Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20
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ISAIAH 9:2-7
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
3 You have multiplied exultation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
4 For the yoke of their burden
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
5 For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
6 For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7 Great will be his authority,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Looking in at the grotto, surrounded by a lot of people from all over, I thought, "Sure, why not, it's grubby enough, it's ordinary enough, this could be it. And if it isn't, well, it's as good a place as any in this city—this city under oppression as it seemingly always has been."
I'm referring to Bethlehem and my experience almost forty years ago, visiting the Church of the Holy Nativity and the very spot, according to tradition, where Mary bedded down and, through the ordeal that is human reproduction, birthed the most consequential human being to have wandered the continents of this planet.
I didn't say the smartest, the most charismatic, the strongest or most attractive, or even the most creative. Just the most consequential.
I was entirely unimpressed as a young man—a theologically uninformed young man—when I paused briefly before the spot and then was relentlessly and inexorably pushed forward and away by the surging crowd and the urgings of the officials.
Indeed at every place in my three months in Israel/Palestine, I was underwhelmed—underwhelmed by the dust and grime of all the holy sites, so ordinary, I came to see in retrospect that they actually "got it."
They actually captured how it is that God glories in ordinary, grotto humans, and by glorying in the ordinary, highlights how everything about us is truly extraordinary.
Jesus' birth is the fulfillment of the great prophetic tradition in Israel, a prime example being our reading from Isaiah tonight.
This prophetic tradition was itself an evolutionary development of religion.
Long story short, ancient humans intuited gods in almost all of Creation—in its forces, creatures, and in the world's unfolding. There's wisdom in that ancient view; surely the world is suffused with divine presence, is it not?
The Jews were gifted with the sense that out of this plurality, there was One, the Lawgiver, the One who gives us a sense of universal justice instead of justice defined by the powerful.
This revelation makes a universal civilization possible while respecting cultural differences. It makes possible things like the equality of persons, the declaration of human rights, and the gradual realization that majority cultures have colonized and oppressed indigenous people.
Over time it has worked like a surgeon to expose wounds and bring healing possibilities to women and those who, throughout history, were mistreated as scapegoats, people like our LGBTQ neighbours.
A civilization of Law, given by the supreme Lawgiver, is an extraordinary advance on "My god is better than your god; therefore, you must now be my slave and serve my god."
But something is also lost, the sheer wonder of God's closeness, the sense that now if I break God's law, I fall under God's judgement. Though God's law flows from God's loving-kindness to human beings, God's identity becomes not so much provider and sustainer, but judge.
God can now seem to be "against us" instead of "for us" and certainly not "with us."
...which is why the prophets realized, Moses' revolution, however important, however world-changing, could not be the final chapter of the story.
And so you've got in the prophet Isaiah the language that brings together the language of "mighty God" with a child being born, with the implements of war being burned and giving way to a human who provides such wonderful counsel that right authority can develop endlessly leading, astoundingly, to universal peace.
These astounding metaphors are taken up by the angels, and they bear down [o pun intended], and this is the central mystery of Christmas, of that little cooing heart on a bed of straw.
Okay, that's the romance of it. But of course, both the prophets and the angels are wrong, aren't they?
Yes, they are, at least in terms of being read literally, at least in terms of being read triumphally. And because this has been the main way Christmas has been presented, more and more people are not convinced, they are unimpressed.
But what if the Christian message was never meant to solve the world's problems in a flourish of solutions, or by proclaiming as I did that tonight we celebrate the birth of the most consequential human being who has ever lived?
Rather, and is difficult to show (given the accouterments of the season and the romance that surrounds it), these words are meant to convey, if you will, both the sheer ordinariness, the downright grubbiness of the original setting and event, and the realization that here we have the way and work of God revealed.
In the years that followed my visit to the Church of the Nativity, I came to believe that God against us will not work. There is no God, even the One God, the one we call Almighty God, who will swoop down and set all the evildoers to rights. The language and the metaphors point us in a different direction.
Even the language of God for us, Jesus, the God who forgives us, is still at one remove, doesn't quite capture it. Finally, it must resolve into Emmanuel, God with us. Not back to "your god against my God"—we get to keep the universal nature of the revolution started by Israel—but the one God in and through all.
Then this one ordinary birth in a dingy grotto reveals how all that is ordinary, including every birth, every human development, is extraordinary.
Christmas is not about being impressed by Christ as the most consequential solver of all our problems. Rather let us be impressed by what is, at first glance, so unimpressive: the possibility, now that God is with us, that every birth, every life, is consequential.
Everything else flows from this, whether it be the justice that needs to be pursued in Bethlehem or Abbotsford, whether it be how we help our teens live in an age when image defines who's consequential or not; whether it be that neighbour who is alone and who needs just some small act of kindness; whether it be that small step of courage your take in your ordinary life that no one seemingly cares about. Everything now shines with Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Bend down, take a brief look; it happened there, just so it happens here, in you! Merry Christmas!
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