SERMON The Light Abroad

Sisters and brothers, grace, peace, and joy be with you all in the name of Christ, God with us. Amen.

The moon is born

and a child is born

lying among white clothes

as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but

the light from the one

is abroad in the universe

as among broken glass.

So says R.S. Thomas in his poem “Nativity.” My wife and I were debating the question of whether, as the song on the radio says, God is funny. I say yes. Surely if God were the cosmic Straight Man--the Bud Abbott to the bumbling Lou Costello of humanity--he would have done a better job with the Nativity scene. Skipping over the Emperor and the Governor, avoiding the Temple and the priests and scribes, and sending his messengers and the whole heavenly host to appear to some nameless illiterate shepherds--this shows something of a comic touch. God chose to enter the human story not as a child of privilege; not as an aristocrat bred for the sword and the scepter. Rather he was born as the helpless infant housed in a reeking barn. There is a joke here on someone. And to be born to an unwed mother, and a virgin at that! A woman who wraps her child in strips of old cloth and who treasures every utterance in her heart! This must not just be a joke, but a rather obvious one. God might even be accused of bad taste.

For two thousand years, this story has appalled and angered the opponents of Christ more than any other. From King Herod to Christopher Hitchens, the idea of the world revolving around a little child born in a stable, born of a virgin and attended by the common folk of the countryside, has provoked fear, anger, and sheer disgust. What ridiculous sentimentality! What childish daydreams! What a barbaric superstition, that God could be born anywhere, much less in such a place. These are stories for the feeble, the stupid, the old, the effeminate, the poor, it has been said. This is a pastime for dreamers and fools and children. Grown-ups and manly people think about other things and face up to reality. They fight wars and engage in politics. They know that the real action is in splitting atoms and damming rivers and fixing the economy. They know that life requires knowing when to be cruel and hard as iron. Life is about getting what you want and bending the dumb world to your will. It has no room for fanciful stories about gods in mangers and shepherds shouting for joy.

And for two thousand years, these serious people have not gotten the joke. Caesar Augustus was the mightiest man who had ever lived in his day. He controlled an army perhaps 100,000 strong and directed the wealthiest treasury in the world. He brought law and order to vast stretches of the world and guarded public morality with all his might. Today the last vestiges of his great empire are gone.

Quirinius was apparently a reasonably capable general and governor of the province. At one point he went through a messy public divorce. He was close to emperors and died as a well-regarded public servant. But today his name is forgotten except in connection to the Christmas story.

And in the years since then, countless armies have marched, countless states have been formed, countless rulers have come and gone, countless books have been written. Countless schemes for human improvement have been tried and abandoned. Each generation builds monuments to itself, and each generation pulls down the monuments of ages past. Time’s great wood-chipper makes mulch of everyone: kings, presidents, authors, eminent professors, popes, and even humanitarians. Today’s king of kings is just tomorrow’s answer to a multiple-choice question, if he’s lucky. The strong men, the hard men, the wise men who have no time for divine children in horse troughs are washed away by God’s hand, as cleanly as sandcastles at high tide.

Yet the shepherds remain. The meditating Virgin remains. We remain. We remain to bear witness to this fact: that God was born in Bethlehem not to complete our excellence or to crown our own might, but to lift up our lowliness. Christ came in humility for the sake of the humble. Christ came in poverty for the sake of the poor. All may enter this holy stable--even the Emperor. But some of us will have to stoop down to do it. Because the light of this child is still abroad in the universe, after so many other lights have gone out; because our broken pieces crave some brilliance to reflect; because the soul that is chapped by the winter and stinking of sheep yearns for a song; because the world has waited; because we have not been too proud to accept a God in diapers. And that, I admit, is kind of funny. But as funny as this story is, the joke is not on us--the joke is for us. There are Good news and great joy and amazement, shepherds running with haste and going away rejoicing--all of this is filled with the sound of unexpected, uncontainable laughter. It echoes down the ages and fills the world like light on broken glass. Thanks be to God for so great a gift. Thanks be to God for granting us this precious light. Amen.

December 24, 2009

Benjamin J. Dueholm, Associate Pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church