Christmas Eve evokes so many childhood memories. I remember how magical it was going to church with my family on Christmas Eve. It was the only time during the year that we went to church at night – and the tree, the lights, and Silent Night made it all so magical. Well, that, and knowing that Christmas morning – and all those presents – was just hours away.
This year, one childhood memory in particular has risen up for me, and although it didn’t happen at Christmas, it was sparked by our Gospel reading for tonight. It was when I was about 5 or 6 years old and learning my address, something my kids are doing now. I remember that this is how I learned it: I lived in…
The Universe – Milky Way Galaxy – Solar System – Earth – United States – Maryland – Baltimore County – City of Arbutus – on Circle Drive – at Number 1132
I remember that this made a deep impression on me. It located me in a specific spot within the vast universe. I was part of this bigger picture and yet inhabited this very particular place.
This all comes to mind because Luke does much the same thing in his telling of the Christmas story. He is careful to locate the birth of Jesus at a specific place and a specific time. He tells us that it happened during the reign of Emperor Augustus (who we know from history reigned between 31BC and 14AD) and when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Luke tells us that the first Christmas happened in The Universe – Milky Way Galaxy – Solar System – Earth – the Roman Empire – Palestine – Bethlehem – A Manger.
Luke locates the birth of Jesus at a real place, at real time, to real people, in a real body. And this is hugely important.
Real Times. Real People. Real Body.
I remember that when I was in college and writing the essay for my Divinity School application, the chaplain there, my advisor, suggested I give it to one of the English professors to proofread. The professor read it over, handed it back to me with his notes. And I will never forget what he wrote at the end of the essay. He wrote, “Remember, God is in the details too.” God is in the details too.
Luke believed the same thing. He tells the Christmas story with vivid detail (more than any of the other Gospel writers.) Its not just good storytelling, which it is. It helps us to locate God in our own lives.
Luke tells us that this was a time of Roman occupation and oppression. People were crammed into the inns of Bethlehem not because they wanted to be, but because they were forced to be, because of the census. They were weary travelers and strangers to one another. These were people who walked in darkness.
There, in the Bethlehem night, Jesus is born to a young, engaged couple. Mary, who is probably a teenager. Joseph, a carpenter. Together, dealing with an unexpected pregnancy and an unwanted journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, facing limited time and meager resources, and the crudest form of transportation available, a donkey. The angels, the only spectacular part of the story, appear to humble shepherds, who were considered to be on the lowest rung of society.
These shepherds come to the stable, perhaps pushing their way past the animals to see the sign: the child wrapped in bands of cloth: Jesus. Jesus – a real baby, delivered in the pain of childbirth, who fed and cried and slept – a newborn, warm, soft, and small.
And Luke says that this is how God saves the world. Not by divine fiat. Not by a grand proclamation or announcement or memo. God saves the world by entering right into the stuff of life. Into molecules and cells. Heartbeats and breaths. God comes to us – as one of us, in the most precious form our humanity can take, a baby.
The birth of Christ is a cosmic event; when the great and divine God takes on frail and finite human form, the universe itself pivots. But redemption and salvation always happen in the particular. They always happen in real times and real places to real people. To Noah and his family in the flood, to Moses and the Israelites in the Exodus. In the manger. On the cross. At the open tomb.
Likewise, we find God in the fine details of our lives. For, grace and salvation are not something that God does to the world. They are something God does in the world…and in us. Presence, love, forgiveness, grace are not simply theological categories or church lingo. They are experienced. They are lived. They are here. And they are now.
The Manger of our Lives
A few nights ago at our Wednesday evening dinner church, I posed the question: How are you experiencing the Christmas story afresh this year? How is this ancient and familiar story taking on new meaning for you? And rather than talk about the text and the Christmas story itself, people shared stories of unexpected graces, kindnesses that they had recently experienced, at home, at work, at the post office.
It was a reminder that although Christmas happened at a particular place and particular time, the act of God entering into the world through our lives continues to happen.
And this is the central promise of Christmas: that God, who was once born in a manger in Bethlehem, is born into the manger of our lives.
He comes to people like us. In places like ours. In bodies like these. At times like this. Our lives – your life and my life – are the manger into which Jesus is born.
As one of our members, an engineer, commented on Facebook this week, it is “amazing how [such] a simple structure becomes a place of peace, love and strength once Christ is present there.”
And so it is with our lives. For, if God could transform a lowly manger into this place of grace, peace, and love, then God can transform my life and your life into such a place.
We need this hope. We need this promise. We need this child called Emmanuel, God With Us. And this why we are here tonight.
Because our lives are mangers, not mansions.
Our lives are simple structures, unfinished and rough around the edges. They bear the marks of time, they hold together the joy and sorrow of life. They are complicated and often messy.
But, as we see tonight, his is where God delights to meet us – with grace, with hope, with peace. Its here where God’s light shines brightest. In our imperfections, our hopes, our and longings.
Tonight we claim the promise: That if all this could happen in as unlikely a place as a manger, it can happen in as unlikely a place as our lives. If it could happen to such unlikely people, it can happen to us. Light can shine. Life can appear. Grace can surprise. The human and divine, we and God, can find themselves wrapped in a loving embrace.
Christmas is not just one event, its the new reality we are living.
And tonight’s the night the world begins again.
Amen.
