Christmas Homily 2013

As I was preparing this sermon, I could not help but be reminded of one I delivered some 10 years ago on the occasion of Mother’s Day while serving a large, very affluent congregation on Hilton Head Island.  I had based the sermon on the historical relevance of the holiday. Mother’s Day began  in 1872, when Boston poet, pacifist and women's suffragist Julia Ward Howe established a special day for mothers --and for peace-- not long after the bloody Franco-Prussian War. That fact, when combined with a politically charged gospel reading that weighs in heavily on the estachological hope of peace, well, you can imagine that this was no sweet Hallmark Card Mother’s Day homily.  The next day I received a message on my office phone from a very angry mother, who I’m guessing had never lost a child to war, who complained between curses that I had ruined her Mother’s Day. She let me know, in crystal clear terms that she had come to church to hear a lovely sermon on the virtues and blessings of motherhood and that my sermon was a complete disappointment.  Being a new preacher and hoping to please everyone at all times, I was truly devastated.  The senior pastor had heard the phone message as well and said something to the effect of this:  On holiday homiletical occasions, a choice must be made: One must either preach the gospel or preach what people want to hear, and rarely do those two things coexist within the same sermon. 

You may now be clued in to the problem we have this evening.  The way forward for us then is for me to trust that you value truth more than sentimentality; and for you to trust that the purpose of the Gospel is to proclaim Good News and it is the work of the preacher to deliver upon that proclamation.

As I’ve said the Gospels are politically charged. Because we are not trained as biblical scholars, it is sometimes difficult to see the venom, the irony, the play on words, the insults, and the passive aggressive undertones that co-exist with the metaphorically peaceable passages of the lamb, the shepherd, the vine, the light, and the bread of life.  There was a war brewing when Jesus came into the world.  And that long-simmering aggression would explode into full-scale warfare at the time the gospels were written, some thirty – fifty years after Jesus’ death.  The Jews had mounted a war against Rome, the greatest empire the world has ever known and they were going to lose, badly.  So anyone who believes that the Gospels would be sterilized of the cataclysmic political circumstances of the times clearly did not learn about the Jewish Revolt of 66 in their Sunday School classes. Yes, I’m being trite; but the point is this. You and I did not learn about the Jewish Revolt. No one ever said to us, as we were learning about the Gospels:  The truth is, we don’t know who Matthew, Mark, Luke and John actually were or even if those were their real names.  It is very possible they used pen names as to not be discovered because what they were writing were wartime documents.  Just listen to how our Gospel reading begins on this Christmas Eve:  “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.”  From the very outset, the entrance of Jesus into the world is linked with the political realities on the ground.  His gospel is intended for all those Christians who lived in hiding, in isolation and in fear for their lives. Those frightened families and small bands of Christians gathered secretly in house churches scattered across the Middle Eastern wilderness sang psalms and praised Almighty God for strength of his right arm, for his righteousness and mercy.  And they read from scrolls secretly delivered to them from writers such as Luke.

By the time Luke is writing his Gospel there has been so much bloodshed, and so much loss; not one woman, child or animal was spared in the Roman slaughter.  Jerusalem had been burned so severely as to leave no evidence that it had ever existed.  If we are to truly  to hear the Good News proclaimed, then we must begin by imagining we are there. It is only when we realize that all is lost, that nothing has been saved, and that the enemy has taken their victory with spectacular ferocity that we can hear the profound meaning of the angel’s words.  We must imagine the words of the angel of the Lord rising up from thick smoke that keeps the day as night for months and the unrelenting smell of war; it is from this place the angel proclaims: “Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people…… 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 God favors.” 

Now let that last phrase settle on you for a moment…. On earth peace among those whom God favors…. Which begs the question, whom does God favor?  Certainly not the Romans, that seems obvious.  But what about now?  For whom is this proclamation intended?  And have I in my arrogance assumed all along it was intended for me?  Martin Luther noted in one of his sermons, “[The angel] does not simply say: ‘Christ is born,’ but ‘for you he is born.’ What good would it do me, if he were born a thousand times and if this were sung to me every day with the loveliest airs, if I should not hear that there was something in it for me and that it should be my own?” 

Quite simply, if we follow the text, then it is clear that the message was intended for the shepherds.  But even this might not be as it appears.  Remember this is a wartime document.  The Good News announces that there is another conflict in play far beyond the temporal realm; a war between the hostile world that seeks to destroy the things of God, and the divine who has promised peace to those whom God favors.  A child has come into the world, and he is the messiah, the anointed one. Let this be a sign for you.  To who? To the shepherds. We have a coded message in these shepherds with three possibilities.  Because shepherds were known to be at the very bottom of the social and economic ladder, the Good News proclamation might have been intended for the very poor.  But because poverty is not accidental, nor is it a natural state of being but is rather the result of deliberate social policy, this might be a message for those who profit from the impoverished, or whose gains are the direct cause of poverty.  For these, this is not Good News; it warns those who deal in greed and human misery to beware because Almighty God has entered into the world to do battle the forces of evil. And God will not be defeated.

But these shepherds appear to be the owners of the sheep and not hired hands, which does not make them poor but of a very different circumstance. In that case they may be meant to represent the rulers of Israel – a sad history in itself; which points us to the rulers of today’s nations; again delivering a warning that should not be ignored.  For as much as we long for peace, we put our hope in a God that is still waging war against injustice.   

Or perhaps we are simply meant to think of another shepherd, David, King David, that is; to consider that God is always doing a new thing, and that God’s most daring promises are fulfilled in the most unexpected  of circumstances.  Like the promise of peace yet to be fulfilled by a child born in a stable, in the presence of shepherds, with unwed parents wholly blessed by the intervening of the Holy Spirit; parents who will very shortly flee to save the life of their son under threat from a King foolish enough to wage his own war against God.  

But in as much as the message was not delivered with us, or the state of the world 2000 years and many wars later in mind, it is undeniably meant for us to whole heartedly receive.  This Good News, this proclamation, this promise of peace is our inheritance.  It is ours to fully claim.  It is for us to ponder the depth and breadth and the beauty of it, even as we still long for the complete fulfillment of it.  Now the peace of which the angel spoke, was, within the context of Luke’s wartime document, clearly intended to deliver the promise of the ceasing of hostilities; an end to war, a very real and terrible war between the Roman Empire and Jews and the Christians who were associated with them.  To give those first generation, founding Christians hope that one day they would no longer be hunted down, tortured and killed for their love of Christ – to strengthen them as they spoke out to those with no hope – for converting Gentiles and Jews alike to practice a faith that for the first time ever, did not promote war and aggression, but insisted on peace.

But for many of us today, the peace God offers, and the peace we need, is much closer to home. It is the hope of peace for those who are fighting wars of illness, sorrow, anger, injustice, oppression, discord between family members, estranged spouses and children, regret, shame, imperfection, incarceration, addiction, incest, adultery, and all manner of things done and left undone.  It is the peace that rests in one’s heart that surpasses all human understanding.  It is the peace that comes from surrendering oneself and one’s battles into the hands of God.  It is comes from seeing the child in the manager as a sign – a sign meant for you.   For you Christ was born.  That you might find peace of mind, and rest for your soul. That you might cease whatever private war you are waging. That you might surrender your will to God’s will. That you might receive the peace of God, and that you might, one day, pass that peace on to another.

Perhaps it was this peacetime pondering that led a German pastor to set down a poem in the dark days of late December. At Christmas the church’s organ unexpected failed and the organist offered his guitar to take its place.  The humble pastor then offered his simple poem that it might be paired with the guitar for the Christmas Eve mass.  [Organ begins to softly play Silent Night] And so it was that in 1818, in St. Nicholas Church, the world heard for the first time, “Silent Night.”  In appreciation of our peaceable time and in honor of those for whom peace has not yet come, let us join our voices….

All sing Silent Night