YEAR A Christmas Luke 2:1-20

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in land of deep darkness-- on them light has shined.

Merry Christmas! After four dark weeks of Advent, we have moved into the light, or more accurately, the light has come to us. Christ is born! And today we hear the old familiar Bible lessons and we take comfort in them and the warmth, the memories, the joy they bring.

Just last week, Matthew told us, Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way, and proceeded to regale us with the story of Joseph and how he was directed by God, through an angel, to take Mary as his wife. He was to name and thus legitimize Jesus, making Him part of the house and lineage of David. Matthew is a Gospel that focuses heavily on men, on strength, on heritage, and kingship.

Luke, whose Gospel we heard this morning, is a totally different type of writer. In today’s Gospel he, too, explains to us how the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place, but Luke’s story is vastly different from Matthew’s. Listening to the reading we feel warmth and happiness, picturing the lovely nativity scene to which we’ve all become accustomed. But Luke is telling us a very vivid story, and to get all the details, we need to pay close attention, and not be distracted by warm, fuzzy Christmas emotions.

Think about it. In response to a political dictum, a young couple, the wife heavily pregnant, suddenly finds they have to travel from the comfort of their home, and the support of family, and head off to a city ninety miles away. Mary is so close to term that in this day and age her doctor would have a fit, and she would not even consider such a journey. But it is ancient times, the decree has come from the emperor, and it would be unwise to ignore it.

We often see depictions of the couple as they travel, with Mary riding on a donkey. While this must have made the journey easier for her, it would certainly not have been very comfortable. And then, after all that travel, they arrive in the city, probably crowded with people flocking in to obey the emperor’s order, and find all the rooms at the inn, any inn, are taken. Could it get any worse? Oh yes it could. As they attempt to settle down in a stable, Mary goes into labour.

Luke makes it sound so simple, so easy. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. I have it on good authority that the first birth is almost always the most difficult, and even in an easy birth, there is a lot of stress and struggle. The Roman Catholic Church maintains Mary had no pain, either in labor or giving birth - but other denominations in Christendom, acknowledging that it hurts to have a baby, believe Mary would not have been an exception.

Painful birth or no, as it says in John, “when a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child has been born into the world”. So, Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger. We can picture the happy, exhausted young mother.

What a picture Luke has painted for us. Now the attention shifts to a totally different local. We leave a smelly stable, which now houses an ecstatic, overjoyed , thoroughly worn out young couple and are told that in that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.

What are we doing here, out in the fields at night – and with these people, the lowlifes of that day and age? Talk about the rejected and scorned, no one wanted to know a shepherd except, possibly, another shepherd. These men were at the bottom of the society of their time, spending their lives following sheep, sleeping rough. Could life get any worse for them?

Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

“Terrified” is probably an understatement. One minute you’re just a regular guy, sitting out in a field trying to keep a close eye on a flock of sheep and then, out of nowhere, there’s some sort of cosmic disruption, and a being of radiant light appears in the middle of it. While the shepherds are trying not to lose it entirely, the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

I’m not really sure that, in their shoes, that would have done it for me. I would still have been terrified. But then, Luke introduces one of those wonderful things that appear only in his Gospel – music.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom He favors!"

It doesn’t actually say they were signing, but the tradition over the centuries has been that they were. One reason for this is that Luke is the only Gospel writer who wrote down the lyrics of hymns he heard in the early Church. He wrote them down, and included them in his Gospel. A few weeks ago we heard Mary’s song, called the Magnificat, and today, just when the shepherds must have been ready to run for it, the angel choir bursts forth in song. And music has a way of stirring the emotions and calming the soul.

And then, just like that, the angel and the heavenly host are gone. Having been told where to find this child, the Messiah, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us. And that is, of course, what they did.

We have been travelling the journey of Advent. We began with a young woman, barely more than a girl, named Mary, who was visited by and Angel. The Angle told her she had been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah, and Mary accepted this. Thanks to Luke, she also rejoiced over her pregnancy with song.

We have encountered an “older” man, Joseph, maybe in his late twenties, who has had to deal with the sudden horror and disappointment of discovering his bride to be, Mary, is pregnant, and the baby isn’t his. After a lot of elaborate plans on his part to “put her aside” gently, an angel appears to him, and everything changes – and Joseph accepts Mary as his bride. Since Joseph’s story is in Matthew he doesn’t get to sing anything.

Then, certainly when plans for the baby’s birth have already been worked out, who will be there to assist and such, an edict is issued by the Emperor Augustus. A young couple who had no plans to go anywhere are suddenly on a long and extremely uncomfortable journey.

There is a thread that runs through all the stories and all the music, all the suffering and the joy, and it can be summed up in one word – obedience. The holy people, Mary and Joseph, are obedient to God. They do not question or argue, they surrender, and they obediently accept God’s will.

But what about us? Are we in this story? Yes we are! In that region there were shepherds. That’s us, common, unremarkable sinners. Luke’s Gospel emphasizes that Jesus came to the disenfranchised, the poor, the suffering, not to the well to do, the well off. We are blessed to be counted among the simple shepherds.

Like them, we go about our daily tasks, working hard, sometimes feeling undervalued or unappreciated. We get very absorbed in our lives and our responsibilities, and as we concentrate on things of this world, we stop paying attention to anything outside of our normal focus. Sometimes, like the shepherds, we are so focused on our tasks, our lives, it is hard to distract us.

On the night Jesus was born, God sent not just a huge astronomical event, not just one angel, but the entire heavenly chorus to inform a small group of simple, hardworking people, that the Messiah had arrived. It takes a lot to get some people’s attention. Where are the angles now, we wonder? The answer is - they are here, but perhaps on any normal day we just aren’t listening for them.

But today is not just any normal day. It is Christmas, and we are well and truly distracted from the pattern of our daily lives. It is right that on this day we should be filled with happiness, warmth, and joy. It is fitting to remember loved ones here and ones no longer with us. It is a time of peace and comfort, but also a good time to remember that beyond our happy memories, the old ones and the ones we make today, there are angles singing to us, speaking to us of God’s love, calling us to be obedient to God’s will.

Today joy is born, hope is born, eternal life and forgiveness of all our misdoings, our sins, is born. The shepherds got the message. Overcoming their terror, obedient to the will of God, they dashed off to see the baby who would save His people, to welcome the Savior of the World. May we humble sinners do likewise and welcome Him with joy, thanksgiving, and love.

Let us pray:

Almighty God, You have given your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon Him, and to be born this day: Grant that we, who have been born again and made Your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by Your Holy Spirit; teach us to live obedient to Your will and with the angels to sing Your praise, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with You and the same Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.