Readings – Isaiah 52.7-10; Luke 2.1-20
“…to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
Luke’s Gospel, from which we hear the Christmas story this morning, is the familiar and cosy Christmas Gospel. At first sight anyway. It is from here that we get all those elements that we like to see our kids or grandkids act out at their nativity plays – the angels, the shepherds, the baby in the manger. As we hear it so often, we can be inclined to snooze off when we hear it in church, and even more inclined to snooze off when we get a sermon about it when we actually want to get to our Christmas lunch. We can be tempted to dismiss it as a soppy fairy-story: great for kids to have a bit of fun with, but not something that self-respecting adults should take too seriously.
The Angels Appearing to the Shepherds, William Blake (1809).
Let me implore you to pay it a bit more attention on this Christmas morning, because when one explores this story a little, it holds a few surprises. For starters, it is set in a realistic and indeed rather gritty world. It is a world not as different from our own as we might expect. We see a cold and indifferent state bureaucracy; underperforming private services where the customer certainly is not king; and people working at vital jobs too poor to put a decent roof over their heads. All this was taking place in what was the mightiest empire the world had ever seen up; it is as if we were discovering the same conditions in Edwardian England, or in today’s California – which is, of course, we could well do.
So, St Luke gives his story of the birth of Jesus a true-to-life setting in the economy section of the Roman Empire. Oh, sure, the angels singing in the sky are otherworldly and mystical and strange (we’ll come back to them) – but they appear in a context that could be a setting for a film directed by Ken Loach. You know, Cathy Come Home, Kes, Daniel Blake, and then the historical one set in the Roman Empire about the unmarried mother giving birth in a stable.
Unmarried mother? Yes, our Gospel reading this morning is very clear about that; Joseph was only “engaged” to Mary. They hadn’t actually tied the knot yet, even after the archangel Gabriel, the visit to Elizabeth, the strange circumstances of John the Baptist’s birth, and all that. Let me be clear, this isn’t one of those moments like where the bishop denies the Resurrection on Easter Day or says God is just a metaphor for goodness: the biblical text is very clear that Mary was an unmarried mother.
All that is important context for the news that the angels give to the shepherds about the baby. They claim it is the Christ, the Messiah, the great leader long heralded in prophecy who was going to forcibly boot the Romans out of the Holy Land and then set up an enlightened and godly state where justice and peace would reign.
Now, in the ancient world, great rulers were supposed to have elevated or even divine origins. For example, Romulus and Remus, the founders of the City of Rome, had the daughter of a king for a mother and Mars, the God of War, for a father. Odysseus, of Homer’s Odyssey, was the great-grandson of the god Hermes.
Luke gives us a weird variation on this. For, Luke has followed the classical pattern by establishing Jesus as a descendent of King David right at the start of his Gospel, and he has the baby born in David’s city of Bethlehem. But he turns convention on its head by having this king of royal descent born in a stable to an unmarried mother. And just as this baby has a very different sort of royal birth, so his triumph will be very different from that of most conquering kings, for it will come in the form of his unjust and brutal execution, before a mysterious victory that opens the way for everyone to enter a kingdom that is not of this world.
As well as being strange, this story has details impossible to reconcile with the other account of Jesus’ birth, produced by St Matthew. Their genealogies don’t tally; and Quirinius didn’t become Governor of Syria until a decade after Matthew and most modern experts say Jesus was born. If you wanted to produce a clever work of fiction to hoodwink people into believing your religion, you wouldn’t do it this way. This story has the roughness of authenticity. Nobody has gone over the Gospels with a fine-toothed comb to make all the details consistent with one another. That’s quite apart from, as we’ve already mentioned, details that nobody would put in the conventional biography of a religious hero in the ancient world, let alone a king, least of all God.
Now, about those angels, the only out-of-this-world characters in this mundane, poverty-stricken, setting. These were not cuddly nativity play angels with cotton-wool wings. When the shepherds see them singing in the sky, they were absolutely terrified of them, at least at first. This was not the sort of thing that people in the ancient world expected to happen when they were working a night shift, any more than we would. When they finally see the baby in the manger, however, they turn from fear to rejoicing. Somehow, the discovery that the Messiah has been born in such unimaginable circumstances is better news than anything they could have imagined for themselves. For this baby who couldn’t find room at the inn was not only the Messiah and a king, but God incarnate, God who had taken on human flesh. Why did he do that? So, at the end of the story, he could die to take on the consequences of our sins and destroy death then rise to life again.
Whatever this unlikely tale is, it isn’t a likely story. You can reject that Jesus was the Son of God, and you can come to the conclusion that Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth is a work of fiction, but if you do, remember that nobody would make up a story like this if they wanted an easy route to money, fame, and respectability. Nor would they do it this way if they wanted to convince clever, highly-educated, sceptics, which the Roman Empire had plenty of. Whatever you think about the supernatural claims here, even as a human story it overturns conventional thinking and elevates the outsider, the vulnerable, and the marginal, above the powerful, the wealthy and those considered wise in conventional ways. Even if you reject Jesus as Messiah, and Jesus as God, ponder well why this story has captivated billions of people, literally billions of people, over two thousand years.
And if you embrace this strange story with the rough edges of authenticity still showing, then it promises to lead you, not to simple triumph, but to something far more realistic and gritty and yet also more amazing and wonderful. It will not keep you away from the death and tragedy that makes up so much of everyone’s life; but it will lead you through them to eternal life in the world-to-come. And knowing that should change how we live our lives in the here-and-now; free us to live with all the trust and openness of a tiny baby, for that is one of the ways to live like Jesus.
And now to our wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting Father, to Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace, and to the Holy Spirit who overshadowed Mary, be glory in the highest, until the end of all ages. Amen.
Preached at St Peter’s, Poulshot and Christ Church, Bulkington.
