Christmas Eve C
Luke 2: 1-20
December 24, 2003
Dear Christian Friends; Grace to you and peace, from God our Father, and from our newborn Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen
“What do you hope to get for Christmas?” It’s pretty hard to make it through the Christmas season without being asked that question, or asking it of someone else; “What do you hope to get for Christmas?”
If you have been specific enough in your requests, perhaps you will get exactly what you hoped for. Or maybe there is someone who knows you so well that they will be able to surprise you by getting you your hearts desire. More likely, you will open one or two gifts that will make you scratch your head and think, “What were they thinking? I would never wear that!”
What do you hope to get for Christmas? Once in a while, someone will give you a gift that you never would have wanted in a million years, but that they know you need. If your family gives you an exercise machine and you enjoy being a couch potato, that’s probably a gift you need. It may not be what you hoped for, but in the long run, it will be the best thing for you.
Christmas is a time of hope. Each of us has our own hopes for this season, and for the year that will follow. And I’m sure that those who were intimately involved in the events of the First Christmas had their own hopes as well, beginning with the hopes of Jesus’ mother, Mary.
Mary was a teenaged peasant girl from the backwoods town of Nazareth. She was engaged to a man named Joseph, and probably hoped for what most women of her time and social standing hoped for—to be married, to raise children, and to grow old surrounded by the love and support of her family. That is what she hoped for. What she got was something quite different.
Before she and Joseph were married, Mary had an encounter with an angel. The angel told her that she had been chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. She was already pregnant—not by her husband-to-be, but by the Holy Spirit. I can’t imagine that this was what she had hoped for. Nothing like this had ever happened before. But Mary had the grace to receive the gift that God had given her; “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”
Joseph, too, must have had his hopes for his future life with Mary. He certainly wanted children, and lots of them. Children were seen as a blessing, and were the way in which a man’s name was carried forward. But he certainly didn’t want the scandal that would come with the news that his fiancé was pregnant. The Bible tells us that Joseph planned to quietly break their engagement. Then he too, was visited by an angel. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a Son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” And so Joseph, too, went along with God’s plan. Like Mary, it may not have been the gift he hoped for, but turned out to be the answer to all the world’s hopes.
What of the people of Bethlehem, and for that matter, all the people of the area? My guess is that they hoped for what the people of Bethlehem hope for tonight—peace, and freedom in their own land.
This week the Jerusalem Times reported that Christmas in Bethlehem will be cancelled. How sad is that? Each year in Bethlehem, a major Christmas celebration is held in Manger Square, just outside of the Church of the Nativity, which houses the spot where Jesus was born. This year, after three-and-a-half years of fighting, it is just too dangerous to hold that celebration. People are afraid to come out of the relative safety of their homes, and venture into the open square, even if the curfew would allow it. People are not coming down from Jerusalem, because they don’t want to risk getting through the military checkpoints. Tonight, the birth of Christ will not be celebrated in the place where it happened, and so we will have to worship and pray on behalf of our Palestinian Christian friends in the Holy Land.
At the time that Jesus was born, the land was also under occupation, except then, it was by the Roman Empire. People yearned for peace and freedom from oppression, and they prayed for a Messiah to deliver them. They hoped for a powerful, political Messiah, who would triumph over the tyranny of Rome. But God does not answer violence with violence. God has other ways of dealing with things.
The people did receive a Messiah on that first Christmas Eve. But they didn’t get exactly what they hoped for. They got something even better. What they got was Jesus.
Here was one who, as the scriptures said, would bear the government on his shoulders. He would be a prince, but a prince unlike worldly princes. He would be a Prince of Peace. He would be a disturber of the status quo, a critic of both the civic and the religious establishment.
Here was one who was born not among the elite, but among the humble poor. Here was one who came to us as a baby, so, as Luther said, we would not be afraid of him. Here, born in human flesh, was the gentle Son of God.
I said before that once in a while at Christmas, there is someone who knows you so well that they give you your heart’s desire, even though you may not have known what you wanted or needed. That’s what God has done for humanity in the birth of the Baby Jesus. God knew the human race so well, that God knew what we needed. And so we received an unsought, unexpected gift named Jesus.
That gift comes to us anew each Christmas, full of hope and promise. All it takes to receive it is an open heart. Thank you, God, for the perfect gift. We just love it. AMEN