Christmas Eve 2023
Christmas comes but once a year! Yet, it used to last from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Then Christmas shopping began around Halloween. And now it seems as if September is not too early to begin seeing Christmas items on sale. By my calculation, Christmas consumes, and I mean consumes, roughly one-third of the year! And still, I hear people saying, “I’ll never make it to Christmas! I will never get everything done! I’m not ready for Christmas!”
Breaking News: that night in the manger, as Luke tells the story, or in the house, as Matthew tells it, or sometime before the beginning of creation as John tells it, guess what? Nobody, no one, was ready for the Word to become flesh and dwell among us. No one was prepared for Emmanuel, “God with us!” to show up.
There are shepherds on the outskirts of Bethlehem – which by the way, means something like “House of Bread,” and much like parts of Ukraine, Bethlehem was known as the “breadbasket of Judea,” producing large amounts of grain for the entire region. These shepherds are just settling down for a long winter’s night watching and protecting a flock of sheep. Sheep. The only sheep I have known personally can be quite cantankerous and unruly, so these fellows had no easy job. There is no way they were ready for a multitude of Heavenly Hosts to arrive out of nowhere proclaiming the birth of a child who would bring Peace on Earth. AND, goodwill among the all the people. Go and see for yourself, sing the hosts! You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.
Oh my goodness, they must have said to themselves! I’m not ready for this. We will be expected to bring gifts to the baby shower, and it’s a week until payday, and what do you buy for someone who can get people to respect one another and help one another? We’ll never get there on time!
But alas, they do as they are told by their heavenly visitors. There was a manger, a corn crib, with a man named Joseph, a woman named Mary, and between them, a child, wrapped in swaddling cloths. This must be the One! As they hurry back to the business of sheep-herding they tell everyone along the way what had happened and what they had seen. As if it could possibly be put into words. Yet, Luke tells us, all who heard what they did say were amazed. Meanwhile, back at the manger, the young girl pondered all of this in her heart, exhausted and yet radiant for having delivered the child the angel Gabriel had announced she was to name Jesus – Yeshua, “he who saves, or “he who redeems.”
It should come as no surprise that Luke writes a somewhat coded tale of just how the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood – as is proclaimed every day on the sign outside Christ Church Rock Spring Parish. Beginning with the name: perhaps we are meant to see the irony in the child’s name. Named after the first Yeshua, or Joshua, who “fit the battle at Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down,” this new Yeshua would be among us as a man of peace and goodwill. His only weapons were prayer and a healing presence. People felt renewed, restored, or just plain different after an encounter with Jesus. He tells his disciples to put down all weapons. He redeems his very name from being that of a mighty warrior to one who cares for, transforms, renews and feeds everyone in sight; all who come to him; all whom he seeks and gathers like a shepherd for people in need, people who are lost, people who need some kind of new direction in their lives.
We may also notice that “a child in swaddling cloths” is mentioned three times: first, we are told Mary wraps him in swaddling cloths; next, the shepherds are told to look for a child in swaddling clothes; and indeed, there they find him, lying in a manger. Many who first heard Luke’s tale would recognize at least two passages in Hebrew Scripture mention swaddling clothes. King Solomon, in the book of Wisdom, reflects on his common connection with all humanity: “...with swaddling clothes and with constant care I was nurtured. For no king has any different origin or birth, but one is the entry into life for us all; and in the same way they leave it.” [Wisdom 7:6] This image is meant to direct us to reflect on our common humanity. As St Paul prays, our God “has made of one blood all the peoples of the earth.” [Acts 17:26] Do we see this? Do we hear this? Do we believe all people are of one blood as we hear this story told?
And just how curious is it, that God sends his messengers, the Heavenly Host, to announce this astonishing news to a seemingly random group of shepherds? God might have sent them to Caesar, who at the time was in possession of the land and all the peoples therein. Or, to one of the Herods, Caesar’s appointed regents. Or, more locally to Pilate. Or, even to the Chief Priests in Jerusalem, or to the utterly faithful Pharisees, to name a few more likely candidates. But shepherds wander; they journey from place-to-place seeking food and water for their sheep. They know how to sustain life not only for their sheep and goats, but for themselves as well. It is no accident that the first and most famous King of Israel was a ruddy young shepherd boy, David. He had walked the hills and the valleys, the rough roads and the smooth, watching and leading his father’s sheep. Prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel use the image of shepherds for those chosen to lead the people of God: Jesus’s father’s “sheep.” Shepherds know that life, especially the spiritual life, is a journey, a never ending, always changing, journey. Suggesting that all of us who come into this world in swaddling clothes are wanderers, people on a journey with others – all others. The babe in the manger will grow up to be a good shepherd, caring for the “sheep” of his Father’s pasture. In just a few sentences, Luke manages to take us deep into the mystery of this child’s birth.
Once upon a time, years ago at St. Peter’s in Ellicott City, we delivered invitations to our entire neighborhood to come visit our church on a Friday evening in Advent. It was an intentional act of evangelism. With one small hitch: we forgot to put the address of the church on the invitation! Nevertheless, people came. Someone suggested lighting a little incense to give the full flavor of what Anglo-Catholic worship is like in all its ritual and transcendence. I was in the hallway, having prepared the coals in the thurible, placing some grains of frankincense on the coals. As the vapor began to rise, a tiny voice behind me said, “That’s the mystery!” I turned, and there was our youngest daughter, Cerny, with her friend Allison, pointing to the incense and declaring, “That’s the mystery!” I thought, “Yes, that’s what Christmas is all about – the mystery that God loves us so much as to come down and dwell among us.” That’s the mystery, just as she said.
A few grains of incense
Scattered on the coals
Smoke begins to rise
The little girl
Standing there
Opens wide her eyes
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
See that star up in the sky
Shining on the place
Where the tiny child lies
Lighting up his face
Can you see the angels there
Up there in the light
Singing songs for all the world
Singing through the night
Hear those angels flying by
Calling out His name
Telling us He’ll change the world
Nothing will be the same
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
Jesus lying in the manger
Listen to him cry
He already seems to know that
He was born to die
To die to hate
To die to greed
To die to power and sin
To die to everything that blocks
The God who lives within
Within our hearts
Within our souls
Within our minds and hands
The God who is Emmanuel
Breaths His Spirit through all the lands
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
A child looks and sees the scene
Eats bread and drinks the wine
Seems to know what all this means
Now and for all time
Can we see him
Can we hear him
Can he make us all his own?
If he came down here right now
Would he recognize this as home?
Whenever there are two or three
Gathered in my name
You’ll see the brokenhearted and the poor
The blind, the sick, the lame
Being welcomed, being served
Given dignity and love
Giving thanks for all good gifts
That come down from above
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
See the baby
See his mother
See the bread and wine
See the angels
See the stars
See that everything is fine
He lives in us
He gives us breath
He calls us to be his own
He calls us to the manger stall
To make that place our home
Then he rises on the clouds
To wake us from our sleep
As we gather to see Him one more time
In the darkness that is so deep
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
The angels and the stars
The shepherds and the light
The incense and the bread and wine
All call us to this night
To enter deeper into the tale
Of how God came to Earth
To sing the mystery of love come down
The mystery of his birth
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
“That’s the mystery,” she says!
“That’s the mystery!”
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