Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve “THE GRACE OF GOD” 12/24/06

As a teenager I used to wonder: “If Jesus were to walk into our world, would anyone recognize Him?” I wondered, and at times still wonder, if I would be one of those visionary people, sufficiently sensitive, so as to recognize God’s only Son if He were to cross the path of this modern world. Scriptures remind us that when we meet “the least” within our world, we may well be meeting Jesus. Unlike “Where’s Waldo?” where’s the Savior is not a game. When the star of Bethlehem shone brightly, the angels sang with joy, and humble people came to see why! Shepherds and angels were all in on the miracle…and, unlike all the prosperous, self-absorbed people celebrating within the over-crowded city of Bethlehem, these outcasts on the outskirts recognized the Savior in their midst. They recognized what Paul, in our Titus text, calls “the grace of God.” (2:11)

Searching for a savior…we, you and I, are still part of this ancient legacy. Every generation looks for someone to save them from cynicism, hopelessness, aimlessness…

simply stated, someone to save us from the worst that is in us! Back on November 7^th our nation made many decisions, hoping to discover the “right” combination of leadership to save us from ourselves. Do we believe they will, or they can? This is part of the human condition, to be looking for someone who will light the way for us, who will show us the best in us, who will provide us all we need to enter and to exit this complicated, mysterious, wondrous, frightening, difficult world.

Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, written in the late 1960’s, presented a gloomy picture of the last half of the 20^th century. Toffler prophesied that the breaking down of community, the social revolution that was changing the roles and attitudes of women and families, the increasing speed by which change and technological progress was occurring would change forever the way we live together. He wrote of the inability of people to bond with each other because they could no longer trust that the corporation would let them stay in one place for very long. The constant upheaval of changing location , in the late 1960’s, was already taking a toll on people’s ability to build strong communities together and this reality is more true 40 years later.

By 1980, Alvin Toffler had to admit that his predictions had fallen far short of reality. The future, indeed, was arriving and crashing down upon us even faster than he had ever thought could happen. Technology outpaces our ability to keep up with the ethics it demands. Science is outstripping our ability to deal with its consequences. Young people over these past 20 years have consistently commented that life is frightening for them. When I ask “Why?” they say, “Because there are too many choices. We don’t know where to begin to look for our future or if we’ll have a future. We are not sure what we can count on!”

Billy Graham once said: “50 years ago the ultimate question for people was, ‘What is truth?’ That is no longer true, for now people are asking, ‘What’s the point?’” What’s the point of marriage if so many get divorced? What’s the point of hard work if the company might eliminate your job at anytime? What’s the point of a college degree if there aren’t any jobs for you upon graduation? What’s the point of eating healthy when science keeps changing its mind about what will kill us? Life is nerve-wracking and most of us don’t like our nerves “wracked”!

It is into this nerve-wracked world of ours that God sends His Son… “For the grace of God has appeared.” It’s been written that “The manger is an intersection between heaven and earth, where our hopes for God meet God’s hopes for us.” The phrase “lying in a manger” appears three times in our Gospel this night. “Lying in a manger”…words so familiar that we don’t really hear the meaning behind them. You wouldn’t know it to look at the illustrations on Christmas cards, but stables are smelly places. A working livestock farm is kept mucked out and hosed down, but there’s still no mistaking the smell of urine and manure. I don’t mean to spoil your “holly, jolly Christmas,” but to surface the fact that we so soften the focus and gild the image to such an extent that we can’t see the marvel of it. We’ve traded “fuzzy feelings” for the “jaw-dropping awe” of Christmas! The thought of God dirtying a diaper shocks us, so we sing of “the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.” We dare to be honest when we ask, “What child is this, who laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?” and “Why lies he in such mean estate, where ox and ass are feeding?” We want our God to have better than stink and straw! We are practicing revisionist history. We’ve so scrubbed up Christmas that we’ve nearly thrown out the baby with the bathwater…remembering that there was, likely no bathwater back then in the Bethlehem barn!

The late Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler (from nearby Richmond, Indiana) was fond of saying, “Don’t begrudge the world its tinseled Christmas---it’s all they’ve got!” But, that’s not all there is! You and I, and all who believe, have the real deal. When we look into Jesus’ face, God looks back at us. God returns on Christmas to physically deliver a personal message: I come into your midst, surrounded by straw and manure, to show you that I love you, just as you are…in the middle of your muck and muddles and mistakes and messes. Tonight, this Christmas Eve, God reaches out from the straw to hold your heart in a baby’s hand.

Amen.