A Sermon preached at
St. John’s Episcopal Church
61 Broad Street
Elizabeth, New Jersey 07201
Christmas Eve (Eve)
December 23, 2007
A Sermon by the Rev. Joe Parrish
Assistant Pastor of i-church
The Holy Gospel according to
Luke 2:1-20
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see–I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Open the eyes of our heart, Lord, open the eye of our heart for we want to see you this night, we want to hold your hand. Amen.
My wife has a co-worker, an Episcopalian, whose wife had their first baby Saturday a week ago. He and his wife had gone to ‘baby caring classes’, for parents about to have babies. Each time a question was asked in the class about what to do when this or that happens to one’s baby, the instructor almost always answered, “Swaddle it. Swaddle your baby.” A swaddled baby usually stops crying, it feels like it is back in the womb I suppose, it feels comforted, and it either goes to sleep or just coos. “Swaddle it.” That doesn’t seem to be new information: Mary swaddled her baby two thousand years ago, the Son of God needed comforting by his mother. He needed the reassurance a baby can feel by being loved, held, fed, all those things any baby needs. His appearance as a swaddled baby was the announcement made by the angel to the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem: ‘This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth, swaddled in cloth, and lying in a manger.’ The swaddling was probably not what set this special baby apart, but the care of new parents who could only put their baby in a livestock stall would be questionable at the very least. Yet the swaddling showed they so cautiously cared for their little infant even though they were more or less destitute that night of all nights. The baby was saved from the elements even though its parents could not find a decent place for him to be born or to rest his little head. “Swaddle it,” I presume the Holy
Spirit instructed Mary, or perhaps Mary’s mother had taught her that, again likely prompted by the Holy Spirit.
How very basic that night. The stars shown above, the shepherds were busy with their sheep, and yet the running of all history would be reset from this one event. The prophesied Messiah had been born. ‘Hooray to God,’ ‘Hosanna to the Highest.’ “Glory to God in the highest,” praised the angels. Glory to the King of kings. For God has looked down on God’s whole creation and has brought about a way for us to avoid the endless darkness of death and instead to see the glory of our God.
Swaddle him.
Don’t you think sometimes, ‘Why didn’t God just avoid all this birth stuff and send a full-grown adult to earth–don’t you think that would have been more dramatic? This coming as a full term fetus has got to be more difficult for people to swallow as a sign of the Messiah. A great fiery angel who descends from heaven would have been a much more impressive event; but a baby in a bed of hay in a cattle feed trough is the height of lowliness. Jesus didn’t make it into any newspaper, historic record, or public announcement of any note, first century scholars say. Only Josephus, a minor Jewish historian, and Tacitus, a secular Roman historian, made any note of Jesus that we have found so far outside the Bible. In the mind of the world, Jesus’ birth was a non-event, a non-entity born in a backwater town with a total population of perhaps less than thirty babies in total anywhere around.
But the shepherds heard such news from the angels that they were excited and amazed, about this spectacular birth. The angels didn’t visit the little babe themselves for some reason, but instead the angels sent the lowly shepherds to announce their excitement to the babe’s parents. Maybe a host of angels would have made the little baby cry; maybe their appearance to the baby’s parents would have distracted them from their care of their little infant. The angels needed human parents to care for him, nurture him, love him. And these enormously powerful heavenly beings, the angels, would only praise God from afar. The angels did not go to the manger. Instead they sent the lowliest of the low, poor shepherds, the most unclean of all professions by Jewish measure, to go announce to Jesus’ parents his heavenly calling as their Savior and our Savior.
The angel had earlier announced to Mary her pregnancy by the Holy Spirit, something which even the Old Testament prophets hadn’t anticipated; Isaiah had expected a ‘young woman’ would give birth, but a virgin? That wasn’t really the word the prophet had written down. Yet, later when the Jewish scribes translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, the lingua franca of the time, then the translators of Isaiah were inspired to use the Greek word, “virgin”, “parthenos,” to describe the woman who would give birth to the Messiah, five hundred years after the original prophecy was made. The translators themselves were prophets sent by God as it turned out. And that prophecy was heralded by the writers of two of the gospels, Luke and Matthew. Jesus’ mother would be a virgin.
Not long ago Jan and I saw a couple of Egyptian geese on a golf course in Florida watching over their four furry goslings. The large parent geese eyed us warily, keeping us constantly in their sights as they continued to watch over their little ones a few feet away. Isn’t it remarkable how nature operates? Why on earth would an adult animal want to watch over its young? They are a pain. They have to be fed. They have to be nurtured. They have to be watched. They have to be taught. What on earth in the genetic code would account for that behavior? I find this a total mystery, myself. It’s got to be a God thing. Why wouldn’t the geese simply fly off and leave these troubling little hungry balls of fur to fend for themselves? But somewhere along the evolutionary or creation line, the surviving species were the ones who did look over and tend their young. When you think of it, isn’t that an extremely complex behavior, watching over one’s young? But it is one of the most common traits of all the higher animal kingdom. One large goose shoves its young out of sixty foot high trees and onto the ground to teach them how to cope with flying and survival. Their young have their soft furry bodies tucked into a ball such that they just bounce harmlessly from such a fall from sixty feet up. And look at the eagles who hatch their young even higher up, hundreds of feet above a canyon floor, and still they push them out of these high nests; but the eagles don’t let their little ones hit the earth, but swoop underneath and catch them on their wings. There is a very famous contemporary song, “On Eagles’ Wings”, which likens God’s care for each of us as a parent eagle cares for its young, keeps them from falling to the rocks below. Doesn’t life feel that way to you at times, that the world has pushed you out of its nest, and that only God can save you?
But praise be to God that God has heard our frightened cries and has swaddled us in God’s mighty wings, perhaps saved us upon the wings of one of God’s angels. God is “high and lifted up”, as Paul Baloche reminds us in his popular song, quoting the prophet Isaiah. But from God’s fierce high place God has sent down his only Son, his precious Son, to be born of a virgin, on earth, on our particular planet of all planets. And by the birth of this little one, we will be saved for all of eternity if we only trust and believe in him and his ability to save us from our dreadful sins. The Savior comes to birth in a lowly manger on the face of a small insignificant planet near the edge of its galaxy in the midst of hundreds of millions of other galaxies. The probability of this event happening is insignificantly small. In fact, it is almost completely improbable. Yet God chose this very seemingly insignificant place to birth God’s Son. But God also sent a host of angels to look over the process, to announce Jesus’ birth, to us, through the lowest of mankind, shepherds.
This story that we hear once again this very night is remarkable in its careful construction to show a birth in the lowest of the low, to the lowest of the low. And as a result we all can see ourselves at least a bit higher than the one who will save us if we only believe this nearly unbelievable story.
Yet isn’t God’s very nature to be caring for all, from the lowest to the highest? And if God hasn’t experienced the lowest, how can God be expected really to understand all of us? The homeless God understands homelessness. The homeless God had no 211 to dial for shelter on a cold night. God’s relationship to humanity, God’s identity with the lowest of humanity becomes a key point for our salvation. We can never be too low for God to care. We can never be too outcast for Jesus to love us. We can never be too uncared for that God can’t swaddle us in God’s mighty arms, clutch as if our very lives were at stake, nurture us, care for us, feed us, clothe us, but especially swaddle us as the most loving parent would clutch its baby to its very heart.
Tonight God’s heart is breaking for someone. God’s heart is breaking for you in your need. God’s heart is reaching out to you to care for you, to let you know how much God does indeed want to meet you exactly where you are tonight.
God died for us to let us know how much God cares for us. God went to the cross to show us how much God loves you and me. Nothing could prevent God from reaching out and touching you this very sacred night, except for our own hardness of heart that may want to withdraw from God’s comforting hand.
Let God hold you tonight. Hear God’s call to you to come cuddle in God’s arms. Listen to God’s Spirit cooing in your ear, warming you, blessing you, saving you. And let God be your God tonight and forever more. Let God’s Savior of the world be your Savior.
Amen.