Christmas Eve

This was a time of upset and upheaval. 

In ancient times ancient rivals fought over land in an ancient country. 

That country, at the crossroads of the Middle East, a land at various times between Egypt and Assyria, Babylonia and Rome, was Israel. 

And at the time of our gospel reading, it is occupied by the Roman Empire where Caesar Augustus was Emperor and Quirinius was governor of Syria. 

The governor of Syria also controlled Israel or as the Romans called it, Syria Palestina and he was responsible for responding to the emperor's decree that all the world should be registered, that every human in the empire should be known to Rome. 

In Israel, this meant that everyone should return to their hometown. 

Children would follow their parents from Jerusalem to Jericho. 

Some distance would be crossed on foot as sons and daughters set home from Chorazin to Capernaum. 

One man set out from Nazareth to cross almost 100 miles of scrubland and desert on his way to Bethlehem. 

Beside him walked his betrothed, his beloved, his Mary who was expecting a child rather soon. 

The journey would have been hard on foot as Joseph supported Mary and Mary supported her child. 

Her miracle. 

Jesus. 

It would have taken them thirty-five hours to walk but that is just walking, they would have had to stop for water, for rest, for sleep. 

And they would have passed so many who were in the same predicament, perhaps some were even traveling from Bethlehem to Nazareth, the same arduous journey just in the opposite direction. 

Essentially, this command, this edict from the emperor would have caused tremendous upset as people would have had to move from their dwelling places, their places of work, back to their hometowns, their cities of birth. 

The roads would have been jammed with carts and donkeys, farm animals and entire families making their way in every which way. 

And then things began to calm. 

People would have arrived. 

They would have placed their animals in sheds and barns and fenced in enclosures. 

They would have placed them before feeding troughs called mangers. 

They would have stretched their backs after a long journey, walked through the doors of familiar if now subtly different homes. 

They would have settled into chairs familiar to them from years before. 

The chaos now over, they would have settled in. 

And the couple mentioned earlier, Mary and Joseph, would have done the same, but seemingly, there was no room for them in their family’s guest room.  

Or in the more familiar telling, there was no room for them at the inn or, no inn for them to settle into. 

In this gospel story we are to infer that what happened next happened in no place fit for a king. 

No place of royal splendor. 

No castle walls to provide protection. 

No guards at the gate to keep out the tax collectors and soldiers who might threaten. 

Instead, what happened, happened in the open, before all the world to see, and all would be welcomed in. 

On this night. 

After a few days journey, Mary and Joseph arrived and everything changed. 

We were not there, but we do know what occurred. 

The world was not there but very soon it was announced the world over. 

First though, the couple betrothed to one another knew and then the shepherds knew as well. 

For an angel appeared before them in the fields and meadows in which they worked and told them the miracle of what happened. 

Reading from the King James’ Version of the bible, the angel said this: 

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 

This announcement, this angel, this news, this good, very, very good news, was God breaking open the curtain between the divine the and the transient. 

The mortal and the immortal. 

From this moment on, the world was put on notice that God had entered into the world and shared with us God’s only son. 

First, the shepherds were told and they then went to see for themselves all that occurred and they told Mary and Joseph and all who were around them all that the angel said. 

A savior was born in Bethlehem and that savior was the child laid down before them, a child wrapped in bands of cloth and placed in a manger. 

That savior, born in the humblest of circumstances, would change the world. 

And the story of that savior was told first not by the royal scribe or a storyteller on par with Scheherazade but by the humblest of the humble. 

The shepherds, not usually thought of as evangelists were the first to evangelize this miracle that occurred beneath the brightest stars shining in Middle Eastern skies. 

As those shepherds returned from where they met this new family, this holy family, as they returned to their fields and to their homes, they told to all they met along the way, all who they encountered heard the good news that first the angel shared and then eventually might see for themselves. 

A child was born. 

Shepherds, whose job was to watch over their flock told the story of a new shepherd born, called to watch over the human flock. 

God had broken through and everything had changed. 

The end of one thing, became the beginning of everything. 

There are stories we will tell. 

Over the coming weeks and months we will hear stories of miracles and healings, of demon pigs rushing into the sea. 

We will hear of a life given to sacrifice, to feeding those who are hungry and feeding those who are hungry for good news, better news than we sometimes hear in our own times. 

We will hear of the ultimate sacrifice and the conquering of that sacrifice. 

We will hear these stories amidst the winter chill, within the hopefulness of springtime, the summer heat and cooling fall. 

We will hear stories that will lift us up, catch our ear, surprise us as we perhaps hear something in those stories we hadn’t quite heard before. 

We will hear new things and old. 

And before that, we hear the story tonight of a miracle born, a family created, a world made new. 

This evening, we hear about the beginning. 

The beginning is the promise, it is the sometimes confusing and seemingly unimaginable promise that life is still good. 

That God sees us for who we are in all our ruffles and wrinkles, in our faults and blessedness, in our dreams and our desires and dreams for us a new day as one people born of one hopefulness. 

Though we humans do human things, though we bumble and stumble and sin, God sees us worthy of a world made new. 

The miracle of this night resides in the joy it brings, that joy, not a reflection of how the world is but, rather, how it may someday be is confirmed by the birth of a child placed in a manger outside the gates of the powerful and within reach of all of us. 

Joy was born this night. 

Hope was born this night. 

Peace was born this night. 

Love was born this night. 

All that we prepared for throughout Advent has come to fruition and we are made anew. 

As the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace, goodwill among people!” 

And now, the bustling of this bustling season is mostly complete. 

You have done the secular things, you have bought the gifts and wrapped them. 

You made the egg nog and drank some. 

You passed on glad tidings along the way and sat through traffic as people traveling from everywhere go every which way. 

We have already sung some songs and will sing still more and then we shall exit into the chilly night air. 

We will make our ways home to our various homes in various settings. 

Some of you will lay your children already asleep in their cribs and their beds. 

Others will call up to your teenaged children a sweet good night as they settle in themselves. 

Still others will hear the echoes of what once was and know that somewhere, a new Christmas tradition is born from afar and in silence you sleep confident of Christ’s birth once more. 

And so, as you exit this place and enter into this new world, this world made new, this world blessed by God and inhabited by Christ, I ask you do one thing. 

Do as the shepherds did. 

Share the story. 

Share the story of a world built of hope and not torment. 

Togetherness and not division. 

Be the voice, the same voices that emerged from a sheep pasture on the outskirts of Bethlehem, and tell the story. 

Tell it through your service to others. 

Tell it as you hand that person a dollar bill because they are in need. 

Tell it as you give your coat away because you have two, tell it! 

When we look to a world, an older world stuck in argument and fear, we can tell the story of a different world. 

A world in which the humble are born in the humblest of circumstances and turn out to be our savior. 

That is our story and it needs to be told. 

In actions, in words, in song, door to door and day to day this is our story to share. 

For unto us a child was born and we are born once more. 

Glory to God in the highest and peace, goodwill to all. 

We are blessed this night and always. 

God has broken through. 

Christ is born anew. 

Amen.