Christmas Eve Message

The Christmas season can at times be marked by various quests for perfection

The perfect Christmas present

The perfect Christmas decorations

The perfect Christmas feast

The perfect Christmas eve service

When these quests are marked by a sincere desire to bring joy and love to all around us, we can affirm and celebrate this.  Indeed, I think most of us try to go out of our way to be a little nicer, a little more loving, during this Christmas season.

But there can be a dark side to this quest to get everything and everybody just so...

We can begin to feel inadequate.  

Begin to become obsessed with perfection, become harried, run all over town

We beat ourselves up

Begin to feel inadequate.

So, when we begin to think about the Christmas story, the idea that God came to earth to be with us, it can seem a little overwhelming, unbelievable even.

With all that is going on in the world, with all of my faults, could God really have sent his son into this world for me?  Surely, there are people far more important, far more influential, far more Christlike, whom God is coming to on this day.  

I think there is no one who would have protested more, no one who might have felt more inadequate, than the cast of characters we see in Luke’s nativity story.

Let’s take them one by one:

Mary

-  She was likely 13 or 14 years old.

-  She was engaged to a man she likely barely knows

-  All of a sudden, she finds herself pregnant.

-  Now, she is an unwed mother

“She must have been scared.  She was very humble, a poor little girl.”

Yes, she did have an angel come and explain it to her, but can you imagine what her life must have been like during those nine months?

Can you imagine the looks she might have received from the people in the community.  People doing math, trying to add up the months, seeing if whatever story Mary told really fit the situation.  I mean, how is she supposed to explain this.  

“Oh, no, I didn’t cheat on Joseph.  An angel came to me, made me pregnant even though I am a virgin, and said my son is the Messiah.....Wait, where are you going?  Why are you laughing”

So who knows how she explained herself.  Did she hide?  Did she have anyone who believed her?  Imagine the shame she must have felt in these months.  I doubt she would have felt like she was worth of God coming to her.

Joseph

Here he is, engaged to be married, only to find his fiance is pregnant.  Now Joseph certainly knows that the child isn’t his.  Here is how the scripture tells it:

“When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”

So, notice, Joseph finds out long before any angel comes to explain it.  Can you imagine the emotions he must have felt?  Rage.  Betrayal.  Humiliation.

When he discovered this, he could have had Mary stoned to death. It would have been perfectly legal, and within his rights.  In fact, that would have been considered to be the righteous thing to do.  But, Joseph is apparently a generous man, and so he just decides to divorce her instead.  However, before he can act, Joseph too receives a visit from an angel.  He is convinced he should stay with Mary, but again, can you imagine his life in the months to come?

Before the angel had a chance to visit, did Joseph tell anyone about his disgrace?  If people were doing the math about Mary, certainly they were doing the same with Joseph.  Do you think he might have been teased, his manhood questioned, by those who suspected he wasn’t the father?  How emasculating of an experience.  What shame he must have felt.  I doubt he would have felt like he was worthy of God coming to him.

Shepherds

At the bottom of the socio-economic world of first-century Palestine, the shepherds have no right, no expectation, no hope in the world of being touched by the divine.

“Shepherds were often despised as thieves unfit for more respectable occupations.  Their testimony was not allowed in court nor their presence in polite society, so shepherds found their place on the outskirts of towns.  They were largely shunned by the mainstream population.”

“They were alone, abandoned by everybody.”

As people who work with animals and outside of villages, you can imagine that they likely smelled quite ripe.  Even the peasants in the towns would have looked down upon them.  When they did have to go into the cities, can you imagine how they must have felt?  The people sneered at these country rubes.  People would cross the street to avoid interacting with, and especially smelling, these roughnecks who were the lowest of the low.  What shame they must have felt as they went about their lives.  I doubt they would have felt like they were worthy of God coming to them.

And yet, wonder upon wonders, it is to the unwed mother that Jesus is born.  It is to the humiliated fiance that God will entrust his son.  It is to those who are considered so unreliable that they can’t testify that God entrusts with his message to proclaim.

God coming to perfect people?  Heavens no.  I imagine that those who do think they are perfect, might be too caught up in themselves to even notice when God breaks into the world.  No, God breaks through into this world to bring light and life to all people.  And thus, we declare that “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

Right now, here and today, God is breaking into this world.  Christ is coming to bring light to whatever dark places there are in your life.  Jesus is here to be with you, exactly how you are.  If you feel like God is distant, if you feel like it is hard to sense the divine, if you feel like you are lost or are ashamed to be found, know that God is seeking you out, waiting to break forth into your life.  Like Mary, and Joseph, and the shepherds before you, God is seeking to bring you in to his divine work.  Through you, on this day, and in the weeks and months to come, Jesus is seeking to become flesh and to live amongst us.  If we allow ourselves to go through the pangs of birthing new life, we will see his glory, the glory of a father’s only son.  And our lives, and our world, will be filled with grace and truth.