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I need your help with this sermon tonight. It will only make sense if you can use your imagination to make mental pictures, and if you will draw on your visual memories. Because I want to reflect with you on how we human beings, and we Christians, find meaning in what we read about, and what we see. For example, we read about the Boston Tea Party in 1774, when American colonists threw boxes of tea off ships in Boston harbor, an apparent act of vandalism. That event is only worth remembering, if we know the burden of taxation which they were protesting, AND if we know that that event led directly to our revolt against British rule. The true meaning depends on what came before, and after. Consider another example, on the cover of the bulletin tonight, where we see a sketch of shepherds looking up at angels. Do you have an immediate feeling about what is happening there? Does it seem that the shepherds are fearful, or joyful, or simply surprised? Now look lower on the page, at other people looking up as well, people who are not shepherds. Who do you think those people are? What are they feeling? Now I’d like you to use your visual memory, to recall some of the Christmas cards and drawings you’ve seen, of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child. Before we talk about Mary, I’d like you to think about the Mother and Baby image, and what it means. Often we see both parents, the father hovering protectively over both mother and child. Almost all of us have photos like that, of our own parents holding us, or of ourselves with a newborn son or daughter, or of our child, with a newborn grandchild. In the last month, we have had three babies born in this parish: thankfully all are healthy. When I look at the photos of these babies with their parents, the first thing I see, is the delight and hope that come with the safe delivery of the newest member of a family. The delight and hope are visible on the faces of the parents in the photo, and may also be felt by everyone who sees the photo. I have certainly felt it as I have looked at Baby Shannon, Baby Samuel, and Baby Shelby. That hope is based on an expectation that this child has a wonderful future, will inherit all the best qualities of his or her parents, and will become a talented and productive adult. We cannot help it: we do expect great things from our children. Such thoughts and feelings are always in the background, or in our subconscious, when we look at an image of the Virgin Mary holding Baby Jesus, with Joseph leaning over them. Of course, the early Christians did not have cameras, and were not wealthy enough to hire painters, so they had no pictures of the Virgin and Child. They had only one medium in which to describe, or really, to imagine, what the birth of Jesus was like: and that medium was words. Using words, they wanted both to tell what happened, and also to tell what it meant to them and to everyone. The challenge they faced, was to connect the few facts they had about the birth of Jesus, with the public facts that everyone knew about the life and death of Jesus. The public facts were that he had neither wife nor home, he befriended sinners, he had extraordinary healing power, he was crucified as a criminal, and then he rose from the dead. So how did they learn the few facts they had about the birth of Jesus? St. Luke tells us that after the shepherds left, Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. Since she was still alive 33 years later when Jesus was crucified, I think we can presume that Mary must then have told her memories to the apostles, who told them to St. Luke. But Mary would have told the story as she experienced it, and she wouldn’t have known the Scriptures the way St. Luke and St Matthew did. So those evangelists looked for words and images in Scripture which would explain the meaning of this momentous birth. Mary said it was a stable: was there anything in scripture about a stable? Mary said shepherds came, and there are many stories in Scripture about shepherds: which ones might explain their importance? Mary said the shepherds received a message from angels: what did that tell them? Each of these is like a black and white photo, which St. Luke has embellished with the color of carefully chosen images and allusions. Let me show them to you. The fact that Jesus was not born in a home, but in a stable, almost as a refugee, is an important pointer toward the ministry he will have with the poor and the outcast. It says, loud and clear, he is not above us, he is one of us. He had no special privileges at the beginning of his life. Beyond that, the specific mention by St. Luke, that the babe was laid in a manger, would have spoken volumes to all the Jews who heard it. For in the book of Isaiah, God announced through the prophet, that the people had no knowledge of God. It is chapter 1 verse 3: “The ox knows its owner, the donkey knows the manger of its lord; But Israel has not known me; my people have not understood me”. Now Jesus was born and laid in a manger, Jesus who did lead the people to know God, and mysteriously, is God incarnate, yet born among the animals, and laid to sleep on the straw. There could hardly be a better fulfillment of that prophecy; and there could hardly be a greater contrast between the poverty of the stable, and the majesty of the One who knows God, and is God. Now turn your mind’s eye to the second image, of the shepherds. Despite the fact that in first century Palestine, all shepherds were suspected of being dishonest, and unreliable, these particular shepherds were in the fields near Bethlehem, the city where King David was born, and where he began life as a shepherd. According to the prophet Micah, the Messiah would be a descendent of David, born in Bethlehem. Furthermore, most of the sheep pastured between Bethlehem and Jerusalem were destined to be sacrificed in the Temple, which for St. Luke would be an allusion to the self-offering of Jesus on the cross. So those particular shepherds, and their sheep, grazing on the Bethlehem hills, spoke volumes of meaning to St. Luke and to his readers. The final image is the angels who appeared to the shepherds. First St. Luke tells of the Angel of the Lord, which is a respectful way of saying, God’s prime minister, God’s personal representative. We know this because “the glory of the Lord shone around him”. Whenever in Scripture the “Glory” is mentioned, it is a way of saying, God is present. We hear about the Glory in the cloud over Mt Sinai, the Glory overshadowing the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and later the Glory surrounding Jesus at his Transfiguration. So those significant shepherds of Bethlehem, were suddenly surrounded by the Glory of the Lord, and given the good news of the birth of Messiah. Then came a whole choir of angels singing God’s praises. That choir of angels is an allusion to a much earlier choir of angels, who sang a hymn of praise after the 6 days of creation, according to first century Jewish literature. For the angelic choir to sing again, must mean a new creation has begun. So now I hope you have three pictures, three images in your minds, which expand the meaning of that manger in which Jesus lay, of those shepherds of Bethlehem, and of that angelic choir. Each of the images has associations which tell us something important about the birth of Jesus, and each one heightens the contrast between what is ordinary, and what is holy. We who call ourselves Christians, make the claim that the One Holy Living God, set aside his Glory to enter into ordinary human life as we know it. In some mysterious way, beyond our ability to express in words, God came to join us in the limitations of time and space, in human life and human death. No wonder St. Luke and St Matthew found as many references in Scripture as they could, to help them explain this extraordinary event. What is important for us to learn, is the pattern of God’s action. On rare occasions, God is present in His Glory, and there is no doubt in the minds of the witnesses that they have in some sense, met God. More frequently, God is present without his Glory, and the people involved must puzzle out the meaning of what they have experienced. There was no Glory in that stable in Bethlehem, not even when the Wise Men came with their gifts. There was no Glory surrounding the flight into Egypt. There was no Glory on Good Friday. This pattern means that we should not expect to see God’s Glory in this life. We should be alert and watchful for God’s presence at the times, and in the places where He promised to be: whenever love gives itself without counting the cost, wherever someone serves the needs of the poor and the sick, whenever those in prison are visited, and those who mourn are comforted, wherever people celebrating the last supper of Jesus, break bread in remembrance of Him. Yet even knowing the times when Christ promised to be present, the choice of God to become incarnate is finally something beyond our understanding. Because the pattern also includes something we dislike and resist in our own lives: letting go, and accepting less. We are always trying to gather our families to create a bigger Christmas or have a better vacation; we are always trying to rise higher in life, through more education and better jobs. When circumstances change, and we must let go of what we have created, we are devastated. None of this prepares us to understand the Holy Mystery of God, who chose an ultimate letting go: the descent from eternity into time, from power into the weakness of human infancy, not even born in a safe or clean place. Therefore, Let all mortal flesh keep silent,
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