The Nativity of Our Lord:  Christmas Eve     December 24, 2008

Luke 2:1-20   Pastor Julie Webb

I’m so glad to be part of this gathering tonight.  It’s good to be with all of you.  It’s good to be inside, after such a blustery day!  And this story is good news.  --Good news all over again, this Christmas, in a world that seems very much to need good news, all over again.

But I wonder whether this good news is for us.

I don’t know whether you noticed what I noticed, in this reading from Luke’s gospel; did you notice that the good news is directed to outsiders?  Right from the start, Luke makes a point of that. 

This is a story of a child who isn’t born to a wealthy family, or even to a very socially respectable one. His parents are lower-class folk from the Nazareth area—you might say they’re from the backwater.  There’s something questionable about her pregnancy.  And their country has been occupied by a foreign power.  This foreign power has the power to make them travel, even though she’s nine months pregnant, so they can be counted in a census . . . Why?  --So their taxes can be increased, so the foreign government can take more of their money.  On top of that, Luke says, the couple can’t even find a private place for her to give birth, at the end of their journey:  there’s not enough room, and they end up with the animals.  Think about it—if they had money (even “comfortable means,” as we call it), or status, or influence, they wouldn’t have to go through all this.  But they’re outsiders, aren’t they?

The child is born, and God makes sure the important people get this good news.  God sends a heavenly chorus . . . to the religious leaders, right?  --To the king?  --To the mayor?  Nope.  God sends divine messengers to the really rough-living, smelly rejects.  The street people—the shepherds.  Pretty much the bottom rung of the social ladder.  The fireworks are for them.  Ta dah!  say the heavenly messengers.  God is sending you a sign!  And what will that sign be?  Why, a trumpet fanfare in the Jerusalem Temple, of course!  No?  How about a vision that causes the king a change of heart?  No.  Hey, for you, shepherds, the sign will be another welfare kid, born in a stall!  Glory to God!  Have a good night!  The good news is for outsiders, and the sign they are given isn’t something that an insider would even recognize.

So, maybe this good news isn’t for us.  It’s for the outsiders.  God comes to the outsiders.  God could not make it much clearer.

I used to work as a jail chaplain, and I often tell people that if you want to find an appreciative audience, if you want to find a group of people who are looking for good news of any kind, jail is a good place to look.  Maybe some of you have been in jail, and know what I’m talking about.  By the time you’ve been through the humiliation that is Intake, and been shut away in a little cell, and heard the door lock from the outside, you’ve gotten the message that you’re an outsider.  Society doesn’t even want to know you’re there.  And worst of all, it’s probably your own fault you are where you are.  You carry within yourself all the reasons why you don’t deserve good news, and yet you are hungry for it.  Most of all, you’re hungry to know that someone cares about you.

The Holy One comes to people in jail and prison.  If you’re an outsider, if you know that you need love and have no power to acquire love for yourself, then Love comes to you.

If you are living on the street, this good news is for you.  If you are addicted to drugs or alcohol, this good news is for you.  If you have just lost your job, or are worried about paying the rent, this good news is for you.  If you’ve been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, Love comes to you.  If you’re missing a loved one during this holiday, there is love here for you.  If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered—if you know you’re an outsider, if people exclude you or threaten you or lift themselves up as superior to you, then this message of love comes straight from God to you, just as it did to those outsiders in Luke’s gospel.  And if that sounds weird or offensive to anyone, then I think you’re really hearing the gospel the way Luke told it.  Christ comes to the ones who need him most.

Oscar Romero said:

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor.  The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God—for them there will be no Christmas.  Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone.  That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us.  Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

The Holy One comes to outsiders, to the poor in spirit, to those who know they need love.  To them, God comes, not in some flashy way, not in a way that dominates the weak.  God comes as a weak one, little and ordinary, the very power of life hidden in one of the outcasts.  God with us, Emmanuel.  And unless we really need this Messiah, this Jesus, we won’t even recognize him when he comes.    

Only if you have a need and recognize it can you see when it is met.  You know what it’s like when you’ve been hiking, or working outdoors all day, and at the end of the day, someone sets a meal in front of you?  It can be the simplest meal in the world, but it tastes like ambrosia.  This is doubly true if you’ve missed a meal or two, right?  When you really are aware of your hunger, then you’re really ready to eat.  When you know your need, then you’ll be able to see when that need is being met.

Is the news of Jesus’ birth good news for us?  He comes to seek and to save the ones who are lost.  He comes to heal a wounded world, and to show that the Holy One is present in our suffering.  He comes to the outsiders, to the poor and to the poor in spirit.  He comes to us, to all of us, as pure grace.  We can do nothing to be worthy of the love he offers.  Do you need him?  What do you need?  If you are aware that you need some good news, then tonight Love comes for you.