Christmas Eve 2008
Luke 2:1-14Inconspicuous Family
The social worker was trying to be helpful, I suppose. Counseling a couple who was about to adopt a child of a different race, she told them, "There will be obstacles. You must realize that you are about to become what is known as a ‘conspicuous family.’"
The couple, quite understandably, did not find that a very helpful term. Why "conspicuous?" Why not just "different?" And why think of difference as an obstacle to be overcome? Surely the point is not that our family will be conspicuous, but that that other people should learn to be more accepting.
Centuries of tradition have made Mary and Joseph the world’s most "conspicuous family," but if you read Luke’s story carefully, you will discover that they were just the opposite. A carpenter and his wife from the upcountry town of Nazareth, come south to Bethlehem on the order of Caesar Augustus -- nothing special about that. According to Luke, the "whole world" was doing the same – shuffling from their current residence to their ancestral home. Being a descendant of the "house and family of David," Joseph was obliged to go to Bethlehem, the home of his famous ancestor.
Joseph, however, was not famous – not conspicuous. He didn’t even have enough pull to get as much as a spot on a distance cousin’s floor, much less a room in the inn. Perhaps he was one of those cousins nobody wants to acknowledge. Most of us have at least one of those. And, apparently, having a wife large with child didn’t earn him any special favors, either.
I was driving to church early last Sunday morning listening to a BBC radio story about a reporter who had decided to retrace the journey of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem. He decided to take a donkey along with him, the announcer said in his introduction, "because the Bible says Mary rode a donkey."
So much for the reliability of the famed BBC. The Bible says no such thing. There’s no mention of a donkey anywhere in Luke’s birth narrative. But you can be sure that reporter got all sorts of attention leading a donkey past checkpoints from Israel into the West Bank, and out again. He’d already been through three donkeys, and was on his fourth when he filed his report. An Englishman and a donkey traveling through the West Bank -- now that is a conspicuous couple.
I don’t miss the donkey in Luke’s story. I do wish Luke had mentioned the panic in Joseph’s heart when he realized that there was no midwife available and he himself would have to attend to Mary.
I came very close to that role almost 26 years ago. I found myself sitting with my wife in the front seat of a Ford Escort in a deserted parking lot thirty-five miles from the nearest hospital in the middle of the worst blizzard the Commonwealth of Virginia had seen in 30 years. We’d already tried the main highway. It would have been too risky to go on, so we pulled back into town. The contractions were getting closer together. We found a phone and called 911, but the volunteer rescue squad – the only ambulance service available -- was out on another call. There was a chance they could rustle up the back-up unit.
"You’d better go back to your wife and wait," the dispatcher advised.
Ever since that night, I’ve never been able to read the story of Jesus’ birth without breaking out in a cold sweat.
Luke spares us the details – the panting, the blood, the screams – Mary’s and the baby’s, and for all I know, Joseph’s as well. It was an ordinary birth, if there is ever such a thing -- an inconspicuous birth to an inconspicuous family.
Word quickly gets out, however. Shepherds – the most unlikely witnesses – are startled to bump into an angel who stands before them surrounded by "the glory of the Lord." The shepherds are, of course, terrified. Who wouldn’t be?
"Do not be afraid," the angel tells them, "for see – I am bringing you good news of a great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savoir who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."
How strange this story is. Even after all these centuries, even after tradition has added a donkey and an innkeeper, and an ox, and an ass, and a little drummer boy, and God knows what else, the utter strangeness of this story still comes through.
Who would have thought to look for the Savior of the world wrapped in homespun and lying in a feed box? How utterly out of place is this "multitude of the heavenly host" in a rocky field outside a village in a backwater of the Roman Empire.
None of this comes as a surprise to Luke, of course. He set all this up in the first chapter of his Gospel. It began with the angel Gabriel appearing to an old childless priest named Zechariah. "You’re going to be a daddy," the angel told him, and he nearly fell off his walker.
"How can this be?" Zechariah asked. "Do you realize how old my wife Elizabeth really is?’
Gabriel fared better with Mary. He told her she would conceive and bear a son who would be called Son of God. Mary had some questions, too, but in the end she said, "Hear am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word."
That fact that Mary, who hasn’t spent a day in seminary, turns out to be more responsive to God’s word than Zechariah, who has a wall full of diplomas, is not missed by Luke. Everything about Luke’s gospel is about ordinary people discovering God’s extraordinary grace made flesh in Mary’s baby -- this ordinary, inconspicuous baby who, we find out later on a hill called Golgotha, really is the Son of God.
One way of looking at Christmas is to see that it’s about God’s decision to show us that nobody is inconspicuous in God’s eyes -- that you don’t have to be a priest to appreciate good news, that even people as low on the social ladder as these shepherds do receive God’s special attention.
One phrase is repeated several times in the birth narratives: "Do not be afraid." It’s said to Zechariah and Joseph Mary, and finally to the shepherds. "Do not be afraid."
Don’t be afraid, Joseph, as your buddies make jokes at your expense about your pregnant fiancée Mary. Don’t be afraid, Mary, as you trust the Holy Spirit to come upon you. Don’t be afraid, shepherds. Mary will not send you away because you wreak of sweat and sheep dung.
Don’t be afraid, beloved in Christ, on this night in this uncertain economy. Don’t be afraid when you feel you are not in control. Don’t be afraid to trust the good news of God’s love that will not let you go, and God’s presence through this child of Bethlehem.
Don’t be afraid that you don’t count, or that you are unworthy because you are different. This is a different kind of Savior who embodies a different kind of God.
Jesus’ birth is good news for all the people. God has pitched his tent among us. We are not alone and we need not be afraid.
If you would like to receive these sermons by e-mail, send a note to brant@oldfirstchurch.org.