perhaps what i mean to say is that its amazing that your love was mine

Luke 2:1-14

Prayer: God, may the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be part of the proclamation; “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among all those God favors.” Amen.

“O’ holy night, O’ silent night,” This story, it just seems to capture the holiness, the silence, the stillness we associate Christmas with. What is about this story the invites us into those quite places?
This story, for me, evokes memories of standing barefoot in my parent’s house, tiptoeing on cold feet to look out the backdoor. I don’t know why, but on Christmas Eve, in the bleak midwinter, the world seemed especially holy and still to me. It felt like things were just ripe for something holy to break through those dark blue Midwestern skies…

When I hear this story, I get that same feeling. And, I suspect, I am not alone.
What is it about this story? Why does it arrest our imagination so? Why does this story about a birth draw us into those still, quiet and holy places?
I’ve been wondering about that a lot lately.
What is it about this story?
Could it be the emperor, and a worldwide registration?
Could it be a manger and those bands of cloth?
Could it be those shepherds in the field?
Could it be the Angel, and God’s heavenly army singing peace?
Could it be a little be of all of these details?
Perhaps.

Perhaps it is those details, those characters that bait all our breaths each year, but I think there is something a little more subtle going on as well. This reading, as it begins we get quieter, drawn deeper and deeper to this story.
Yes the angels, shepherds, and emperor confirm our suspicion that this is no ordinary story. But, it isn’t their presence that makes this story so holy. No, it is not the anomalies that bless this story. Rather, it is the commonalities that bless this story.

After all, who cannot relate to the humility of being a young, unwed pregnant mother?
Or still, who can’t comprehend the shame Joseph must have felt when he had nowhere to offer Mary to rest than a stable?
Finally, who hasn’t known the delicateness of holding a new born child?

This story is arresting, not because it is remarkable. No, this story is arresting because it is so utterly unremarkable. This story is terribly ordinary.

A young, pregnant Mary, and lowly carpenter have nowhere to rest and so the child must be born in a stable. These are the kind of insignificant persons and details an emperor does not have time to be bothered with. Yet, that is where the Prince of the Universe is born. Among a lowly women and man, in the stable, Jesus is born. Who among us can’t relate to this?

Luke begins with the Emperor, a man with the power to order others to go hither and yon.
And, while many would expect a savior,
a messiah,
a lord to be born in his palace, that is not the case.

Contrary to expectations, God chooses to show up among a lowly woman, engaged to a carpenter. God chooses to be birthed in a manger.
More than likely the Emperor would have no interest in people as common as Mary and Joseph, there story is far too ordinary to have any significance. Yet, God chooses them, and their commonplace existence is sanctified.
Their story becomes blessed.
God chooses to show up in all those places we know so well. God chooses to show up where we are likely to show up. God’s breaks into the ordinary. That is why our breath becomes deeper when we hear this story. This story is so holy, because we know it so well.
We have been there.
This is our story too. In the rigmarole of registering for taxes, God shows up.
In the simplicity of trying to find a place to rest, God shows up.
And that is not it, either. In the anxiety of an unwed girl, God shows up.
In the humility of having nowhere to rest, God shows up.
In the joy of holding a newborn, God shows up.
In the love of a couple, God shows up.

God chooses to show up in the fears, hopes, wonders, sorrows and joys we all know so well. No longer are our fears just fears. When Jesus is born into our midst our fears become places where God meets us, and brings peace.
The same is true for our hopes, wonders, sorrows and joys. In these ordinary places, God shows up and shares our hopes, our wonders, our sorrows and our joys. The incarnation is remarkable because it is true for each one of us.
That is why the story arrests us.
Quietly we listen.
Can this be true? Could it be that God is born into the world I know so well? Could it be that God is born into the hopes I know so well, the same struggles, fear, anxieties and joys? This story has such a spell on us because we know it, and as well as we know it we still struggle to believe it. Yet, here it is. You’ve heard the story, and it can’t be taken back. Not in some far-off castle, but in the backyard mangers, and daily tasks we know well.
This story is not about the shepherds, it isn’t about the angels, it is about God.
The story is about God then, and where God chooses to show up.
Because God chooses us then us, too. This story is also about us.
This is our story, too. God comes into the dark we know so well, and God meets us there. That is why this story takes our attention, because we live it every day.
At the beginning of the sermon I offered a little illustration about my Christmas Eves growing up. And, I guess in ways I didn't understand then, and definitely don't understand now, that child was onto something. In that ordinary house, covered by the same snow that covered the rest of the town God was indeed breaking into my midst.
At the time I didn’t completely recognize it, but in the longing of a child for peace, God was breaking in. It wasn’t the fact that it was December 24th, or a near full moon that made that evening holy.
It was, and is, God’s care and love.
Make no mistake, this is true for you all, too. In those quite places you all know so well. God breaks in and meets you there. God breaks into the holy-ordinary and sanctifies it.
This changes everything.
You know where you’ve smelled, touched, tasted, felt or seen the incarnation. This story is about an incarnation, and it is a part of our story and the incarnations we all know so well.
As you leave this evening and your moms and dads look a little more gentile, as you leave and your children seem more holy, your partner a little more loving, the air a sweeter, remember that is the world of the incarnation.

God is with us. Amen.