First Reading Isaiah 9:2–7
2The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. 3You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. 4For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. 5For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. 6For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Psalm Psalm 96
1Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. 2Sing to the LORD, bless the name of the LORD; proclaim God’s salvation from day to day. 3Declare God’s glory among the nations and God’s wonders among all peoples. 4For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised, more to be feared than all gods. 5As for all the gods of the nations, they are but idols; but you, O LORD, have made the heavens. 6Majesty and magnificence are in your presence; power and splendor are in your sanctuary. 7Ascribe to the LORD, you families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD honorand power. 8Ascribe to the LORD the honor due the holy name; bring offerings and enter the courts of the LORD. 9Worship the LORD in the beau| ty of holiness; tremble before the LORD, all the earth. 10Tell it out among the nations: “The LORD is king! The one who made the world so firm that it cannot be moved will judge the peoples with equity.” 11Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea thunder and all that is in it; let the field be joyful and all that is therein. 12Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy at your coming, O LORD, for you come to judge the earth. 13You will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with your truth.
Second Reading Titus 2:11–14
11For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
Gospel Luke 2:1–20
1In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.8And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. 10And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 14“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” 15When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
THE WRONG GIFT
What did you get for Christmas? It’s a question that gets asked each year because it’s part and parcel of our experience during the Christmas season. And while Christmas gift-giving may have originated in Christian communities seeking to celebrate God’s gift to us, it’s now part of a culture that demands we spend and purchase because it’s these expenditures that drive the economy into the black during the 4th quarter of the year. In so many ways, we’re made to feel obligated to give gifts.
When you stop and think about it, advertising, in the form of TV and radio ads, popups on social media, emails and even cultural pressure itself, has cajoled us into giving. We’re driven by social pressure to give or send the “right” gift for each person on our list. We stress ourselves out each year asking, can we do it? Did we do it? Is this the year we finally it right? Well, according to statistics, we have a 50-50 shot at getting it right. Tomorrow half of those who received gifts will want to take them back to exchange them or get refunds so that they can buy what they really wanted. Yesterday we were convinced we bought the perfect gifts. Tomorrow half will be wrong.
However, we shouldn’t feel bad, we’re in good company. You might say that God got it wrong, too, that first Christmas. That’s essentially what we read at first glance in our gospel lesson for this evening. We’ve become so familiar with the words in Luke’s report that we often skim past the meaning. When we put Jesus’ birth back into its historical context, it would appear that God gave the wrong gift to the wrong people wrapped in the wrong package! Let me explain.
First, take note of how Luke ties the events of Jesus’ life directly to circumstances in the greater Roman world. He reports that Jesus’ birth occurred during the reign of Caesar Augustus and when Quirinius was the governor (Luke 2:1-2). Later, Luke tells us that the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry took place in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar’s rule (Luke 3:1). The connection with Caesar Augustus is particularly striking, since Augustus was the ruler who brought about the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. For fourteen years prior to Jesus’ birth, the doors of the temple of Janus in Rome had been closed. During the decades prior, the doors stood open, as they always did when there were battles being fought and the Legions were in the fields to the north and the east. But Caesar Augustus had brilliantly subdued the world and peace was his gift to an empire that embraced all. So, no new peace was needed.
In fact, no one was looking for a new ruler. Caesar was a “demi-god” and the world rejoiced in his benevolence. And yet there was that nagging fear at the edge of the collective social conscience, that even Caesar’s marvelous peace could never last. Now the angels sing that God is bringing “peace” to earth through this gift of Jesus on Christmas morning. To our minds this simply doesn’t make sense in the middle of the Pax Romana; and it shouldn’t. Yet it does. Because we know that in a few short years the great Roman Empire would begin to fray and disintegrate, and only the kingdom of God would survive its collapse. From a purely intellectual cultural first century standpoint, it seemed like the wrong gift. But time will reveal a different story.
Looking from the ancient culture’s viewpoint, God’s gift was not only the wrong gift, it was also announced to the wrong people. Luke makes it evident, particularly through the song of the angels to the shepherds, that even in those times of relative calm, the greater gift of divine peace was needed by humankind and could only be brought through Jesus. So, who were these shepherds to whom the angles sang?
Today we picture our children in bathrobes portraying the shepherds in the Christmas program. And through nostalgic eyes, we see little boy David on the hillsides of ancient Judah. But in the days of Jesus’ birth, shepherds had become the outsiders of society. They were considered ritually impure, socially inept, thieves and robbers, and perpetual liars. They weren’t allowed in the synagogues or in the Temple in Jerusalem. Rabbis railed against them, forbidding people to ever to do business with them, let alone enter their despised trade. You see, shepherds paid no attention to property lines when herding their flocks, they spoiled backyards and swiped things that weren’t locked down. No shepherd was allowed to testify in court, for it was widely known that they were all liars and couldn’t tell a truth if it whacked them in the face.
So, if God was going to do something nice for the human race, the least He could do is bring a gift to the people who deserved it. Yet here, the familiar nativity story takes us to where we truly don’t want to be. When we find out about the shepherds, we stay away from them, like the lost and the last and the least in all our societies. How could God do such a thing? First God gives a gift at a time that’s perceived as unnecessary, and then God sends it to the wrong address, as if those who received it would know what to do with it! To say the least, it seems very odd of God! But this perceived wrongness doesn’t end there.
The wrong gift to the wrong people, wrapped up in the wrong package. As George MacDonald put it in one of his poems: They all were looking for a king, To slay their foes and lift them high; Thou cam’st a little Baby thing, That made a mother cry. (“They All Were Looking for a King” George MacDonald, 1883). If we get a gift from God, certainly it ought to be something we can use, like power, wealth, recognition, possibly healing. You know, the things we need. Yet, all we seem to have gotten is a baby! A helpless baby! It doesn’t make sense! It’s at this point that we need to take another look at what’s going on here.
Although the New Testament gospels are among the most widely recognized and read literary documents in the world, it remains difficult to explain their exact genre. They have no parallel in any other religious or literary tradition. Certainly, the gospels are not mere biographies. They don’t offer enough data about the life of Jesus to construct a full story of His life, nor do they offer a well-developed social portrait of His presence among His contemporaries. Nor is it true that the gospels are a complete and systematic summary of Jesus’ teachings. What has been preserved as the record of Jesus’ sayings and speeches seems to be haphazardly gathered to form a codified collection that would neatly explain His wisdom or theology. It seems to me that the most fitting designation for the gospels is a “proclamation.”
These documents are records of early Christian preaching about Jesus, describing the significance of His coming, the meaning of His person, the content of His teachings, the impact of His actions, the character of His death, and the miracle of His resurrection. And that’s exactly what Luke tells us at the start of his gospel. Jesus is the center of history, according to the Bible.
The very term “gospel” means “good news.” In a world plagued with bad news, Jesus’ coming and presence, reminds us that God wants to show His love for us, that He cares about us, and wants to help us understand the ethics and morality of the kingdom of God that protects and affirms us. That’s why the preaching of the church is always about Jesus. And it begins with the gospels. Luke starts his record with a quick personal note to Theophilus, who is a friend and recent convert to Christianity.
Theophilus may have been a highly placed government leader, since Luke calls him “most excellent.” More interesting, though, is the man’s name. “Theophilus” means “friend of God.” Whether this was the name given to him by his parents or a nickname he claimed when he became a Christian, it’s a marvelous title for all who read about Jesus and call Him Savior and Lord. Furthermore, as Luke notes, becoming a Christian is always a kind of homecoming.
The gift God announced to the shepherds is designed to bring them home. “For unto you is born this day, in the city of David…” You see, we’re all displaced people, whether in little or great ways. The gospel story reminds us that God came into our world in the person of Jesus Christ to find us and bring us home to God’s love, His grace and eternity itself. When we actually begin to digest the message of the gospels, they point us to home.
Christopher Fry put it this way in one of his plays, The Lady’s not for Burning: Margaret and Nicholas are talking about a woman who seems to be acting strangely. Margaret says, “She must be lost.” Nicholas responds, wistfully, “Who isn’t? The best thing we can do is to make whatever we’re lost in, look as much like home as we can.” Nicholas is right. All of us are lost and we try to make where we are home. That’s what we do with our lives, isn’t it?
We have so many goals and dreams and hopes in life, yet so few of them pan out. We get old before we’ve done half of what we wanted. Somehow, we never become what we thought we might. We make some mistakes along the way. We disappoint some people, and we get disappointed. Even our best times have an edge of bitterness attached to them — when they end, we walk away nursing our nostalgia. We’re always a little bit away from home — from the home we remember or the home we desire; from the dream we miss or the dream we’re still looking for. That’s what Nicholas is saying to Margaret in Christopher Fry’s play. We’re all a bit lost in this life. We’re all a bit away from home. The best we can do, is make what we have, look as much as possible like what we think “home” should be, until we can finally see our true home, our eternal home, and like St. Luke, bring our friends along with us.
No matter where we go, no matter what we do, there must live in each of us a touch of that homesickness, or we die a horrible death. Our trips “home” are merely a pale imitation of the place we belong and merely a wayside rest stop on a restless journey to the real home of God’s love and God’s eternity. More than we know, that’s where we all truly want to go. Only in finding Jesus and the coming of God’s kingdom will our desires find fulfillment and our longings be satisfied. Only then will our homesickness end.
That’s why this “wrong” gift of God keeps giving each year. Perhaps it’s not the gift that’s “wrong,” at all, but we, the ones who beg and borrow and steal, who really don’t know what we need. I’m sure that was the case for Mary and Joseph as they wrestled with these things, “pondering them,” as Luke puts it.
There is an interesting, albeit limited, parallel that can be drawn between Caesar Augustus and Christ himself. All who saw what Caesar looked like never expected him to gain an exalted position in society. Here’s how those who knew him described him: He is quite short; he has such sensitive skin that he dares not be out in the sun too long — and never without his head covered; he walks with a limp; his right hand fails him from time to time, so he rarely uses it; bladder stones cause him daily pain; he doesn’t sleep well; he catches cold easily; and horseback riding tires him, so he’s often carried to the battlefield on a litter.
Can you imagine a man bearing that description becoming the great Caesar Augustus? Yet he did. Part of his secret lies in an event that occurred when he was a young boy. One day he visited the well-known astrologer and fortune-teller Theogenes. When Theogenes read the boy’s horoscope, he was so impressed with its prophecy that he fell on his face and worshiped him. You and I may dismiss astrology, but Cesar Augustus didn’t. All throughout the struggles of his life, he lived as if this prophecy were true, and eventually it became true.
How much more significant is this prophecy for Christ and for us? Jesus certainly knew the meaning that God’s long history of salvation placed squarely on His shoulders. But those of us who become the ongoing incarnation of Christ in this world share His identity as well, and need to become again and again what we’re meant to be: the servants of God for the redemptive transformation of God’s world. So, was it really the wrong gift, for the wrong people, in the wrong packaging? Some certainly saw it that way, but I don’t! Jesus is indeed God’s perfect gift, given at the perfect time, to redeem all who would come and adore Him.
Amen. Some ce
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