THE INVASION: Luke 2:1—20

 

We Recognize this Place

Luke begins his story of Christmas on a bit of a sour note: taxes.  December is the time of year when we try not to think about the tax returns we all will be filing come 2023.

 In his reference to the revenue census, Luke reminds us that the birth of Jesus is not some tender-hearted Hallmark Christmas special with soft music and a quaint small-town setting. 

 Rather, we get taxes and a heavily pregnant woman traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem by foot or by donkey, fulfilling an Empire-mandated journey.  This is no trip to grandma’s house in the family minivan. When Joseph and Mary get to Bethlehem, the lodgings are all full and there are no spare beds.  Jesus is born outside and laid in a feed trough.

 This is important to Luke’s telling of the story.  The birth of the Son of God takes place in the real world, among the challenges of daily life. This happens in no fairy tale world; it transpires in the world where we live.  We recognize this place.

 Yet There Are Extraordinary Happenings Here

Nonetheless, angels appear in the story.  And the glory of the Lord shines down from on high.  This is no ordinary night.  The shepherds are given a message from another realm.  They are told that the most ordinary of things—an infant swaddled in cloths lying in a feeding trough—is a sign of something extraordinary. It is a sign that the Messiah, the Lord, has come.  This is no ordinary evening.

 The angels sing:

Glory to God in the highest

heaven,

 and on earth peace among

those whom he favors.

In the birth of this child, heaven and earth embrace one another. 

 Celtic spirituality developed the concept of “thin places.”  A thin place is a physical location where the separation between the divine and the earth is considered to be thin. In other words, the Divine is unusually accessible.  That feed trough was the thinnest of all places.  It is so thin, one could call it an invasion.

 The Invasion

An elderly Dutch woman remembers the dark days before the Christmas of 1944, recalling how each night they sat secretly around the wireless, eagerly hoping to hear some coded message that meant the invasion has begun.  They would scan the skies looking for Allied planes and walk the dykes looking for ships on the horizon, and praying, always praying.  They were starving; the Jews were all gone. They wondered could they endure another year of Nazi occupation. 

 They knew they were powerless to save themselves.  Help must come from somewhere else.

 This is the message the angels bring. The invasion has begun; help is coming from somewhere else. They sing:

Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord.  And this will be a sign for you, you will find the baby wrapped is swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

This is something more durable than a visitation.  This is an invasion.  Few people took note night; Only Mary and Joseph and some shepherds marked the event.  Nevertheless, the invasion had begun.

 World Rejecting

This is not a story about fleeing or escaping this world.  Rather, the Creator of the heavens and the earth enters our world and our lives.

 The German sociologist Max Weber observed that Christianity is not a world fleeing faith.  It is a world rejecting faith.  It is a faith that plants itself amid life in this world and says: “I reject what you have done to one another. I reject what you have done to my creation.  I reject the shallow and passing things you have grown to crave.”

God in Christ simply refuses to leave us and our world the way we are.  This child will grow up to comfort and renew and forgive and love.  He will also grow up to challenge and confront and correct. The one thing he will not do is leave us and our world as it is.

 Mary had already warned us as she contemplated what God would do through this child:

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
    but has sent the rich away empty. (1:51-53

 God simply will not leave us alone.

 God Was All In

We who celebrate this child’s birth should be sober about what is really happening in the shadows of that night long ago.  This is no dreamy holiday production.  This is an invasion.

In George MacDonald’s allegorical fairy tale, The Golden Key, a young heroine meets the Old Man of the Earth on her quest for the land from which the shadows fall. The Old Man of the Earth guides her on to the next leg of her journey.

Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.
"That is the way," he said.
"But there are no stairs."
"You must throw yourself in. There is no other way.”

 God threw Godself into our world that night in that baby; there was no other way.

 Jim Kelsey

Executive Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State

Art Credit: Adoration of the Child by Gerard van Honthorst, Uffizi, Florence.

 

Art Credit: Adoration of the Child by Gerard van Honthorst, Uffizi, Florence.