Note: This sermon was originally delivered on the Second Sunday in Christmas on January 2, 2022 and references the following texts: Jeremiah 31:7-14, Matthew 2:1-12
Merry Christmas! I know, I know, the world outside the church has moved on… but we still have several more days of Merriment ahead of us, and I for one am happy to have all the Christmas I can get right now. So I say again: Merry Christmas! This week I was watching a video where four friends were making arguments to one another for why a given Christmas movie was, obviously, the best Christmas movie of all time. I’ll confess here that I am not a fan of Christmas movies in general. But I was interested to hear how these four friends, who run a YouTube channel that discusses history and literary or media analysis, would discuss the genre. True to form, they developed a scoring system by which the three “judges” would assess if the film the presenter was discussing was a “good” Christmas movie. They judged on three criteria: “Is the movie fun?” “Is the movie festive?” and “Does the movie impart the true meaning of Christmas?” The question which seemed most nebulous to them was the last one, and each person seemed to have a slightly different interpretation of how to describe the meaning of Christmas.
Now, I am not one of those people who harp on about how “Jesus is the reason for the season,” or “Keeping the Christ in Christmas…” Part of this is because I find that these slogans are trite and frankly come across as scolding. I don’t know anybody who has been scolded into a deeper Spiritual life, and I know many people who have been scolded away from Jesus. Plus, I don’t know what the point of these War on Christmas slogans is other than to assert Christian superiority over the holiday… which, from what I can tell from discussions with friends who are not Christian, has never been in doubt. They know we celebrate this holy season to commemorate the birth of Jesus. There’s no disagreement about that. What they don’t understand, and what even we can lose in the midst of all our cultural practices around the season, is what the birth of Jesus means. Just like those four friends trying to assess the True Meaning of Christmas, we too tend to have something of a varied and nebulous interpretation.
The one common thread that the presenters were able to draw out to determine if a movie imparted the true meaning of Christmas was this notion of togetherness or coming together. And actually, I think they’re on the right track there. Even if they can’t point to the birth of Jesus as the reason for that meaning, these folks who do not profess a Christian faith get it. Where we lose the plot, both as Christians trying to communicate the Good News to a weary world, and as a wider society, is how all of this fits together and why Jesus’s birthday is cause for such joy.
An ongoing narrative of the Bible is God looking upon the human condition and seeing us struggling to live up to the potential God creates us with. Dr. Scott Bader-Saye, the academic dean at Seminary of the Southwest, describes this potential as “being human in a godly way.” Over and over, across the whole Bible, God sees us struggling in a state of dissolution and brokenness, unable to live into our potential, and offers us the means to be restored, to turn towards this potential, to be whole, to come together. When we read the words of the prophet Jeremiah say:
“With weeping they shall come,
and with consolations I will lead them back,
I will let them walk by brooks of water,
in a straight path in which they shall not stumble;”
God is speaking to the People of Israel as they were in captivity in Babylon. You see, the Babylonians had a really effective political strategy that allowed them to conquer vast swaths of the Near East. When they came into the territory of a different people, they would take all the political and cultural leaders and move them to the city of Babylon. Inevitably, they would begin to mix culturally with the folks already there, because that’s just what humans do, and in the meantime, the people remaining in the land wouldn’t have their leaders and would either fall into absolute chaos or would clamor for favor with their occupiers. Again, this is just what humans do. Every empire has enacted some version of this technique: divide and conquer. The Romans did it all over the Mediterranean. The Han Dynasty did it in China. The Mexica did it in Mesoamerica. The English did it literally all over the world. We did it in Latin America and Vietnam and Korea and the Middle East.
So here the People of Israel are, in captivity, a broken and traumatized people, and God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah and tells them that this is not the end of the story. Their pain, their suffering, their heartache, is not the final outcome God has in mind for them. The prophet says:
“Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
and the young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their mourning into joy,
I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.”
And eventually, Babylon falls. The Persians conquer them under King Cyrus the Great. The Persians, while still an Imperial power, had a gentler style of governance, so the People of Israel were restored to their land and able to more or less govern themselves how they saw fit as long as they paid their taxes to the Persians. So they went back to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple and carried on from there. But then come the Greeks. And then the Romans. The Romans in particular were brutal colonizers. Their economy and their state relied upon extracting as much wealth as possible from their colonies, both to enrich the wealthy and to ensure just enough stability for the common people in the capital and the soldiers to keep things humming along. So while the People of Israel had ways of managing their own lands and communities which ensured their flourishing, when the Romans came in, their interest wasn’t in maintaining those systems, but in breaking them apart so they could carry as much as possible back to Rome. Again, God looked upon humanity, suffering and broken, and offered them wholeness and hope. But this time, God would offer it through Godself.
Through the birth of Jesus, God entered literally into the flesh of our humanity, to be us. Birth is messy. It’s bloody. It’s loud. It’s painful. And God, the Creator of all things, came into the world through the messy, bloody, loud, and painful way that all of us come into the world. God teethed and learned to walk and stubbed his toes and felt all our feelings. All to be closer to us. All to help us to be human in a godly way. All to bring us back together.
That may give us the warm fuzzies, and it ought to, but we must also remember that there are many powers in this world that benefit from brokenness and dissolution. This is why Herod is so threatened by the rumors of Jesus’s birth. Herod, as the puppet king of the Roman Empire, benefits from maintaining the system as it is. The birth of a messiah means tearing asunder that worldly system that has, indeed, made him and his own so very comfortable. The Good News of Jesus Christ– that we are all able to be whole and indeed are made whole through love of God and of one another– is inherently threatening to all powers of the world which benefit from hardening our hearts against one another and separating us from our communities.
Taking time away from our work to remind ourselves that God dwells with us and our communities is powerful. Taking time to know and love our neighbors is powerful. The meaning of Christmas– the meaning of God being with and among us, is far more powerful when we live it out and allow it to transform us– than any power in this world. Loving and caring for our neighbors is more powerful than political forces that pit us against one another. It’s more powerful than a plague. It’s more powerful than the darkest winter or the deepest sorrows. Herod knew that. So he tried to nip it in the bud. But he couldn’t. And we must not allow the powers that be in this world that are so committed to sowing dissent between us and our neighbors to do so.
I’m not saying any of this is easy. The Gospel writers are light on the details of Mary’s delivery, but we know that nobody enters this world, not even God, without pain and struggle. And God does not come to dwell in us now without pain and struggle. We are not transformed easily. We have to work at it. We have to labor. But the joy of Christmas– the hope of that beautiful, messy, painful, birth of God into humanity, is that we never have to do it alone. God is with us. God is one of us. God is bringing us together. No matter what the powers of this world have to say about it.
So I say again: Merry Christmas! May we all come to know the joy of God dwelling with us.
Now, I am not one of those people who harp on about how “Jesus is the reason for the season,” or “Keeping the Christ in Christmas…” Part of this is because I find that these slogans are trite and frankly come across as scolding. I don’t know anybody who has been scolded into a deeper Spiritual life, and I know many people who have been scolded away from Jesus. Plus, I don’t know what the point of these War on Christmas slogans is other than to assert Christian superiority over the holiday… which, from what I can tell from discussions with friends who are not Christian, has never been in doubt. They know we celebrate this holy season to commemorate the birth of Jesus. There’s no disagreement about that. What they don’t understand, and what even we can lose in the midst of all our cultural practices around the season, is what the birth of Jesus means. Just like those four friends trying to assess the True Meaning of Christmas, we too tend to have something of a varied and nebulous interpretation.
The one common thread that the presenters were able to draw out to determine if a movie imparted the true meaning of Christmas was this notion of togetherness or coming together. And actually, I think they’re on the right track there. Even if they can’t point to the birth of Jesus as the reason for that meaning, these folks who do not profess a Christian faith get it. Where we lose the plot, both as Christians trying to communicate the Good News to a weary world, and as a wider society, is how all of this fits together and why Jesus’s birthday is cause for such joy.
An ongoing narrative of the Bible is God looking upon the human condition and seeing us struggling to live up to the potential God creates us with. Dr. Scott Bader-Saye, the academic dean at Seminary of the Southwest, describes this potential as “being human in a godly way.” Over and over, across the whole Bible, God sees us struggling in a state of dissolution and brokenness, unable to live into our potential, and offers us the means to be restored, to turn towards this potential, to be whole, to come together. When we read the words of the prophet Jeremiah say:
“With weeping they shall come,
and with consolations I will lead them back,
I will let them walk by brooks of water,
in a straight path in which they shall not stumble;”
God is speaking to the People of Israel as they were in captivity in Babylon. You see, the Babylonians had a really effective political strategy that allowed them to conquer vast swaths of the Near East. When they came into the territory of a different people, they would take all the political and cultural leaders and move them to the city of Babylon. Inevitably, they would begin to mix culturally with the folks already there, because that’s just what humans do, and in the meantime, the people remaining in the land wouldn’t have their leaders and would either fall into absolute chaos or would clamor for favor with their occupiers. Again, this is just what humans do. Every empire has enacted some version of this technique: divide and conquer. The Romans did it all over the Mediterranean. The Han Dynasty did it in China. The Mexica did it in Mesoamerica. The English did it literally all over the world. We did it in Latin America and Vietnam and Korea and the Middle East.
So here the People of Israel are, in captivity, a broken and traumatized people, and God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah and tells them that this is not the end of the story. Their pain, their suffering, their heartache, is not the final outcome God has in mind for them. The prophet says:
“Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
and the young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their mourning into joy,
I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.”
And eventually, Babylon falls. The Persians conquer them under King Cyrus the Great. The Persians, while still an Imperial power, had a gentler style of governance, so the People of Israel were restored to their land and able to more or less govern themselves how they saw fit as long as they paid their taxes to the Persians. So they went back to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple and carried on from there. But then come the Greeks. And then the Romans. The Romans in particular were brutal colonizers. Their economy and their state relied upon extracting as much wealth as possible from their colonies, both to enrich the wealthy and to ensure just enough stability for the common people in the capital and the soldiers to keep things humming along. So while the People of Israel had ways of managing their own lands and communities which ensured their flourishing, when the Romans came in, their interest wasn’t in maintaining those systems, but in breaking them apart so they could carry as much as possible back to Rome. Again, God looked upon humanity, suffering and broken, and offered them wholeness and hope. But this time, God would offer it through Godself.
Through the birth of Jesus, God entered literally into the flesh of our humanity, to be us. Birth is messy. It’s bloody. It’s loud. It’s painful. And God, the Creator of all things, came into the world through the messy, bloody, loud, and painful way that all of us come into the world. God teethed and learned to walk and stubbed his toes and felt all our feelings. All to be closer to us. All to help us to be human in a godly way. All to bring us back together.
That may give us the warm fuzzies, and it ought to, but we must also remember that there are many powers in this world that benefit from brokenness and dissolution. This is why Herod is so threatened by the rumors of Jesus’s birth. Herod, as the puppet king of the Roman Empire, benefits from maintaining the system as it is. The birth of a messiah means tearing asunder that worldly system that has, indeed, made him and his own so very comfortable. The Good News of Jesus Christ– that we are all able to be whole and indeed are made whole through love of God and of one another– is inherently threatening to all powers of the world which benefit from hardening our hearts against one another and separating us from our communities.
Taking time away from our work to remind ourselves that God dwells with us and our communities is powerful. Taking time to know and love our neighbors is powerful. The meaning of Christmas– the meaning of God being with and among us, is far more powerful when we live it out and allow it to transform us– than any power in this world. Loving and caring for our neighbors is more powerful than political forces that pit us against one another. It’s more powerful than a plague. It’s more powerful than the darkest winter or the deepest sorrows. Herod knew that. So he tried to nip it in the bud. But he couldn’t. And we must not allow the powers that be in this world that are so committed to sowing dissent between us and our neighbors to do so.
I’m not saying any of this is easy. The Gospel writers are light on the details of Mary’s delivery, but we know that nobody enters this world, not even God, without pain and struggle. And God does not come to dwell in us now without pain and struggle. We are not transformed easily. We have to work at it. We have to labor. But the joy of Christmas– the hope of that beautiful, messy, painful, birth of God into humanity, is that we never have to do it alone. God is with us. God is one of us. God is bringing us together. No matter what the powers of this world have to say about it.
So I say again: Merry Christmas! May we all come to know the joy of God dwelling with us.
Comments
Post a Comment
Please remember that other living, breathing human beings will read your comments. Any comments which deny the inherent, God-given dignity of other people will be removed.