Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text (Luke 2:10-11):
And the angel sad to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, enlighten our darkness with the light of your Holy Spirit, so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I read a slogan about Christmas this week which goes like this:
“Christmas is… capturing the magic forever.”
Fools write that stuff, and only fools believe it.
Christmas is not capturing the magic forever, whatever the magic might be. It is God our heavenly Father capturing you forever, by sending his Son to be born into the world.
The reality of Christmas is another story. It isn’t very magical!
Shepherds seeing angels and they were filled with fear.
A weary journey for a young pregnant woman.
A baby being born amongst all the animals, and amongst all the animal smells.
And then we read the family became refugees, and had to flee to Egypt, because they were worried about King Herod trying to kill the baby. And in actual fact, to make he sure he did the job he killed every baby in Bethlehem.
This is the reality of Christmas.
Christmas took place in a time of great mess. The Jewish people were ruled by a foreign power – the Romans. People were madly running around trying to register themselves for the census.
This is the reality of Christmas.
And there are elements to this in our own time too. Christmas is a time of a great mess. People madly running around, visiting people, buying people presents, finishing off the year, getting things done, and all that sort of thing.
But there’s also a side of things where Christmas is a time of great sadness for some people. It can be lonely for people who have no one to celebrate Christmas with. It can be difficult for people who have lost a loved one to death during the previous year who won’t be there this year. It can be an utterly fearful time for people who just have no hope in life, when everyone around them seems happy.
Now I don’t want to make you feel miserable at Christmas time! That’s not the point of why I’m saying these things. But let’s take a reality check – let’s look at the sort of things we see around us, because I’m sure you know that the things I’ve said are true. There are so many people suffering around you, and so Christmas is a time for you to be generous to them, and to learn once again what it means to be generous.
Let’s never forget that the baby who was born on Christmas night those many years ago grew up into the man whom the bible calls “The man of sorrows”. The man who was “despised and rejected by people”. Just as Jesus was born in a manger made of out wood, he was also nailed to a cross made out of wood.
And God has called all of us into a certain situation. He has put us in certain families, certain households, certain towns, certain streets. And all of this may seem to you to be insignificant. But so are stables in the back streets of Bethlehem. And if you help those around you, where God has placed you, if you serve them, if you show kindness to people, if you open yourself in generosity to people for the sake of Jesus Christ who serves you and shows kindness and friendliness to you, and is generous to you, that you will also become a person who endures great suffering. You will also become a person who will be treated like the animals in a stable. And it won’t just be people who will be the problem, but this will be a great internal battle for you. It will be easy to you to take the wide path, and turn a blind to people, and to joke at them.
And so it’s time for you to stand up as a citizen of God’s holy church on earth to fight the good fight, to stand up for those who have no one to stand up for them (and I mean, no-one), and to be human beings who were worth having lived, who changed the not-so-inevitable-after-all course of history, and who took up their crosses and followed Jesus. You are called to do nothing on this earth as a Christian, but fight: dripping in the waters of your baptism, with the words of Scripture marinading your mind, and the body and blood of your Lord tasted upon your tongue, and with love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as your disposition. And so St Paul raises up the war-cry: “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”
Don’t be a person who says, I will not visit the baby Jesus in the stable in Bethlehem, because I am afraid of what I might step in.
This is precisely why the angels of God came tearing out to insignificant places like paddocks, and spoke to insignificant people like shepherds, and made them the example of our faith.
We read: And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”
“Fear not.” If the shepherds weren’t afraid, they wouldn’t have said this. And there is nothing for us to fear either.
The news of Christmas is good news. The joy of Christmas is a great joy. And the good news of great joy is for all people.
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.”
There’s nothing glamorous about it. There he is: a baby Jesus, helpless like any other baby. In the stable with the animals, wrapped in cloths, cradled by his mother.
And when you visit this baby Jesus, and when you find him, and he becomes yours, we realise a strange thing: that in fact, he is the one who visited us, he is the one who found us, and we became his.
And then there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
He was born, dead, risen for you and for the forgiveness of your sins. Every weakness and sin in you has become his, and everything strong and pure that is his has become yours, even if you can’t see it in yourself, but purely because our heavenly Father has forgiven you. And just in case you think that everybody else’s sin is forgiven except yours, God sends an angel to say: Fear not, I bring you good news of great joy that will be all, all, all people.
It’s the shepherds – who find their Jesus in the insignificant church, in the insignificant stable, among the insignificant animals, in the insignificant bible, in the insignificant water of baptism, in the insignificant bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper – its shepherds with their feet planted firmly on the ground, who sing with the angels and the archangels and all the company of heaven, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to all people.”
So do not fear, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people.
Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, you are our Lord and God, who was not afraid to become a human being like us, into to deepest and darkest parts of our world, our lives and our hearts. Capture us this Christmas and send us the Holy Spirit, so that we may keep the faith, and be yours forever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment