December 24, 2012 | 6:00 p.m. | Christmas Eve Family Service

A Sermon on Christmas Eve

Joyce Shin
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Luke 2:1–20

Welcome and merry Christmas. Some of you may have traveled to be here with family and friends. You may be a little weary from the rush of getting to the airport so that you could stand in lines to get through security checkpoints. Traveling at this very busy time of year may put you in a mindset that can relate more easily to Mary and Joseph making their journey at a time when it seemed that everyone else was traveling too.

Bethlehem was crowded—so crowded that all the inns were occupied, because the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus had issued a decree that the whole world be registered. It was time for a census. Required by law to register himself and Mary in the town of his birth, Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem.

A census is a big undertaking, and a census almost always raises controversial issues. In the days of Caesar Augustus, the census was one of the controversies that sparked a revolt by religious zealots. Today, the accuracy and uses of a census are always questioned as are the categories by which people are classified. Growing up in my parents’ home, however, I remember an excitement that accompanied the task of completing the census form. I was a little girl when in 1980 we received the form in the mail. Registering ourselves as Asian, I remember feeling uneasy and thoughtful at the same time, wondering what this was all about and feeling comforted by my father’s optimism that being counted in the census meant that we were going to count for something more in the future.

The census decreed by the Roman emperor, however, had more sinister implications, and the people were aware of this. Its purpose was not merely to count and catalog people in order to discern population trends. By taking inventory in every region, a ruler had in better grasp the military and financial service of a people. Therefore, a census in those days heralded deeper poverty for and exploitation of the poor. It is not surprising that even in the Hebrew Bible there is an awareness of the dangers of a census. With so much at stake, it was understandable that the poor feared the census.

It is ironic that Jesus was born at a time when a census had been decreed. Like his parents and like everyone else, Jesus was to be counted and catalogued. As far as the empire was concerned, Jesus was to be registered and recorded as a data point. From the perspective of the empire and those in power, the person of Jesus would not have been noteworthy or distinguishable in any way.

Even his birth, as Luke tells it, would not have attracted notice. The story of Jesus’ birth is a very simple, understated account. Where are the three wise men who pay homage to the infant Jesus? Where is the star in the night sky? Where are the treasure chests of gold, frankincense, and myrrh? You don’t find them in Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth. They are conspicuously absent, as though Luke wanted to strip the manger scene of any decoration, any glitter, any royalty. Luke tells us very simply that when the time came for Mary to deliver her child, “she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” So inconspicuous was Jesus’ birth, according to Luke, that you almost start to worry that the world may not learn of it.

This past week, retired Fourth Church organist Morgan Simmons sent me the link to a YouTube video in which children of St. Paul’s Church in Auckland, New Zealand, dramatized the Christmas story. It was entitled “An Unexpected Christmas.” This short video begins with God in heaven looking down at earth, saddened by what he sees. The child playing the role of God says, “It’s hard to be friends with people when you don’t like what they are doing.” So he decides he must send someone to be with them. Some of his angels, excited by the idea, say to God, “Yes, let’s send an army.” God says, “No, I’m thinking of sending just one person.” Imagining that person, the angels say, “A strong, powerful person.” “No,” God says, “no need to be strong. I’m thinking of sending a newborn baby.” Shocked, the angels can’t believe what they hear. Stepping forth, a reasonable angel says, “A baby is small and will need to be protected. We would have to depend on human beings to care for the babe. This would be a risky plan. Perhaps we should send the baby to a great ruler or a king.” “No,” God says, “I’m thinking of sending the baby to be born to a humble peasant girl.” The reasonable angel probes, “My Lord, I see you’re planning to take earth by surprise. But what good would a baby born to a peasant girl do for the world?” God says, “This won’t be just any baby; I’m thinking of sending the Prince of heaven.” The host of angels gasp, “Your son?” Another angel speaks up: “To send your son as a baby to be born in a peasant’s cottage just doesn’t seem right. He should be born in a ….” And just as he says, “palace,” God says, “You’re right, he’ll be born in a stable.” As the plan sinks in, the reasonable angel asks, “How will the world know he is there? What if they don’t notice?”

This is the question that seems to have concerned Luke. Luke, so committed on the one hand to stripping down the story of Jesus’ birth to a bare, humble, lowly scene, and on the other hand to making universal the gospel of Jesus Christ, did not see the two commitments as contradictory. In Luke’s theology, the two commitments were inherently connected. What seems to have amazed and inspired Luke was the power of the gospel, by virtue of its solidarity with the poor, the lowly, the most disenfranchised in society, to spread by word of mouth to the ends of the earth.

So we find in Luke’s account a story of Jesus’ birth so simple and modest accompanied by a story of the shepherds encountering angels so grand and sublime. To shepherds who were living in remote regions of the empire, who didn’t even count themselves as census-worthy, a host of angels, surrounded by the glory of the Lord, appears. Unable to act as though nothing had happened, the shepherds go to Bethlehem in search of the baby about whom the angels spoke and sang. When they find baby Jesus just as the angel had described him, the shepherds tell Mary and Joseph and everyone they encounter on the way all that the angels had proclaimed about him.

For Luke it seems that putting together the glorious heavenly proclamation about Jesus with the humble reality of Jesus’ birth was important. It is important to Luke to make sense of how a lowly, inconspicuous birth hidden from the world’s view can be proclaimed as news that has universal reach and import. Luke wants us to struggle to make sense of this. He wants us to be like Mary, who, hearing the words of the shepherds, treasured and pondered them in her heart.

More than the other Gospel writers, Luke imagines Mary’s perspective. More than once, Luke speaks of Mary as treasuring and pondering what she hears and observes about her son. It is as though Mary, over the course of her son’s life, remains open to who Jesus is—not just in relation to her, but in relation to the whole world, to heaven and to earth.

There is a song, the lyrics of which I would like to share with you. It is a song that expresses the perspective of Mary more poignantly than I have come across elsewhere, and it is composed by a friend with whom I went to divinity school. His name is Justin Roberts, who happens also to be a Grammy-nominated songwriter and singer. Before I became acquainted with his children’s songs, for which he is now well known, I heard him sing a song he composed and wrote called “Bethlehem.” Rather than singing it for you, I’ll read you some of the lyrics.

In a worn-out stable in Bethlehem
the mother touches his golden brown skin
and talks about the way things might have been.
. . .
She says, “You are my oven-baked apple pie
and you are the light of my life.”
“Was hoping you might find a girl,
someone to show you this oyster’s lined with pearls,
but no, you gotta go out and save the world.
I know soon you must go away.
You got a lot of work to do and only a couple of days;
there’ll be no time for your mother anyway.
But when heavens fall and the earth starts to decay
I’ll always love you more than they can say.
For nine months you were a part of me.
Soon you’ll be the toast of humanity,
and I hope to my soul you won’t forget about me.
I love you so much you know I’d die
just to keep you in my arms and hold you tight,
but the greatest love is self-sacrifice.
. . .
So go out and make angels out of mice,
but an occasional letter would be nice.”

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary is the person who cherishes and ponders the things about which Luke himself was deeply concerned. Who is this for whom the angels sing? Who is this in whom heaven and earth meet? Not by registering and recording, not by counting and cataloging, can Jesus be identified. At a time when the empire was wielding its wealth, power, and prestige to gain universal reach, Luke and others like him were trying to make sense of an entirely different logic: that a savior born for all people would be poor, powerless, and even inconspicuous and that people all over the earth would learn of him not by decree or royal announcements but by word of mouth that travels because it is good news. “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, the Messiah, the Lord.” Take these words, treasure them, and ponder them in your heart. Amen.