Same Story, Different Snaps.

Coolamon Baby - Glenn Loughrey 2016

Luke 2:1-20

 

Have you ever been to an event, concert or a holiday destination that has been a major disappointment only to read somewhere later a report waxing lyrical about what an outstanding event, concert or holiday destination it was?  You find yourself asking, did we go to the same event or destination, was the writer ever actually there; it seems like we attend two different events, or concert or holiday resort?

 

For most of my life that has been my experience of Christmas. Growing up in a household where Christmas celebrations quickly descended in an alcohol fuelled disaster, I came to dread Christmas and disbelieve the story we were supposed to celebrate. I listened to the story in church, watched the decorations in the shop windows and witnessed the joyful festivities of others and wondered if we were actually celebrating the same event? Did I somehow live in another dimension were the joy and peace of Christmas simply was unavailable to such as me? I still find this time of the year difficult.

 

This  split can also be found in the Gospel story we just read. Luke provides us with two polaroid prints of the same events but they could not be more different. One is a black and white print of  two scared and lonely young middle eastern people fulfilling the need to be counted by a tyrannical government and expecting their first child. They find themselves in unfamiliar territory, nowhere to stay and a baby due any moment. They take whatever refuge they are offered and find themselves sharing a space with animals and their food troughs. Their baby is born alone and un-welcomed except by the barn animals standing around and his parents. One can only begin to imagine how scared they were.

 

The other is a coloured photo full of lights, surround sound and a cast of thousands.  Here the angel Gabriel comes with the multitudes to announce to shepherds as representatives of those whom God favours the birth of the Anointed One. Terrifying but majestic, an advertising campaign launch bigger than anything a major ad company could dream up. It’s inclusive promises are writ big and bold and are so effective, the shepherds head into town to find out whether this is fair dinkum or not.

 

The little family would have wondered if they were in the same story, if their poverty and homelessness and the brutality of the birth was some how misplaced in a cosmic trailer to the incarnation event. How did they fit and why? How were they privileged to suffer poverty and violence and why wasn’t their child, the Anointed One welcomed in a way commensurate with his title and genealogy?

 

Jesus was born in a violent world. War and occupation was ever present in his life just as it had been in the lives of his parents. There is nothing beautiful about this manger scene and the heavenly messengers in the field fail to make it so. In fact they make it worse. Herod becomes inflamed when he hears of the goings on in Bethlehem and sets about genocide of his own. The isolation of the birth becomes an isolation of a people and a life until the predictable end.

 

How do we make sense of these two pictures and the crumpling of hope so loudly proclaimed? How do we live in the shadow of the manger and the shepherds’ field in a world that has changed little? Unjust wars destroy the babies born in Aleppo, Yemen, Mosul, the Sudan, West Timor, Myanmar and Central Australian indigenous communities. Violence destroys the hopes of little ones in houses in our cities where domestic violence has not lessened. Young people are being traumatised not for a moment but for a lifetime through the dysfunction of a world still clinging precariously to the promise of  ‘peace among those whom he favours’.

 

How do we embrace the hope of those words and the little boy in a food trough and change the world in which we live? The great intentions of God can only become real if they are embodied in ordinary actions every day by those he favours. It is us who has to take the steps to bring about peace on earth. It is us who has to resist the temptation to fear, the beginning of all violence and war according to Thomas Merton.

 

Our fears and anxieties lead us into savaging others with our words and our actions, our anxieties and fears make us defensive and protective to such an extent we have to eliminate or annihilate the other. No one sets out to hurt but does so when it is the most effective to protect him or herself from what they fear. It can start out innocently but escalates beyond imagination as our fears are magnified and feed by the ego self who cannot afford to fail.

 

We can begin by understanding that the baby born in Bethlehem was not a special baby due special attention. The baby born in Bethlehem is an ordinary baby just like your baby, your child’s baby and the babies being born this moment in places like Aleppo. When we do this we normalise the experiences of all born as a baby while elevating each to the sanctity we attribute to the Christ child.

 

In other words the affection and worship we save for Jesus is required of us for all born into this world. We are all, in some mystical way, the embodiment of God in the world. Our birth is special and unexpected, an expression of poverty and dependence we almost instantly seek to forget. Yet it is this innocence, this infinite trust in the love and nurture of God in others we bring with us which empowers us to be one of the many who make up the angelic choir.

 

If only we could let go of our fears and anxieties and begin to trust as we did at our first breath then we would begin to change our world. There would be need for violence for there would be no thing to defend. All would be valued and worshipped, the child born in Aleppo, Mosul or some remote township in Central Australia or the child born in a home near here, as we worship the boy born in Bethlehem.

 

It is the difference in the two scenes in Luke’s Gospel. It is no good the shepherds responding and going to visit the baby or the Wisemen who bring gifts, something must be transformed by the encounter, something has to be changed by what they witness.

 

Tonight as we come to contemplate this event we must come to be transformed by the birth of the Christ child so that we leave here committed to respect, justice and love and not to fear, violence and tyranny. It is up to us. 

Mary and the Shepherds

17When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (Luke 1:17-20)

Writing a Christmas sermon is not easy. Everyone knows the story. They have heard it all before, or at least enough of it to have said, Yep, I know what its all about. It’s a story about a baby, some shepherds and their reindeers, a funny old fellow called Santa Claws, presents and a star. I know its got something to do with chimneys, kissing under the mistletoe, three wise women from the east and a docile donkey, no midwife and only a cows’ feed trough for a bed. It’s about Christmas specials, turkeys and prawns, snow and beach cricket, a big lunch and an afternoon siesta, a boat race to Tasmania and beating the Indians at the MCG. Yep, that’s what Christmas is all about.

Really? You sure?

Christmas is also about boat people looking for a better life, refugees on Christmas Island (appropriately named), people mourning a loved one, no money to feed empty tummies, needless wars in far off lands, too much alcohol, car accidents, politicians and their platitudes, and more.

Really? Is that all?

Well no, that’s not all.

Christmas is about hope, gift, presence, love, mystery in the midst of the ordinariness of life. When, as a child, I asked my father what he wanted for Christmas he would say, “A jam tin with a hole in the bottom.” A funny thing to say. A jam tin with both ends cut out is kind of useless really. You can’t put anything in it, you can’t cover anything up with it, it is useless.

Or was he saying something else about the essence of Christmas – was he saying that it is much more than a tangible item, it is a gift that is too big to grasp and contain, to hold and to keep for yourself. It is more than something you can lock down and put a lid on. The essence of Christmas is beyond definition, beyond theological or philosophical argument, it is the presence of the Spirit in the midst of life.

The shepherds are keeping watch over their flocks – sitting around a campfire as the sheep sat around them, their night - time stillness was disturbed by a mysterious vision of angels announcing the birth of the Messiah. Now that was disturbing, for no one ever told shepherds anything – they were so much the outcasts that people barely spoke to them. Yet it is to them that the birth of the Messiah is announced. And not an announcement about a king born in a fancy palace, but a baby born in the shed put aside for the farm animals at the back of a house of lodgings – called a pub – in a non-descript country village far from the halls of power and authority.

This so intrigued the shepherds that they went down to have a look. Interestingly no-one stayed behind to watch the sheep. Why? Well, because of the racket caused by the angels, I suggest the sheep had scattered far and wide and they would have to go looking the next day to round them up. Can’t do that of a night.

So down they go and find it all as the angels had told them, and they are amazed and rush off back to share their story with anyone and everyone who would listen. They were excited.

Now, the key player in all this, Mary, responds differently. She has just given birth to a healthy baby boy, a boy she has been previously informed is the saviour of the world. I am sure she was happy, happy to have given birth in circumstances that were primitive, even for the time, and survived the ordeal and happy for the special honour this particular birth was. Yet she and Joseph don’t seem to be cracking open the champagne and passing out the cigars. They seem to be quietly watching this extraordinary event unfold around them, the birth, the gathering of the shepherds and their encounter with the angels, the visit from the locals, the strange star overhead, and the back story which preceded this event.

Luke captures their mood when he says:” 19But Mary treasured all these words (and experiences) and pondered them in her heart.”

For Mary and Joseph this event was so mysterious, so indescribable, so awe-inspiring that it was beyond their understanding at that very moment. Neither understood what this all meant, no could they, but they simply didn’t dismiss it all as some sort of myth or hallucination, but pondered, reflected, contemplated it all, allowing the Spirit of God to reveal it, as and when appropriate.

On this, the night before Christmas, let us take into our hearts the story of the birth of Jesus, the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the one with us in this world and reflect upon it’s innocence, it’s love, it’s depth and it’s call to us, who once were outcasts, to open our lives and share it with all, regardless of who they are. Let us reflect on the gift God gives us and remember that all gifts, given and received this Christmas, are only symbols of the gift of love found in Christ.

Let us reflect on the incarnation or coming amongst of Christ and be mindful of how we are amongst those we share this world with.

Let us reflect on the fragility of that small baby who relied so much on others for life and know how fragile our lives are and how much we rely on others for our daily existence.

The story of Christmas has become a little confused in the modern retelling, or should I say, reselling of it; yet the foundational story has not changed. It is about the gift of life and the power of that gift to unbalance our complacency and cause us to ‘ponder on all these words and experiences within our heart”.

The challenge, as we move to the Eucharist and the festivities of Christmas day, is to celebrate the gift or life and live mindful of that gift everyday. Like my father’s jam tin with the a hole in it, Christmas is a gift we can never contain and it will go on revealing itself to us for the rest of our life, if we ponder on it in our hearts.