Christmas Sermon Notes 2011 Luke 2;1-20

Under the nose of the 1% Jesus Christ was born for the 100%. That’s why Luke starts out with the parade of political figures to start the story. Under the hegemony of Roman officials, a divine intrusion by the downtrodden happened on Christmas. In Luke’s story, the only people who hear about it are some downtrodden shepherds. Remember that shepherds were not the romantic figures of our imagination from movies and Christmas pageants. Instead of occupying Rome or Jerusalem, Jesus was born a maybe a good 2 hour walk away from the temple, but it was still the city of David.

Luke places the story amid the power of the occupying Roman authority. The angels use names applied to the emperor and apply them to this baby born in an out of the way place. Even the appearance of the angels is ironic. In the OT, the angelic host were the fearsome troops of God. Now they have been transformed here into a choir. Only the rough shepherds heard songs of Christmas that evening, a small audience for the heralds of a miracle, a miracle of the Incarnation, where the very self of the Creator God, the omnipresent one, squeezed into a baby;s life in all of the divine fullness in that very human baby. When I am in a Grinch mood, I wonder if Christ is being squeezed out of Christmas. Then I remember that the incarnation has God hallowing all of creation, as the Book of Order says. Many things can point sacramentally to Emmanuel, God with us. Hear that phrase carefully this morning. God with us, connected to us, relating to us, not against us, not over us, with us. If we have eyes to see, if we have Christmas eyes, we can look beneath the tinsel to find the real treasures that lie beneath.

We place so much weight on this day. we imagine that life can look like a Hallmark card, just for today. we have been inundated with Christmas songs and decorations for weeks now, as the secular calendar collides with the sacred calendar. No holiday could come close to trying to fill the expectations and dreams we heap on this holiday. No gift, no gifts, are capable of of carrying the freight we place on them. We arrive at this day worn out from a frenzy of preparation and wearied by the constant crush of gatherings. Mary and Joseph and the babe heard no hymns. their first Christmas was away from home, in a rude shelter at best. That’s one reason our thoughts move so easily to the poor, why Dickens’ Christmas Carol has such resonance with us over the years.

Luther was impressed with the divine psychology at work in this birth. He saw God as fearsome, so we can all be brave enough to come near a baby, as he said, God became small for us. Instead of a shock and awe campaign, God chose a hidden approach, to make the work of salvation an inside job. God works from within as well as without, from the inside out. I bet the malls are already busy taking down Christmas decorations, and here is the church just starting the season. there’s the church behind again. Dig beneath the tinsel and the lights being packed away and the trees already getting dry and brittle. Beneath the glitz, the fading decorations, the self-same miracle is celebrated today. the Christmas season is just starting. May we have plenty of room in the inn of our lives, to invite the dear child to enter in. 100% of us are mangers to support the Christ child.