Christmas centers in the story told from the heart and not from the head. It is totally left brain. It has stimulated poets and artist’s brushes as no other story has. The story of the baby Jesus is told to the delight of little children. The story is also loved by parents and the grandparents, who retell the story as it was told to them.
It is evident the story about the shepherds abiding in the fields at night would have never lived on if the shepherds had not retold their story over-and-over again. It’s also quite evident that the Magi did not remain silent after they saw the Christ child in Bethlehem. True, they did not go back to tell Herod. The fact that their story is still told throughout the world bears testimony to the fact they were not bashful about telling their story.
The Christmas story is still future tense. There is the story of the Magi following a star hoping to find the baby who will become their King, their long-looked for Messiah. Shepherds hear Angels tell about a baby about to be born, and they go to Bethlehem to find that baby. In a real sense, the story of the baby is a story told in future tense. The baby is not yet the Messiah. His born to be the Messiah. He is not yet the words sent from God. He is born to be the words sent from God. He is not yet the crucified Christ, but he is the baby born to be crucified. His not yet the baby born for the resurrection from the dead, but he is born to fulfill that purpose.
This past week we in the Northwest have been going out into the backyards after nightfall to discover the planets Jupiter and Mars in a constellation that they may have been in the very moment the Magi were searching for the baby. We look at the constellation as it moves and changes each night, and our hearts are fulfilled with hope. Our hope is that this indeed affirms the story to be true. We come in from the night with some of the wonder in our eyes that the Magi must have had when the constellation of planets first appeared to them.
Many years ago, an anonymous poet put it this way: “We travel bravely by 1000 roads, some broad and lined with palaces, some steep and some hard and lonely, some that blindly twist through tangled jungles where there is no light. And mostly they are traveled thoughtlessly. But once a year an ancient question comes to every traveler passing on his way. A question that can stab and burn and bless. Where is the road that leads to Bethlehem?
Today our scripture lesson is found in the gospel according to Luke. Luke centers the Christmas story around a young woman called Mary. This might not be an accident but by design. There is much speculation that the gospel writer Luke drew much of his unique material from a primary source written by a woman. Luke contains 40 passages involving a woman, many more than the other gospel writers. About half of the women stories in Luke appear in no other gospel.
Luke has Mary speak to God and the people through a beautiful poem we have come to call the Magnificat. She begins the poem with these words:
My heart praises the Lord;
My heart is glad because of God my savior,
For this for he has remembered me his lowly servant,
From now on all people will call me blessed,
because of the great things the mighty one
has done for me.
One of America’s great women theologians Letty Russell has paraphrased this Magnificat in this way: “Oh god I’m so happy because you have taken me who is nobody and you have made me a somebody.” Last week we studied the genealogy of Jesus as it was reported by the gospel writer Matthew. One of the things we discovered was that Jesus was adopted into the genealogical line of David by Joseph adopting Jesus. Of himself Jesus was a nobody insofar as genealogy was concerned and of course neither was Mary. Normally women did not appear in the genealogical tables.
There was a time when the biblical scholars explained the difference in the genealogical table concerning Jesus. in Luke from that in Matthew by saying the one in Luke was a genealogical table of Mary’s ancestry. We know now that this was indeed another tracing of Joseph’s genealogy.
Luke begins the actual birth story with a decree by the emperor Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. Though his decree has never been found in Palestine, a similar decree dating about the same time was found in Egypt and it reads:
Gaius Vibius Maximus Prefect of Egypt orders: Seeing that the time has come for the house-to-house census, it is necessary to compel all those who are for any cause whatsoever residing outside their districts to return to their homes that they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also diligently attend to the cultivation of their allotments.
It could be this was the worldwide decree that called for the same census in Egypt as it did in the Roman province of Judea.
Luke also has the Angels coming to the shepherds. In his marvelous little commentary, the great English Bible scholar James Barclay points out that it is a wonderful thing that the story should tell that the first announcement from God should come to the shepherds. In the day of Jesus, the shepherds were considered the lowest of the low. In fact, they were despised by all the Orthodox Jews, because they could not keep to the minute details of the ceremonial laws and ablutions required by strict Jewish law. They could not even keep their laws of the Sabbath, because their sheep required their attention on the Sabbath the same as on any other day. It was these despised and simple shepherds to which the message of the birth of the Messiah first came.
But these shepherds were not just shepherds. It happens that the shepherd fields of Bethlehem where the nearest to Jerusalem and were reserved for those raising sheep for the sacrifices at the temple. They were the shepherds who were responsible for seeing that the perfect unblemished lambs were always ready for the evening sacrifice and for the sacrifices made on the day of atonement and other holy days. It is beautiful to think these shepherds who were responsible for raising the sacrificial lambs would be there to receive the news that the true Lamb of God was to be born in their own city.
In a real sense the story of the shepherds can be paraphrased: “Me a nobody he has been made a somebody.” Even today at Christmas time, the children vie to be the shepherds in their Christmas pageant. In fact, I can still remember the odd wonder in my heart as a boy, when I was a shepherd and I knelt before where the Christ child lay.
Luke has two other people to appear in the story of the Christ child. These people were important because they recognized the Christ child as Messiah when they saw him. These people were Simon and Anna. We know very little about either one but reading between the lines we can say these two were nobody’s.
We know that the temple in those days was a place of refuge for many older people who had no family. They would work as volunteers with the Levites, by doing the many chores in the temple area. Remember the temple square was a highly developed religious community comprising some 90 acres. Some of these volunteers even aided the priests in their religious duties.
Simeon was perhaps one of these. The fact is Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple to receive the customary blessing bestowed on children’s who survived the first 8 days of life, and in those days that was an accomplishment. The fact that Simeon administered the blessing indicates he was a volunteer who could perform priestly duties.
Luke records that Simeon received the message from the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he saw the long-looked for Messiah. You can imagine the excitement in the temple that day. Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms and suddenly felt the thrill he knew in his heart that this was indeed the baby who was to be the Messiah.
We again see the Christmas story in future tense. Simeon would never live to see the Messiah work his wonders in Israel. But for the old man, Simeon, that was not important. He saw the child’s promise. As he held the baby, he felt the warmth of the baby permeating his own body. He knew this was the warmth of God that would permeate the world through him.
Ana too was a volunteer who lived and worked in the temple. She probably had no family and no other place to go. She likely was a member of a religious order of prophets and prophetesses. She is called a prophetess by Luke. She was standing by Simeon when he blessed the child. She too felt the warmth of the baby coursing through her. She too knew this was the long awaited for baby, who would be the savior of Israel. She too was fulfilled with joy and felt the real purpose of her life was now fulfilled. She was a witness to the blessing of the Messiah and could now bear witness to him in the world in her generation and through Luke’s record, she bears witness today.
In Simeon and Anna, we again have two people for whom Letty Russell’s paraphrase of the Magnificat holds true. They were nobody’s who had become somebody’s because of the Christ child. Yet they would never really saw the Messiah in action. They only saw him through the eyes of hope tempered by their deep faith that God would send his Messiah and he would do great things to restore Israel as the people of God. They really were part of the story that was future tense.
Now we are reliving the Christmas story in the year of our Lord 1986. The world of our time is not changed very much. We still have the same kind of world with those who have too much of those who have too little, with those who are oppressed and with those who are oppressors, and with those who rule in injustice and those who are enslaved. When we go to the manger in Bethlehem, we are looking into the face of a baby who is not yet come into his own. Our religious dreams and hopes are of the “not yet” variety. We are still witnesses to the story that is future tense. We still look at the Christ who will save the world from the results of its own sins, its own greed and avarice.
Realization of the Christmas Story is still future tense. We are still living in the world of the “not yet.” As the Apostle Paul wrote: “All things are not yet but under his feet.” Like the Magi we still follow his star hoping it will lead us to the world of Shalom, where Christ shall have Dominion over the land and sea and all the people will follow him and call him blessed.
But once in a while, Christmas comes true in our time. These incidents are the seeds of hope that keep us going. Jesus walked in the streets of Calcutta this Christmas and Mother Teresa and her mendicant nuns walk through the streets to pick up the sick and the dying off the streets, to bring them to the hostel that they may die in dignity.
This week I read a story of a pensioner in Los Angeles by the name of Jesus Santiago. Jesus is a Mexican American Christian who lives in the Watts district in Los Angeles. Much of this former black district of LA is now populated by Mexicans. Many are illegal immigrants, living in abject poverty and in constant fear immigration officers will knock on their door and arrest them and deport them to even greater poverty than which they now live. Jesus spends his life and his pension ministering to the needs of these people. He works with the street gangs and tries to direct these young people’s lives into more productive channels. He ministers to those in abject poverty steering them through the channels to places they can find help. Many times, the first help comes from his own pocketbook.
For weeks before Christmas, he works through Catholic Church channels to gather special gifts for people. For people who have names. He knows their needs. He matches the gifts to their specific needs. Each Christmas Eve he takes his old 1960 vintage truck filled with the gifts and dressed in a Santa Claus suit makes his deliveries to each home, carefully watching no one is overlooked. His name is Jesus translated into English means he is truly a gift from God to so many of these people.
You see Christmas can become present tense in our lives in our day. Christmas can become present tense when the Christ spirit becomes a reality in our day, in our time, and in our lives. Christmas is the time we can go with the shepherds and the Magi and follow our Angels and our star until we come to the birthing place of our Christ. This can happen for us today. Then filled with all the spirit of the Christ child, we too can go out in the world to make the Christ story a reality, and then Christ will become our contemporary.
Reverend Arthur Schwabe Blog 