Christmas 2001
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Christmas I “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Everybody has a birth narrative. Every parent tells a birth narrative. My wife and I often recount our children’s birth narrative to them on their birthdays. For example, on our son’s birthday we’ll say, “George, on this day five years ago, we were still waiting in the hospital for you to be born, where we’d already been waiting for fifteen hours,” Or on Suzette’s birthday, we’ll say, “Suzette, you arrived exactly on your due date, between breakfast and lunch, with no complications at all.” I’ll wager most of us parents can recall in even more detail the events surrounding the births of our children: who was there, who visited, who was helpful, and who just couldn’t take a hint that it was past visiting hours. Was there difficulty nursing? Was it raining or cold? Had we made other plans for that day? Perhaps most importantly, was the anesthesiologist prompt and effective. All these things forever echo in the hearts of parents, and let’s be honest, not all these echoes are easy to ponder for all parents. Yet they are there, our stories of beginnings, our families’ birth narratives. And so, as we are gathered here tonight, we appropriately hear the birth narrative of our Lord Jesus Christ. I feel I should point out that St. Luke has apparently left out a lot of what Mary might have had to say about the birth of her son. Not being told how long she was in labor or who attended to her or how competent that person was is not insignificant. It has lead to the idealization of the event itself. “Since no mention is made of anything else,” we think, “it must have been an ideal delivery: painless, quick, and easy.” While this perception of the birth of Jesus is common and even celebrated in many a Christmas Carol, it is a misunderstanding of the text. Here in Luke’s gospel, the absence of detail implies not “ideal”, but rather “normal under the circumstances.” Thus we can with certainty say that Mary’s delivery of Jesus was rather painful, it was exhausting, it took some time, and like all deliveries prior to the advent of modern medicine, it was a close encounter with death for both mother and child. These are the details upon which Luke does not elaborate. Perhaps Luke overlooks this dimension of the birth narrative because he was a man and was simply unaware of all that goes into giving birth. Or perhaps he thought that women the world over could fill in his narrative gaps, and understand all that went on by his simply writing, “And she gave birth to her firstborn son…” However, what Luke gives plenty of space to are not the details that affirm that this was a birth like most births. Luke underscores the details that set this birth apart as uniquely significant in the history not only of humankind but of all creation. What Luke wants to emphasize is that the birth of Jesus was the birth of the Christ. Thus he mentions that, like David, the greatest of the Kings of Israel, Jesus, his descendent and heir, was not born in a palace, but in the country, in a rustic setting. And his birth was not hailed by noblemen and courtiers, but by shepherds prompted by the heavenly hosts. Luke thereby illustrates that Jesus’ birth, while it was as ordinary as a birth can be, fulfilled both the word of the prophets and heavenly revelation alike and was unmistakably a the birth of the Messiah. Unencumbered by the details that most of us communicate in a birth narrative, the story we hear tonight is one that all of us can claim as our own. Because what Luke describes is not simply the birth of a child, it is even more than the birth of the Messiah, it is the story of the birth all who follow him. It is the birth narrative of the Body of Christ, the gathered Church, in the midst of which you are seated right now. You see, the Church and every Christian is born in the midst of pain and suffering, as the result of a special interaction of the divine and the human. The Church and every Christian reveals God especially to the humble and lowly and brings God and man together in amazing ways. Christmas comes once a year, but Christ is born every day and always through the ministry of the Church, and the lives of all Christians who proclaim the Gospel in their living. Tonight we celebrate our common yet extraordinary birth narrative. Without that story and the event it describes, we could not have come to birth as Christians, so we do well to worship on this night. Yet that story and the event it describes also beckon us to participate in it, to reveal God and proclaim good news throughout the narrative of our lives, to become part of the narrative of the Body of Christ that will conclude only when the lowly behold him in person again. Amen. |
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