Christmas Eve 2019

 Christmas Eve 2019         Luke 2:1-20         Isaiah 9:2-7         Titus 2:11-14

                This world tells us that certain people count and others don’t, or that some people count more than others.  And into this world, Jesus was born to throw our ideas of who counts out the window.

In those days a decree went out about who would be counted and who would count.  The Hebrew people had not been counted in a long time, but Emperor Augustus Caesar suddenly decided that they would count, because he could extract taxes from them to fund his huge armies.  He wanted to count the people he would oppress.  The Emperor had a lot of power to order around that many people to go and be registered with their tribe.  The Emperor’s command counted for a lot.

Mary didn’t count for much.  She was a teenager who was pregnant before she was married.  She was a girl, who wasn’t even counted as a full person.  She had no rights.  Her father could marry her to whomever he wanted.  She had no say over her life.  She had no way of supporting herself or being independent.  Yet the angel came to her and treated her with respect.  The angel asked her if she would bear the Son of God.

Joseph didn’t count for much.  We don’t have any hymns about poor overlooked Joseph.  He was a carpenter—not a very respected trade.  His betrothed appeared to have cheated on him.  Yet the angel came to him, too, in a dream and told him that he counted, and Mary counted.  Joseph paid attention to his dreams and to the angel’s message and protected the Son of God at great risk to himself and his own plans.

The shepherds didn’t count for much.  Long ago when Israel was an agrarian economy, shepherds were valued.  Even King David had been chosen from among the shepherds.  However, shepherds had fallen a long way since then.  They had become simple caretakers for owners of large herds.  They lived in the dirt, among animals, in caves.  They were on the fringes of society, without support networks.  Among the shepherds would have been thieves and criminals, trying to go undetected, away from cities and towns.  The angels came to the ones who everyone thought didn’t count.  They were the first to receive the good news.  “To you is born this day a Savior, the Messiah, Christ the Lord.”  And the one who was born was a shepherd himself, come to shepherd the people and shield them from wolves and find them when they were lost.

A baby was not someone who counted.  Infant mortality was high, near 50%.  Half of babies didn’t survive.  A baby is helpless, completely relying on other people for survival.  And yet, God showed that a baby has value, when God chose to send the Son this way, so helpless and vulnerable.

When we think we don’t count and when we think others don’t count, we treat each other in terrible ways.  We hurt ourselves.  We hurt each other.  We hurt this beautiful creation God made. 

God’s action this Christmas night tells us that God counts all of us as family.  As he comes in the flesh, a human body, he shows us the value of our human bodies, with all their flaws and shortcomings.  Jesus in the flesh becomes our brother, grafts us into his family tree, adopts us into his family and lets us know we all count.

All during the season of Advent, we have revisited Jesus’ family tree.  We met people who doubted God’s promises, who even laughed at God’s plans.  We met men and women, young and old, people poor in possessions and rich in hope and joy.  We met people of many nationalities, languages, and backgrounds.  We met tricksters, and people who made serious mistakes.  And all are in Jesus’ family tree.  They are part of Jesus’ lineage.  God was able to work through them to bring us a Savior. They were nobodies that God counted, so now we know their names and stories.

Tonight we take our place next to them in the family tree.  We are grafted into the shoot of Jesse that seemed cut down.  New life is abundant, and we find ourselves alongside these ordinary people, these heroes, these flawed, human, vulnerable people.  The angels are singing to us this night, no matter where we’ve come from.  They don’t need us to be anyone important or rich.  In fact, we get to put away our ideas of what counts, because everyone is welcome at the feet of the angels.  Everyone is welcome to go running to the manger to see the one born to make us all brothers and sisters, children of God.  And not only Jesus’ brothers and sisters, but brothers and sisters to each other, sharing, helping, receiving, including.  Not only do we each count to God, but we each count to each other.  We are invited to see each person as siblings and to treat each other with love and forgiveness.  We are invited to come again and again to this table of our Creator, and sit down with each other, share stories with each other, work together with each other, and go out to our siblings who couldn’t get here.

God works through unlikely, undignified, clumsy people like you and me.  So now we have no excuses.  God works through unlikely, undignified, clumsy people like all those people out there.  So now we have no excuses not to go to them.  Christmas is the gift of God’s own self, and as the body of Christ, we work together to bring in the Kingdom.  God works through us, despite our inadequacies, using our skills and gifts, to not only tell the good news, but live the good news. 

Go with haste to see him in the manger.  Peek in at every little baby you see and give a smile.  Open a door for a struggling parent.  Volunteer at the hospital rocking babies or gathering donations for new parents and their infants. Give to a person standing on a street corner holding a sign.  That’s Jesus’ brother or sister.  Bring a cup of hot soup or buy them a coffee or give a bag of granola bars or clean, dry socks.  Come spend time at the FoodBank stocking shelves for Jesus’ family members.  Come and meet them on a Saturday, all his nieces and nephews excited about a little treat.  Listen for the signs of Jesus’ arrival, the songs in the air, in the trees, on the wind, in the animals’ calls in the night, the sound of the voices of people no one ever listens to.  Look for the signs of Jesus’ arrival, candles, people shivering, tents in the park, a man riding his bicycle in the rain, people gathered in a warm place to share, people helping each other change a tire, strangers providing gifts for kids who wouldn’t normally get one.

I love the story of the shepherds on Christmas Eve.  Did they wonder about that night for years to come and tell their children and grandchildren of the night the sky lit up and the angels scared them half to death?  What did their children think of the story of the baby in the barn?  Did the shepherds keep a watch their whole lives long?  Did they look at every person they met and wonder, is this the child all grown up?  What would he be doing now?  I wonder what happened to the baby in the manger?  Did Jesus ever cross their paths again?  Did any of them show up at the feeding of the 5000 or at the cross?  Did they know they had praised this man as a little baby?  Did they stand a little taller, knowing they counted?  Did their lives change in any way? 

I hope that knowing that we count, not for what we do, but for who we are, would motivate us to question the world’s view of who and what counts.  Let’s use God’s accounting system in which we are all family and all of value and all in need of each other and all clumsy and all a little bit weird.  And especially that we are all children of God, siblings, and part of the family, part of the story of Christmas.