The Christmas Story

Whether it is Christmas day, we're going to do something just a little different today, and it's not just getting out early. That isn't be different. But that's not the only thing. Today, rather than expounding a text of Scripture, I'm just going to read the Christmas story. Now, hold on a second. Before you decide to settle into the pew for a long-wind or nap, thinking, I've heard all this before, I know. And the very commonness of the story causes us to miss out on some of the wonder. But I want to tell it in a way today that recaptures some of that wonder of the story of Christ's coming when he came to planet Earth. I want to tell the story with hopefully a little bit of creativity and some sanctified imagination. Actually there are two reasons for doing this today. First of all, because the story has become so routine, we really don't think anymore about what really happened. Secondly, this has become somewhat of a Christmas tradition for me here at Johnston Chapel when Christmas Day falls on Sunday. I actually put this presentation together in 1997 and presented it to some of you who were here then for the first time on December 21, 1997. But it was in 2005 when I recognized Christmas was going to be on Sunday, but I thought, let's do this again. So we did it in 2005, again in 2011, and low, once again, we find Christmas Day happening on Sunday. So this has become somewhat of a tradition for me as regards how to celebrate Christmas Day with you and your families here at the chapel. There are two elements of the story of Christ's birth that deeply intrigue me. One is the inexplicable mystery of the incarnation that God would lower Himself to become man. We should be amazed at that. The second is the very real and common circumstances of the people and events surrounding His birth. We seldom stop to think that Mary and Joseph were real people, just like us, and to imagine what those awesome events must have meant to them. With the help of the creative writing skills of Max Lucato and Philip Yancy and Ken Gyer and Kent Hughes, I want to try to tell the story in a way that grasps both the awesomeness of His coming and the very common circumstances of the event itself. Gabriel must have scratched his head at this one. He wasn't one to question His God-given missions. Sending fire and dividing seas were all in an eternity's work for this angel. When God sent, Gabriel went. And when word got out that God was to become man, Gabriel was enthused. He could envision the moment, the Messiah, in a blazing chariot, the King descending on a fiery cloud, an explosion of light from which the Messiah would emerge. Well, that's what he expected. What he never expected, however, was what he got. A slip of paper with a Nazareth address. God would become a baby, it read. Tell the mother to name the child Jesus and tell her not to be afraid. Gabriel was never one to question, but this time he had to wonder. God will become a baby. Gabriel had seen babies before. He had been platoon leader on the bull rush operation. He remembered what little Moses looked like. That's okay for humans, he thought to himself, but God? The heavens can't contain him. How could the body of a little baby contain him? Besides, have you seen what comes out of those babies? Hardly befitting for the creator of the universe. Babies must be carried and fed, bounced and bathed to imagine some mother burping the son of God on her shoulder? Now that was beyond what even an angel could imagine. So Gabriel scratched his head. What happened to the good old days? The Sodom and Gomorrah stuff, flooding the globe, flaming swords. That's the action he liked. But Gabriel had his orders. Take the message to Mary. Must be a special girl he assumed as he traveled. But Gabriel was in for another shock. One peak told him Mary was no queen. The mother to be of the son of God was not regal. She was a Jewish peasant who'd barely outgrown her acne and had a crush on a guy named Joe. And speaking of Joe, what does this fellow know? Might as well be a weaver in Spain or a cobbler in Greece? He's a carpenter. Look at him over there. Saw dust in his beard and nail apron around his waist. You're telling me God's son is going to have dinner with him every night? You're telling me the source of wisdom is going to call this guy, Dad? You're telling me a common laborer is going to be charged with providing food for the Messiah? What if his meager business falls off? What if he gets cranky? What if he hears about Mary expecting and decides to run off with a pretty young girl down the street? Then where will we be? It was all Gabriel could do to keep from turning back. This is a peculiar idea you have, God. He must have muttered to himself. Nonetheless, he went obediently on his way to deliver this important message. Are God's angels given to such musings? Are we? Are we still stunned by God's coming to our planet? Still staggered by the event? Christmas still spawned the same speechless wonder it did 2,000 years ago. Our view of the next event is really influenced more by the beautiful scenes on Christmas cards than by reality. Christmas art shows Jesus' family, the holy family, as icons stamped in gold foil complete with halos. In the paintings, a calm Mary receives the news of the birth as a kind of benediction, but that is not at all how Luke tells the story. Mary was, and I quote, greatly troubled and afraid at the angel's appearance, and when Gabriel delivered the lofty words about the son of the most high whose kingdom will never end, Mary had one thing only on her mind. But I'm a virgin! Mary's predicament has undoubtedly lost some of its force for us today, but in a closely knit Jewish community in the first century, the news Gabriel delivered could not have been entirely welcome. The law regarded a betrothed woman who became pregnant as an adulteress, subject to death by stoning. Matthew tells of Joseph generously agreeing to divorce Mary rather than press charges until an angel shows up to calm his feelings of betrayal with an explanation. Luke tells of Mary hurrying off to the one person who could possibly understand what she was going through her relative Elizabeth, who has miraculously become pregnant in old age following another angelic message. Elizabeth indeed believes Mary's story and shares her joy, and yet the scene pointedly underscores the contrast between the two women. The whole countryside is talking about the miracle of Elizabeth's healed womb, meanwhile Mary has to hide the shame of her own miracle. A few months later the birth of John the Baptist took place with great fanfare, complete with midwives doting relatives in the traditional village chorus, celebrating the birth of a Jewish male. Six months after that Jesus would be born far from home with no midwife extended family or village chorus present. A male household head of household would have suffice for the Roman census. The Joseph take Mary with him on such a hard journey because he knew that no one would help her in Nazareth should her time come. For a few tense months the eternal fate of mankind rested in the responses of two rural teenagers. How many times must Mary have gone over the angel's words as she felt the son of God kicking inside her? How many times must Joseph have second guessed his own encounter with an angel? Was it just a dream? As he endured the hot shame of living among neighbors who could plainly see the changing shape of the woman he planned to marry. We know nothing of Jesus' grandparents. What must they have felt? Did they respond like so many parents of unmarried teenagers today with an outburst of fury and lectures followed by that terribly awkward mix of humiliation and loving desire to help their children? Or maybe perhaps a period of solace silence until it last the bright-eyed newborn arrives to melt the ice and arrange a fragile family truce? Nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal. It seems almost as if God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for his entrance as if to purposely identify with the most downtrodden and hurting of humanity. I am impressed that when the son of God came, he played by the rules, harsh rules. Several towns do not treat kindly young boys who grow up with questionable paternity. It has been observed that in modern times with family planning clinics offering ways to correct mistakes that might disgrace a family name, it is extremely improbable that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. He raised pregnancy in poor circumstances and with the father unknown would have been an obvious case for an abortion. And her talk of her having conceived as the result of the intervention of the Holy Spirit would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger. Thus, our generation needing a Savior more perhaps than any other that has ever existed would be too humane to allow one to be born. The Virgin Mary, though whose family was not planned except by God, had a different response. She heard the angel out, pondered the enormous consequences and replied, I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me, as you have said. Every great work of God comes with two edges, great joy and great pain. And Mary embraced both. She was the first to accept Jesus on his own terms regardless of the personal cost. Even though she gave birth to the Son of God, she would be the first to learn what it cost to follow Him. To deny herself, take up her cross and follow Him. For the census, the royal family had to travel 85 miles, Joseph walks while Mary, nine months pregnant, rides, side saddle on a donkey, feeling every jolt, every rut, every rock in the road. By the time they arrived, the small hamlet of Bethlehem is swollen from an influx of travelers. If we imagine that it was into a freshly swept county fair stable that Jesus was born, we miss the whole point. It was wretched, scandalous. In Bethlehem, the accommodations for travelers were primitive. The eastern end was the crudest of arrangements. Typically, it was a series of stalls built inside an enclosure and opening onto a common yard where the animals were kept. All the innkeeper provided was fodder for the animals and a fire to cook on. On that cold day when the expectant parents arrived, nothing at all was available, not even one of those crudestalls. And despite the urgency, no one would make room for them. But fortunately, the innkeeper is not all sheckles and mites. True, his stable is crowded with guests' animals. But if they could squeeze out a little privacy there, they were welcome to it. Joseph looks over at Mary whose attention is concentrated on fighting a contraction. But we'll take it. He tells the innkeeper without hesitation. The night is still when Joseph creeks open the stable door. As he does, a chorus of barn animals makes this cordent note of the intrusion. The stench is pungent and humid. As there have not been enough hours in the day to tend to the guests, let alone the livestock, small oil lamp, lint them by the innkeeper, flickers to dance shadows on the fence. A disquieting place for a woman in the throes of childbirth, far from home, far from family, far from what she had expected for her firstborn. But Mary makes no complaint. It is a relief just to finally get off the donkey. She leans back against the fence, her feet swollen, back aching, contractions growing stronger and closer together. The eyes dart around the stable, not a minute to lose. Quickly, a feeding trough would have to make dew for a crib. Hay would serve as a mattress if he could find enough of it dry. Blankets, blankets, ah, his robe, that would do. And those rags hung out to dry would help. A gripping contraction doubles Mary over and sends him racing for a bucket of water. The birth would not be easy, either for the mother or the child. For every royal privilege ended for this son at conception. A scream from Mary nifes through the calm of that silent night. Joseph returns breathless, water sloshing from the wooden bucket. The top of the baby's head has already pushed its way into the world. Sweat pours from Mary's contorted face as Joseph, the most unlikely midwife in all Judea, rushes to her side. There was sweat and pain and blood and cries as Mary reached to the heavens for help. The earth beneath her was cold and hard. The involuntary contractions are not enough and Mary has to push with all her strength almost as if God were refusing to come into the world without her help. Joseph places a garment beneath her and with a final push and alongside her labor is over, the Messiah has arrived. He elongated head from the constricting journey through the birth canal. Light skin as the pigment would take days and even weeks to surface. Mucous in his ears and nostrils wet and slippery from the antibiotic fluid. The son of the most high God, umbilically tied to a lowly Jewish girl. The baby chokes and coughs. Joseph instinctively turns him over and clears his throat. The smell of birth is mixed into a wretched bouquet with the stench of manure and aqued straw. Trimbling carpenter's hands clumsy with fear, grasp God's son's slippery with blood. The baby's limbs waving helplessly as if falling through space, his face grimacing as he gasps the cold air and as his cry pierces the night. Joseph shows him to Mary. She reaches for him and lays him by her side. His helpless cries subside. His tiny head bobs around on the unfamiliar terrain. This will be the first thing the infant king learns. Mary can feel his racing heartbeat as he grows to nurse. Think of it. Deity nursing from a young maiden. Could anything be more puzzling or profound? Joseph sits exhausted, silent, full of wonder. The baby finishes in size. The divine word reduced to a few unintelligible sounds. And for the first time, his eyes fix on his mothers. Deity straining to focus. The light of the world squinting. Tears pool in her eyes. She touches his tiny hand. And fingers that once sculpted mountain ranges, cling to her finger. She looks up at Joseph and through a water eval their souls touch. He crowds closer, cheap to cheek with his wife. Together, they stare in awe at the baby Jesus, whose heavy eyelids begin to close. The king of kings is tired. It has been a long journey. It has been an eternal leap down as if the Son of God rose from his splendor, stood poised at the rim of the universe, and dove headlong, speeding through the stars over the Milky Way to Earth's galaxy, finally past Arcturus, then just beyond our Son, plunging into a huddle of animals. Nothing could be lower. Where you would have expected angels there are only flies. Where you would have expected heads of state. There were only donkeys, a few halted cows, a nervous group of sheep, a tethered camel, and a fervive story of curious mice. Except for Joseph, there was no one to share Mary's pain or her joy. Yes, there were angels announcing the Savior's arrival, but only to a band of blue collar shepherds, and yes, a magnificent star shown in the sky to mark his birth, but only a few foreigners bothered to look up and follow it. Thus, in the little town of Bethlehem, that one silent night, the royal birth of God's son, tipped-toed quietly by as the world slept. Can we really grasp what it means to see the Son of God cooling in a feeding trough? Do we recognize how easily God can be overlooked in the busy shuffle of our lives? How many times we miss the working of God because we expect it to come in much different ways? Can we see that divine power is not communicated through human strength and ingenuity, but through our weakness? Can we see that through greatness comes not through the assertion of rights, but through their release, not through pushing to be noticed, but through quietly fitting into his plan? Can we see that even the lowest things become sacred when God is there? Now both Mary and the baby are sleeping. Joseph can't. Feelings are rushing through him like raging torrents, conflicting emotions, awe and anger, faith and fear, incredible joy and numbing shock and confusion, most of all confusion and questions. So he steps outside the stable area and paces anxiously, trying to express his thoughts to God. This isn't the way I planned it, God. This isn't the way I thought it would be, a barnyard with sheep and donkeys, hay and straw. My wife giving birth with only the stars to hear her pain. This isn't at all what I imagined. No, I imagined family, I imagined grandmother's, I imagined neighbors clustered outside the door and friends standing at my side. I imagined the house erupting with the first cry of the infant, slaps on the back, laughter. That's how I thought it would be. The midwife would hand me my newborn child and all the people would applaud. Mary would rest and we would celebrate. All of Nazareth would celebrate. But now. Now look. Nazareth is five days journey away and here we are in a sheep pin. Who will celebrate with us the sheep, the shepherds, the stars? This doesn't seem right. What kind of husband am I anyway? I provide no midwife for my wife, no bed to rest her back. Her pillow is a blanket from my donkey. My house for her is a shed of hay. The smell is bad and the animals are loud. I probably smell like a shepherd myself. Did I miss something? When you sent the angel and spoke of the sun being born, oh this isn't what I pictured. I envisioned Jerusalem, the temple, the priests and the people gathered to watch, a pageant perhaps, a parade, a banquet at least. I mean this is the Messiah. Or if not born in Jerusalem, how about Nazareth? Wouldn't Nazareth have been better? At least there I have a house in my business. Out here what do I have? A weary mule, a stack of firewood, and a pot of warm water. This is not the way I wanted it to be. This is not the way I wanted my son. Oh my, I did it again. I did it again, didn't I, Father? I don't mean to do that. It's just that I forget he's not my son. He's yours. The child is yours. The plan is yours. The idea is yours. And forgive me for asking, but is this how God enters the world? Mary has just given birth, not to a child, but to the Messiah, not to an infant, but to God. That's what the angel said. That's what Mary believes. And God, my God. That's what I want to believe. But surely you can understand it's not easy. It seems so bizarre. I'm unaccustomed to such strangeness, God. I'm a carpenter. I make things fit. I square off the edges. I follow the plumb line. I measure twice before I cut once. I like to see the plan before I start working on something. But this time I'm not the builder, am I? This time I'm a tool, a hammer in your grip, a nail between your fingers, a chisel in your hands. This project is yours, not mine. I guess it's foolish of me to question you. Please God forgive my struggling. Trust doesn't come easy to me, God. But you never said it would be easy, did you? One final thing, Father. The angel you sent. Any chance you could send another? If not an angel, maybe a person. I don't know anyone around here. And some company would really be nice. Maybe the inkeeper or a traveler, even a shepherd would do. Of course we have no way of knowing if Joseph prayed such a prayer. But you probably have. You've stood where Joseph stood, caught between what God said and what made sense. You've done what he told you to do only to wonder if it was really God speaking in the first place. You've stared into the sky blackened with doubt. And you've asked what Joseph asked. You've asked the Lord if you're still on the right road. You've asked if you were supposed to have turned left when you turned right. And you've asked if there is a plan behind this scheme. Things just haven't turned out the way you thought they would. Each of us knows what it's like to search the night for light. Not outside a stable, but perhaps outside a hospital emergency room or on the gravel of a roadside or the manicured grass of a cemetery. We've asked our questions. We've questioned God's plan and we've wondered why God does what He does. The Bethlehem sky was not the first nor the last to hear the pleadings of a confused pilgrim. If you're asking what Joseph asked, then do what Joseph did. Obey. He obeyed when the angel called. He obeyed when Mary explained. He obeyed when God sent. Joseph didn't let his confusion disrupt his obedience. He didn't know everything, but he did what he knew. Just like Joseph. Maybe you can't see the whole picture, but just like Joseph, you have a choice either to trust him and obey or not. How will you respond? Years passed and he's growing fast. Have you ever thought what it would be like having God's Son growing up in your house? You really think about it. There are a lot of things we can ask Mary. What was it like watching him pray? How did he respond when he saw other kids giggling during the service at the synagogue? When he saw a rainbow, did he ever mention a flood? Did you ever feel awkward teaching him how he created the world? When he saw a lamb being led off to slaughter, did he act differently? Did you ever see him with a distant look on his face as if he were listening to someone you couldn't hear? How did he act at funerals? Did you ever try to play Count the Stars with him and succeed? Did he ever come home with a black eye? How did he act when he got his first haircut? What kind of reports did the teachers send home from school? Did you ever scold him? Not that you ever had to. Did he ever have a question to ask about scripture? Did he ever get angry when someone was dishonest with him? Did he ever wake up afraid? Who was his best friend? Did someone refer to Satan? How did he act? What did he and his cousin John talk about as kids? Did his brothers and sisters have any idea what was happening? Did you ever think that's God eating my soup? Did you ever catch him thoughtfully looking at the flesh on his own arm while looking at a clawed of dirt at the same time? Is it really possible to grasp the full significance of the King of the universe coming to earth as a helpless baby so that he might live human life and give himself on the cross to die for our sins? How can we put it in proper perspective? JB Phillips wrote a fantasy which may help. In his story, a senior angel is showing a very young angel around the splendors of the universe. They view whirling galaxies and blazing suns and then flip across the infinite distances of space until at last they enter one particular galaxy of 500 billion stars. As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our son and through its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a dirty tennis ball to this little angel whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen. I want you to watch that one particularly said the senior angel pointing with his finger. Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me said the little angel. What's special about that one? He listened with shocked disbelief as the senior angel told him that this planet, small and insignificant and not overly clean, was the renowned visited planet. Do you mean that our great and glorious prince went down in person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why would he do such a thing like that? The little angel's face wrinkled and discussed. Do you mean to tell me he said that he stooped so low as to become one of those creeping crawling creatures on that floating little ball? I do and I don't think he would like you to call them creeping crawling creatures in that tune of voice. For strange as it may seem to us, he loves them. He went down to visit them to save them from their sin and ultimately to lift them up to become like him in heaven. He could only do this by becoming one of them and giving his life for them on cross. The little angel looked blank, such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension. It is almost beyond my comprehension too. I accept that this truth is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the foundation of our faith. If it is true, this Bethlehem story, it is a story like no other. It is true and never again need anyone wonder whether what happens on this dirty little tennis ball of a planet matters to the God of the universe. How did God the Father feel that night as he watched his son emerge, smeared with blood to face a harsh, cold world? Lines from two different Christmas carols come to mind. One, the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes, seems to me a sanitized version of what took place in Bethlehem. I imagine Jesus cried like any baby the night he entered the world. A night that would certainly give him a world that would certainly give him much reason to cry as an adult. The second line from a Christmas carol comes from a little town of Bethlehem and it seems as profoundly true today as it did 2,000 years ago. Could the Father possibly have been thinking this? The hopes and fears of all the years are met in the tonight. Thank you for that amazing gift of your son who came to be our Savior. Thank you that in even the way he came he models for us what greatness truly is. Thank you that we can worship you and him on this day in Jesus' name. Amen.