By Kristin Berkey-Abbott
Luke 2: 1-20
In Sunday’s Gospel reading, the story from the Gospel of Matthew about how Joseph comes to take Mary as his wife, we met a family in trouble. In tonight’s Gospel reading, here again, we meet a family in trouble. The writer of the Gospel of Luke shines a spotlight on the trouble caused by a distant emperor: a census, hard travel to the ancestral hometown, not enough rooms when they arrive, and a woman about to give birth.
Chances are good that Joseph and Mary were not as alone as we might have traditionally been taught: instead of having a separate barn for the animals, most animals were kept indoors, in a separate part of the overcrowded house. If Joseph or Mary needed help during the baby’s birth, there would be women nearby who would hear and assist. As I talked about in my sermon 2 years ago, it’s likely that there’s no room in the guest room because other family members got there first. But that doesn’t mean that Joseph and Mary would be turned away, just that they would have to settle for lesser accommodations. Their situation is not quite as dire as it might sound to modern ears.
Does this knowledge change the way we view the story? It’s important to remember that a Gospel is a very different piece of literature from a work of history or biography. A Gospel by its very definition is designed to deliver good news, a task which involves truth telling, even if some meanings change over time.
Historians can’t find evidence of a census during the time of Caesar Augustus and Quirinius, the way that Luke describes. People who study the time of Rome would question the efficiency of registering citizens in this way, requiring them to return to their ancestral place of origin, which would be very disruptive to the local and larger economies. But the truth of tonight’s Gospel remains, that earthly empires don’t usually make life easy for their citizens.
It's a contrast with the way that God works. God does not require a return to our hometowns. God does not require that we exist in any document that has been certified by a government official. As one theologian put it, the lesson of tonight’s Gospel is that things don’t go as planned, and God appears anyway. In fact, that might be one of God’s consistencies: into the midst of every day life, God breaks through. We might prefer that God wait until we have our personal lives straightened out or until we have a better housing situation, but that’s society talking, not God talking. God loves us, no matter where we are on the spectrum of broken to perfect. This is the truth.
This story also reminds us that God often appears to the most lowly. Tonight’s Gospel ends with angels appearing to shepherds, and again, I think that 21st century people, especially those who have seen many a darling Christmas pageant, forget how out of the mainstream of society a shepherd would be in the first century. They would rarely interact with humans. They would spend time with smelly sheep, and many citizens would see them as little above sheep themselves. God works through the necessary but undervalued. This is the truth.
In the Gospel of Luke, these shepherds are the ones who hear the good news of the arrival of the Messiah first: not the emperor, not the governor, not the priest. By now, it’s not news to us, especially if you’ve been hearing my sermons week after week. But it’s a truth that’s important enough to repeat on a regular basis: the good news of God’s love is not reserved for the mighty and the powerful. At the end of tonight’s Gospel, the heavens split open, the way that Mary’s body splits open, and the Good News of God’s presence pours out.
In fact we see this as a theme across the Nativity stories, across the Gospels: the idea of Heavenly shattering and remaking. One thing that is shattered through the birth of this baby is social status and stratification. The community that Jesus builds includes people of less social status, and the appearance of angels to shepherds foreshadows this community. It’s not just the priests and the magi who hear the messages of the angels, but the dirty, smelly ones out in the fields, away from civilized life, tending flocks of sheep: they, too, get Divine visits. God comes for them too. This is true.
Look at what the angels say, notice what they proclaim: God is doing all of this shattering and remaking to bring us peace. As I prepared for this sermon, I read one theologian that summed up tonight’s Gospel this way: God wishes us peace.
The empires of the world will tell us that they will bring peace, but the Gospels tell the truth. The empires of the world will cause disruption, and we know that it won’t bring peace for all, just for a select few. Empires of the world are not set up to help the pregnant women and the shepherds and all the others at the bottom of the totem pole.
Native American scholars would remind us that the ones at the bottom of the totem pole are necessary but undervalued. Nonetheless, the ones at the bottom of the totem pole hold up all the rest, and we see that throughout the ministry of Jesus. He returns to caretakers as a central metaphor for his teachings, and he practices what he preaches, a Gospel of Love that feeds not just bodies but souls. Women make the work of Jesus possible, from Mary his mother on throughout his ministry and into the early church: the salvation of the world is undergirded by the work of these women, these necessary but undervalued. This is the truth.
We know that the work is not finished yet. The creation that is around us, lovely as it is this time of year when decorated in lights and ornaments, that creation is only a pale shadow of what God creates, offers, and intends. Tonight’s Gospel shows God’s arrival in the most unlikely places—a manger—and heralded to the most unlikely listeners: the shepherds.
Does this knowledge change the way we view the story? It’s important to remember that a Gospel is a very different piece of literature from a work of history or biography. A Gospel by its very definition is designed to deliver good news, a task which involves truth telling, even if some meanings change over time.
Historians can’t find evidence of a census during the time of Caesar Augustus and Quirinius, the way that Luke describes. People who study the time of Rome would question the efficiency of registering citizens in this way, requiring them to return to their ancestral place of origin, which would be very disruptive to the local and larger economies. But the truth of tonight’s Gospel remains, that earthly empires don’t usually make life easy for their citizens.
It's a contrast with the way that God works. God does not require a return to our hometowns. God does not require that we exist in any document that has been certified by a government official. As one theologian put it, the lesson of tonight’s Gospel is that things don’t go as planned, and God appears anyway. In fact, that might be one of God’s consistencies: into the midst of every day life, God breaks through. We might prefer that God wait until we have our personal lives straightened out or until we have a better housing situation, but that’s society talking, not God talking. God loves us, no matter where we are on the spectrum of broken to perfect. This is the truth.
This story also reminds us that God often appears to the most lowly. Tonight’s Gospel ends with angels appearing to shepherds, and again, I think that 21st century people, especially those who have seen many a darling Christmas pageant, forget how out of the mainstream of society a shepherd would be in the first century. They would rarely interact with humans. They would spend time with smelly sheep, and many citizens would see them as little above sheep themselves. God works through the necessary but undervalued. This is the truth.
In the Gospel of Luke, these shepherds are the ones who hear the good news of the arrival of the Messiah first: not the emperor, not the governor, not the priest. By now, it’s not news to us, especially if you’ve been hearing my sermons week after week. But it’s a truth that’s important enough to repeat on a regular basis: the good news of God’s love is not reserved for the mighty and the powerful. At the end of tonight’s Gospel, the heavens split open, the way that Mary’s body splits open, and the Good News of God’s presence pours out.
In fact we see this as a theme across the Nativity stories, across the Gospels: the idea of Heavenly shattering and remaking. One thing that is shattered through the birth of this baby is social status and stratification. The community that Jesus builds includes people of less social status, and the appearance of angels to shepherds foreshadows this community. It’s not just the priests and the magi who hear the messages of the angels, but the dirty, smelly ones out in the fields, away from civilized life, tending flocks of sheep: they, too, get Divine visits. God comes for them too. This is true.
Look at what the angels say, notice what they proclaim: God is doing all of this shattering and remaking to bring us peace. As I prepared for this sermon, I read one theologian that summed up tonight’s Gospel this way: God wishes us peace.
The empires of the world will tell us that they will bring peace, but the Gospels tell the truth. The empires of the world will cause disruption, and we know that it won’t bring peace for all, just for a select few. Empires of the world are not set up to help the pregnant women and the shepherds and all the others at the bottom of the totem pole.
Native American scholars would remind us that the ones at the bottom of the totem pole are necessary but undervalued. Nonetheless, the ones at the bottom of the totem pole hold up all the rest, and we see that throughout the ministry of Jesus. He returns to caretakers as a central metaphor for his teachings, and he practices what he preaches, a Gospel of Love that feeds not just bodies but souls. Women make the work of Jesus possible, from Mary his mother on throughout his ministry and into the early church: the salvation of the world is undergirded by the work of these women, these necessary but undervalued. This is the truth.
We know that the work is not finished yet. The creation that is around us, lovely as it is this time of year when decorated in lights and ornaments, that creation is only a pale shadow of what God creates, offers, and intends. Tonight’s Gospel shows God’s arrival in the most unlikely places—a manger—and heralded to the most unlikely listeners: the shepherds.
May we have the courage of Joseph and Mary who said yes to God’s disruption of the life that they had planned to have. May we have the curiosity of the shepherds who knew that they needed to respond to the good news. May we keep our Advent disciplines of watching and waiting so that we will see how God is still at work in the world, shattering social structures, offering a new vision of community. May we know the truth of the Gospel, that God often works through those who are most undervalued and underappreciated, working through them to bring us all the peace that God intends for all of creation. May we know this truth in our core being so that we, too, can say, “Be not afraid” and live out the truth of the Gospel.
No comments:
Post a Comment