We know that birth is never clean and neat especially birth in a stable, but that is the way “God with us”, Emmanuel, came into the world. Surely God had a purpose in mind for coming in such an odd way.

Each week of Advent, we have allowed a different group of characters to lead us to Bethlehem. The first week the prophets led the way, the second the holy family and this week the shepherds lead us. Having shepherds lead us anywhere would seem very strange to someone in Jesus’ day. The shepherd statues in my little nativity sets are these clean men often with a crook or sheep in their arms. They look so serene and respectable, but let’s remember that they spent long days and nights working herds of sheep and goats. They were a dirty and smelly group. Can’t you imagine the mixture of sweat and sheep smells? How is that for a Christmas fragrance? They were in all likelihood a course group both inside and outside with rough language and course manners. It wasn’t just their appearance that was messy; shepherds in Jesus’ day were a despised occupation. They were scorned as lazy, dishonest, dishonorable people who left their women unprotected at night and who grazed their flocks on other people’s lands.^[ii] And it was to this lot that God chose to reveal Jesus and the meaning of his birth. These first witnesses were such an unlikely choice. If we needed a testimony, wouldn’t we choose someone more respectable, more believable?

I have confessed before to an ongoing struggle with perfectionism.  I find myself obsessing over keeping things neat and clean, organized and straight. My mind’s eye pictures a “Leave It to Beaver” standard of an immaculate home with a lovely dinner on the table at the exact same time every night. I want a neat and clean life where things progress smoothly, where I know what’s coming and am sufficiently prepared for it. I want my work to be flawless, deep and meaningful and completed well ahead of time. And the sad thing is that often I allow my obsession, that perfect picture, to get in the way of living fully. We all know that life is rarely if ever clean and neat, organized and straight, at least I haven’t experienced it like that yet. We don’t have “nativity scene” lives; they are messier, more chaotic more like the story Luke told. I think a lot of that struggle and “mess” is coupled with fear. We’re afraid, afraid of not being good enough, afraid of failing, afraid of rejection, afraid of this, afraid of that, afraid. And God enters and says “do not be afraid; I am bringing you good news.”

God brought Jesus into this messy world in a messy way to be one with us; to show us that he will be with us through anything and we don’t have to be good enough or clean enough or even respectable enough to receive his love. The sign that indicated that Jesus was the chosen one was not a golden halo or even an angelic choir, but that he was lying in a feed trough, the place where the animals got their food every morning except for that morning of course. His first visitors were not angels or a parade of the town elders or religious leaders; they were shepherds, course working stiffs who came to tell Mary and Joseph and anyone else around what they had seen and heard from the angel and heavenly hosts. I think that God chose to come into the world in this way to tell us that we truly don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to be afraid of being good enough to approach the Holy One, Yahweh (which means I am who I am and I will be who I will be). Mike Yaconelli wrote a book called Messy Spirituality and he talks about it this way, “Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. ^[iii] … Messy Spirituality unveils the myth of flawlessness and calls Christians everywhere to come out of hiding and stop pretending.Messy Spirituality has the audacity to suggest that messiness is the workshop of authentic spirituality, the greenhouse of faith, the place where the real Jesus meets the real us.”^[iv] God comes not as a sanitized Savior above the fray, but enters the tangledness of our lives saying “Do not be afraid, I am with you.”

Do not be afraid. I hear that message and I know that message in my head, but getting it to move from my head to my heart is difficult. The sermon doesn’t come easily and I start to panic. I stress over small things and not so small things and I have to hear that message again “don’t be afraid, I am with you”. I have to be reminded to open my heart to it and trust again and again. Perhaps that is why the church in her wisdom has us come to the manger year after year after year. So that we remember, we re-experience the story and the promise again and again. So that we see the mess of the stable still soiled from the birth and the shepherds right from the fields with the angel’s words ringing in their ears. The Shepherds point us to Bethlehem and tell us we don’t have to come neat and clean, with serene looks like the lovely nativity scenes that decorate my home. We don’t even have to come as respectable citizens. We just have to listen to the angels call and come. “Do not be afraid- for see I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born a Savior, God with us.” Now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense that God chose to come into the world this way. Amen.

Sermon delived by Rev. Nancy Cushman on December 17, 2006.