Rome Improvement 12/24/2020

MORE POWER! MORE GLORY!! MORE SPIRIT!!!

SURVEYING THE SITE—Luke 2:1-20

In many ways, I think of the Gospel of Luke as a musical. It seems like every time you turn around someone is singing. We have heard the songs of Elizabeth, Mary, and Zechariah.

Mary and Joseph get to Bethlehem this week only to discover that not only are all the relatives’ homes are full, but so are the motels are full and there is nowhere to stay. They end up in a place where the eating place, manger, is the only place, apparently, to place the newborn child, Jesus. We do not get to hear that song, but I am sure Mary is singing a psalm of complaint and Joseph responds with psalms of consolation and comfort.

Switch to the shepherds watching their sheep. They are casually talking about the events of the day when, suddenly, spotlights blind them. From the heavens they hear that they are not to be afraid; great things are happening. The savior of the world is being born. Then, choirs in heaven begin singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven…”

The shepherds leave their hills and go to see the thing the angels spoke of. They see the baby and tell Mary everything they have been told. Another song? Finally, the shepherds return to the hills with their sheep, singing songs of praise. I’m sure it was “Joy to the World.”

READING THE BLUEPRINT

Beloved of God, in this orderly account given by Luke, we are told that Joseph and Mary leave Nazareth and go to Bethlehem to be counted in the census. When they arrive, they find no place, not even in the celebration dining room (usually translated as inn). We will not find this dining room word again in Luke’s Gospel until Jesus meets with his disciples at the Last Supper.

Mary goes into labor, delivers a boy child whom she names Jesus, and creates a new eating place for the world when she places him in the manger. Into this messiness of life—of blood, struggle, pain, and celebration, this life, our lives—Jesus comes to be God’s vulnerable presence among us. This is what the shepherds witness and tell. At the Last Supper we again witness the body and blood of new birth, new covenant, and Christ’s death and resurrection presented before us.

ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE

There is more to this text than the pastoral image we favor. We admire and adore the father and mother of Jesus standing on either side of a hay-filled manger. Around them are animals, some shepherds (sometimes at a distance), and three wise men with camels and gifts.

As pleasing as this tableau is, it does not touch the subversive nature of this text. Luke tells of Jesus’ mother Mary (Miriam, in Hebrew, their rebellion), giving birth to the Son of the Most High, the Son of God, titles belonging to the emperor.

Yet, on this night, on the night of Jesus’ birth, the titles of the world are set aside. God’s son, Jesus (God saves), addresses the pretensions of Caesar Augustus, Herod the Great, Quirinius, and all those who would rule the world. As Caesar wants to count the people for the purposes of taxes, the one who is born in Bethlehem not only knows the number of people, but also the number of hairs on your head, on every head, of every person, not for the purposes of taxation, but because of the intimate love relationship that God has with all creation. 

Further, Luke tells us that the witness of this amazing event is not for the elite. This birth is for shepherds, for the poor, the hungry, the down-trodden, the scorned of the world. Their presence at the birth of the child is not from afar, not at a distance. The shepherds’ presence is an integral part of declaring who Jesus is.

Jesus is the one who is proclaimed from the heavens. He is the one who is declared to be the savior who is Christ the Lord, the one who is born of David’s lineage in the city of David, in Bethlehem, whose name means house of bread. He is the one who will become our bread of life. This bread is not the gift of the Caesar. It is a gift from God, who fills the hungry with good things, who casts down the haughty, and lifts up the oppressed. The one who is born is the one who will shake the foundations of the world and lead us into new ways of living, ways that will challenge the very authority of the Caesar and all of the imperially minded for the rest of time.

PUTTING UP THE WALLS

The earliest creed of the Church is “Jesus is Lord.” It is such a simple statement, but in the world of Rome, Caesar was lord. This faith statement challenges the authority of all who would rule over us. “Jesus is Lord” says that there is nothing higher than God’s presence among us. There is no pledge, oath, symbol, or nation that has greater authority over us than God’s love alone. In our nation, even our flag submits to the empty cross. God’s loving word, revealed to us in the person of Jesus, stands above and beyond all other obligations.

HANGING TRIM

This year, as we “virtually” worship with one another, let us see the Christ-child laid in the eating place before us and see our altars with the substantial elements of bread and wine laid out before us with God’s words, “Given for you.” May we know Christ’s presence in the altars of our hearts, altered by Christ’s presence in our lives, and then join in the song of Luke’s Gospel, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace among those whom he favors.”.