Bill Countryman Good Shepherd Berkeley

CHRISTMAS 2022

Year A: Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalms 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

The familiar Christmas-card picture of the first Christmas that we carry around in our heads tends to have a kind of warm glow about it—the infant Jesus in the manger, with Mary leaning over him; the animals in the stable intrigued by this unfamiliar scene; the shepherds shrinking back at the sudden appearance of the angel—all of them illuminated by a soft light that seems to come from all directions at once. I have nothing against that. In fact, I love it. But it can leave all the people seeming a little less than real. 

So I want to see if I can salvage some of their reality tonight. Joseph, to start with, was maybe thirty years old, considered a good age for a man to marry. He was an artisan in wood, probably covering the whole gamut from cabinet-maker to home-builder, with an occasional gig as wheelwright thrown in for good measure. He wasn’t poor, but he wasn’t rich, either. True, he claimed King David as an ancestor; but that was a thousand years before his time. And the Roman government has just thrown a wrench into his life by making him travel to Bethlehem for a census.

Mary was in her mid teens, a normal age for a girl to marry. She is expecting her first child. Joseph can’t bear to leave her at home on her own, but every village they passed through would have a midwife, and certainly a prosperous town like Bethlehem would have several. It was very distressing to find that there was no room left in the inns of Bethlehem. But one innkeeper must have recognized that Mary was close to giving birth and managed to make a space for them in the barn. (That seems very odd to us city dwellers, but village people of the first century wouldn’t have been so finicky.) I can’t help but think that it was also the innkeeper who sent for the midwife.

The shepherds, for their part, were kind of at the bottom of the social pecking order, though at least they had jobs, which put them a step above beggars. The nice clean clothes that they wear in most Christmas pictures are, shall we say, a bit unlikely. They were more ikely well patched and a bit on the dirty side.

And Jesus was like any other newborn. He did not glow in the dark. He did his share of crying, despite what we sometimes sing in carols. He slept a lot. And he was helpless and needed lots of attention.

Now, this doesn’t take away all the warm glow. A new mother with her first infant is a wonderful sight even in the most ordinary circumstances. It inspires a certain awe at the mystery of life and a new hope for the future. But, still, these were real people, ordinary people, we’re talking about, doing things that people do. Not altogether unlike us. 

The amazing thing is what is hidden inside these prosaic events. There is a young woman who has taken a tremendous risk at God’s request, a man who married her even though he knew she was pregnant and not by him, a midwife who delivered the baby (I know she’s not mentioned, but she has to have been there), an innkeeper who found some place to get them under a roof. And some shepherds with a strange story about angels who made pronouncements and sang hymns. And Mary could only “treasure all this . . and ponder it in her heart.” She couldn’t yet imagine what it all really meant. 

And truth to tell, it’s still beyond our imagining. We describe this helpless newborn in the words of Isaiah, “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” A newborn who can’t even turn himself over at this point or lift his own head! The full truth would come clear only over time, as Jesus ministered and healed and proclaimed the good news of God’s love for us and for our world—he even invited us to join in that love by loving one another—even the most unlovable among us. Wonderful Counselor indeed! And Mighty God, too, because he was the incarnation of God’s true power—the power of love. Everlasting Father of a new humanity dedicated to justice and peace. And Prince of Peace because, in truth, he gave us the only way to achieve it, the way of love that the true saints have been following ever since.

We’re still a long way from that world of justice and peace. This year has made that quite clear. But we still—even ordinary people like us—are invited to join in building it. God is still asking us, even with all our human weakness, for our help. Even now,

Even in this year of war and sickness,

uncertainty and fear,

God still knocks at the door of our hearts,

looking for a place to be born.