Xmas Time

Christmas Eve Sermon on Luke 2:1-20

I think it took maybe 5 minutes before there was a knock on my door after turning in today’s sermon title. Ever careful, our church secretary Carol wanted to just make sure that I really meant it when I put the sermon title down as Xmas instead of spelling Christmas out. Rightly so, she wanted to make sure that I knew what I was doing printing the title this way. Yes, it is on purpose!

With a husband who works retail, I am very aware of the retail side of Christmas. This year has been especially interesting watching the news and social media grab the argument and embrace the season in a so-called War on Christmas. News channels debate the reason for the season, comedians have a heyday picking apart their words, televangelists and even politicians – maybe especially politicians - all want to have their say on the importance of Christ and not letting our secular society heist the season and leave out Christ.

Rachel Held Evans notes that perhaps leaving Christ out may not be such a bad thing! What would happen if the Christian holiday was made distinct – completely separated from the consumerism and holiday hoopla? They can keep the candy canes, Christmas trees, Santa, frantic parties and commercialism. Maybe, just maybe then Christmas would be more authentic. In the time of Jesus it wasn’t a matter of forcing the mighty Roman empire to acknowledge this group as a force or power to be reckoned with – indeed, Jesus was placed in a manger because Augustus demanded a count of citizens so that he could get as updated a count for taxes as possible.

The important part for us is not the recognition or the authority of the group to be equally represented. The importance for us as Christians is to take the time to remember who Christ was and is in our lives. Christmas is a time of radical hospitality, amazing grace and love that defies all norms. Jesus the Messiah did not have to mandate equal time in the society with laws and representation instead HE was a magnet that attracted and amazed despite being so very counter-cultural.

As Frederick Buechner said, “Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it in and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one.… The Word become flesh. Ultimate Mystery …. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful.”

Why now is it so important to us that Christianity is a culturally accepted thing? Yes, I find it comforting, and I am not giving up my cookie exchanges, decorated tree or manger scenes. But Christmas is about more! Let’s take a fresh look at the words from Luke. A historian pointed out that the most important messages in the Christmas story in the gospels is not the history of the tale but the theology. For example, he pointed out that for a census, Joseph would most likely not have drug his pregnant wife across the land. He simply would have registered for her as the male of the family – he certainly would have had that authority to do so without her there in that day and age. So, why was Mary there?

Mary with Joseph is not only showing the loving support of family but also the protection that Joseph offered under the circumstances by keeping Mary close to him. It’s all about relationship – and that’s the theology. The main way we form and show our love in relationships is through our time – how we spend it, who we spend it with. Time, that most precious of commodities, seems in especially short supply in a season when we are called to be remembering and celebrating the wonderful miracle of Christ. The man who called upon us to turn our priorities upside down from what society expected. A God for whom relationship was so important that Jesus was born in human form to spend time among, with, and as one of us.

How was this gift of time spent? The Luke passage emphasizes suddenness and haste in the angels presenting their message and in the shepherds getting to Jesus to see. Amazement and awe were the emotions present. Here, presented to them, the common man - shepherds who weren’t the most desired of company – given to them to see was this amazing gift of a baby.

There was no room at the inn, but Jesus was born surrounded by a family who loved him. We lose the importance of this message when we try to plan everything and have it all be in an acceptable format – the main street with the proper banners, the highway with appropriate billboards accepted by society. WE want a Christmas party not a Holiday Party in our schools and workplaces. In trying to defend the faith, we are losing one of the most essential components. Jesus wasn’t about being accepted by the powers that be or the most popular message in town. Jesus was about taking the time to offer an amazing message of awe and grace to the least of these. Not the equals in power but the outcast – often the very people who nobody worries about how you talk to them! Are our inns full of trying to make sure everything is planned and fits with society? What do we need to make room for in our inn – in our banks of time, how are we spending this commodity? How are we using our time to further Christian relationship?

What does Jesus coming among us move us to in relationships? What do these relationships demand of our time? The significance of a humble birth demands central place – Christ fits into our messy chaotic lives more than into our planned, orchestrated moments. We like our happy, planned manger scenes with everything arranged just so – after all isn’t a part of this that there will be peace on earth? Maybe we have even tamed the word peace!

Our cultural understanding of peace definitely implies the absence of chaos. Yet Jesus had deep, abiding peace in his life and it was definitely chaotic. The Greek word used here emphasizes more a reconciliation between people rather than the absence of trials. This is the Good News of Christmas. The counter cultural, the use of that precious gift of time with all people in relationship of love not law. God took time to spend with us. In this birth story of Christ, the Messengers of God declared that through the birth of Christ, God and humanity would be united again. Amen