Merry Christmas, Christ has come!

Readings: Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-20

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hallelujah, Christ has come! Jesus Christ was born this night over 2 millennia ago. Children are born everyday, what makes this birth so special, so monumental that we still throw such an elaborate birthday party each year?! Well, two things: the very fact that GOD becomes flesh and, unlike Sally down the street who just had a baby boy, good for her, but what’s it to me, Jesus’ birth is FOR YOU.

That’s right, this birth is SO momentous because God became flesh.. FOR YOU.

Why would the Lord of all that is.. Creator of the entire universe CHOOSE to become flesh and share in our sufferings?! I’m not sure our minds can even comprehend the selflessness of this act. But it doesn’t even stop there! God could have at least chosen the easiest path of humanity. Jesus could have been born to royalty! Jesus’ mother could have been a queen, surrounded by midwives at Christ’s birth, with the best care possible and the comfiest crib ever made for the God-child. Christ could have been raised rich and comfortable and taken over the throne and ruled as King David’s successor like the prophecies predicted. But instead God chose to be revealed in a much different way. In a way that would redefine the throne, redefine power, kingdom, justice, and love.

God instead came to us through poverty, suffering, and exclusion. Mary and Joseph were not royalty. Mary was a young, possibly 14 year old orphan, unwed and now pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph was a carpenter. King David may have been in Joe’s distant lineage, but he has left Bethlehem the city of David and sought work in Nazareth, which must have had a bad rep - if you’ll recall the gospel of John when Nathanael asks Philip ‘Can anything good come from Nazareth?’ So God becomes flesh, is born into a human family that is poor and from a bad neighborhood. Then Mary and Joseph, in obedience with the law, have to find a way to travel down to Bethlehem for the Census. That’s 90 miles and they don’t even have a car! (obviously) But they may not even have had a donkey, it’s not actually in the narrative, it’s just how we’ve come to imagine the story over the millennia. Regardless, Mary at 9 months pregnant either had to make this journey by feet or by donkey – neither sound appealing.

When they finally arrive, most likely dirty, grumpy, in pain, so many people have come to the area for the Census that there is no more room for them. God in the flesh, comes into the world AS the lowly.. the poor.. the excluded. Our God did not come just to take on human form and lift up the lowly, but AS the lowly. Our God did not just become flesh and blood to save the world, but also to be in and of the world.

God did not have to do this! Why did God do this!? We would never choose to do that! At Easter we are mind-blown by the love God reveals for the world in the cross, but let us not mistake the cross as the only extraordinary thing about Christ’s life, as if the only importance of Christ’s birth is his death. The cross is only half the equation. God’s love for the world is equally revealed in the manger! God’s love is equally as selfless in the manger as it is on the cross.

In the manger, we find God willfully emptied of all glory, honor, power, and might. We find God revealed to the world as the lowest of the low. The world has not made room for it’s Creator, it’s Savior. The world doesn’t even know what hit it yet. As if this weren’t already radical enough the angels are back to help us humans comprehend! Mary and Joseph don’t know what has hit them until an angel appears to explain, and in the same way the world cannot know what has happened until the angels proclaim.

If I were God I’d have sent those angels straight to the emperor, straight to royalty and the rich to proclaim that their time of self-righteousness, greed, and violence has come to an end, but instead God sends the angels to.. the shepherds. The people who were seemingly so unimportant that they didn’t even need to bother traveling into town to be counted for the census, they just carried on their work, unnoticed by their superiors. But God noticed them. They were excluded; just like Christ, there was no room for them.. but that is exactly who heard the good news that night – the lowly, the excluded, the outcast, the forgotten.

The late preaching professor Daniel Harris reflects on the radical nature of the proclamation to the shepherds in remembering his time in LA where he would “often see men standing in small groups on street corners waiting from someone to drive by and pick them up for a day job. Perhaps they would be hired to mow the lawn on a wealthy estate or sweep the factory floor. These hardworking immigrants would do a good job; if they were undocumented, it was all the better, since they could be hired for less than minimum wage.. These are the shepherds.. The angels knew exactly what they were doing, of course. The new king born this night has brought peace to all men and women, but especially the poor.” The shepherds, like many still today, were the outcasts, the ones living in the darkness on the outskirts of society, the poor and forgotten. On them a great light has shone, God’s own face has shined upon them in Christ Jesus – the light of the world!

You who feel overlooked, forgotten, excluded.. Jesus Christ came FOR YOU. You who feel overworked and underappreciated.. Jesus Christ came FOR YOU. You who are poor, be it financially, mentally or spiritually.. Jesus Christ came FOR YOU. You who are afraid, grieving, lonely, depressed.. Jesus Christ came FOR YOU. For like that post that’s been going around on Facebook says, Jesus did not say ‘Come to me all you who are crushing it, living your best life, and I will give you rest,’ he said, ‘Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light’(Mt 11:30).

Jesus Christ has come into the world not only for the lowly, but as the lowly. God voluntarily became flesh, to suffer as we suffer. Jesus Christ is the love of God incarnate. Come to look us in the eyes and say ‘I love you and you are mine.’ We don’t have to wonder what our God thinks of us.. We don’t have to fear the false powers of this world.. For we know what a true king looks like; we know what force rules the universe. We know that love wins the day. Truly, what a gift it is to have such a God who would do such a thing as this.

We have been given a great light, a light that shines in the darkness of our souls and of our world. May we know this light. May we be this light. May we share this light. For who could keep such a miracle to themselves?!

I’ll leave you with a quote from the President of the Lutheran World Federation, Archbishop Panti Filibus Musa, “Imagine how different the world would look if each of us allows the light of Christ to shine in our lives, families, and environments! May this light be switched on in every human heart and in every corner of the earth. May it transform hearts of brutality and hate into hearts of love. May God grant us grace to be the hands and feet of Christ, making the light visible and transformational for others.”

Hallelujah, Christ has come!

Amen.