Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Happens

Every year as Christmas comes around I’m reminded of a story I once read in a preaching journal early in my ministry. On the surface it had nothing to do with Christmas.  It was about the author’s experience of witnessing the launching of the space shuttle.  He was in Florida, and it was hot, and it was crowded.  The shuttle program was still new enough to be a novelty and so people had flocked to the grounds.  Well before the launch, the fields were quickly overwhelmed with people staking their claims and vying for position.  The scene was tense, with people stepping over one another or on top of others’ blankets (and who doesn’t hate that?).  As they waited they grew impatient.  Tempers flared upon occasion, but at the very least they were constantly on edge.

But then, everything changed.  There was the countdown, and the roaring of rockets, and the rumbling and quaking of the earth around them, and the miraculous lifting off of this remarkable spaceship.  As it rose higher and higher the noises and the power of this shocking moment receded as well until in complete silence the shuttle vanished beyond sight into the vast creation beyond our atmosphere.

No one said a word, the author noted.  Time stopped.  Mouths were agape and eyes stared up at the heavens as wonder, the overwhelming sense of wonder, had overcome them all.  Slowly, time returned.  People looked around at one another as they emerged from their arrested state.  They smiled.  They helped one another up.  They were kind to one another.  They were courteous.  Everything in that crowded field changed because of the wonder that had come upon the people.

In that sense, it is very much a Christmas story.  Wonder, amazement, awe, these are Christmas themes.  Nothing ties us to the inexplicable beauty, and grandeur, and intimacy of God like wonder.  Nothing humbles us, softens our hearts, ties our souls to their sacred source like wonder!

“How can this be?” Mary asks in wonder as the angel tells her the news of God’s child within her.  With the shepherds too there is wonder.  With the witnesses there is wonder.  With the wise men there is wonder.  If in our Christmas Eve worship we can restore (or at least invite) a bit of wonder to our hectic and harried lives, then I believe we will have done a most important thing.

I was reading through a stack of picture books a week or so ago, as I thought about what I might share with the children.  I came across one, I think it was called, This is Christmas, that had the most remarkable depiction of this evening’s reading.  The shepherds were out in the fields keeping watch  over their flocks by night when an angel of the Lord appeared among them.  The first words out of the angel’s mouth, of course, were, “Do not be afraid.”  We hear the angel say this every year, and every year I imagine that fear doesn’t seem like a major concern to us.  Maybe it is because we know how the rest of the story goes.  Or, maybe it is because angels have become just a bit sentimentalized in common culture, seeming to us like pretty, feathery symbols of serenity.  But, This is Christmas, painted quite a different picture.  Compared to the angel the shepherds were small little things standing on a hill with nowhere to hide.  The angel was a glorious bright white that turned the darkness of night into nothing more than a flimsy frame.   She could have wrapped the whole scene – the hill, the darkness, and those little shepherds – in her wings without the slightest sense of burden.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel says, but with this view of the moment it struck me that they had every reason to be just that.  Something of the really Real, the sacred beauty of God’s perspective tore through the veil of darkness and revealed humanity’s smallness.  Even though I was sitting on a comfy couch reading a children’s picture book, I had a moment of fear myself.  Here we are again telling a cherished and familiar story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of a baby when meanwhile the truth of the matter is that God the Almighty, the everlasting Lord of all time and space, is born into our very midst.

It is no small thing that is happening, and it’s no mere coincidence that just about every time the angels of God show up the first words from their mouths are, “Do not be afraid.”  One of my commentaries writes, “The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but God’s goodness encourages us not to be afraid of Him.  To fear and not be afraid – that is the paradox of faith.”[1]

There was a little child, perhaps about 2 years old, whose parents were taking him across the country to their new home.  The trip required later hours than the child was used to, which exposed him to night skies that he had never before seen.  On one particularly clear night the child’s parents pulled to the side of the road and took the child out of the car because the stars were too bright and numerous not to take in.  His eyes opened wide as his mother held him and he said, “Wow!  Whobody hanged ‘em up there?”

Whobody did that?  It is exactly the right question.  It is the same question that surfaces from within us every time we come face to face with wonder.  The remarkable thing about Christmas is that the answer to the whobody question, that answer that we hold and proclaim but cannot fully comprehend, lies in a manger and spends his first night surrounded by animals and greeted by shepherds.  This infant child is the “Good News” from heaven; he is the “Good News of great joy” for all the people.  He is the “Word of God” who was “with God” and “was God,” in the beginning.  The hopes and fears of all the years are met in this child tonight.

It makes no sense, of course.  He’s just a baby, a little, vulnerable, utterly dependent, powerless child.  But, “powerless,” I say only in certain ways.  Because, on the other hand, can you name a force more powerful in softening our hearts, in redirecting our energies, in calling forth our most tender of loves, than an infant child.

“Peace on earth and good will toward all!”  These too are Christmas words, words we hear each Christmas season.  But, my friends, if that peace is to happen, if those words are to be true, they must be true first for us and within us.  We cannot make peace beyond us without first seeking peace within us.  Christmas happens, Incarnation, holy birth, happens where there is room within us for wonder, when we are ready and open for our souls to be touched, when making room for that infant child, when holding him becomes our deepest joy.  May God ready us for just that, this night and alw

[1] FOTW, Year C Volume 1, page 96.