Here is my message from Christmas Eve. The text was Luke 2:1-20:

Last Christmas Eve I told the story of having ordered a little people nativity set for our youngest daughter, who was one at the time, and after unpacking the toy realizing that we didn’t have Mary. After I frantic search I was able to find her, but that got me thinking about the characters in the nativity, and the fact that if you were going to lose a character, it probably would be Joseph, because he is sort of anonymous in the crowd. He doesn’t really play a key role, and he is much more like us than probably the others, and yet he makes a difference for Mary and Jesus, and we too are called to be like Joseph and make a difference in people’s lives and in the world, even if we might not ever get the recognition, or even realize we are making a difference. But, tonight we are going to talk about the one character who has to be there, the one who caused me to panic because she was missing, and that is Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Now for as important is Mary is, or has been in the history of the church, especially as a person to whom devotions are made, we really know very little about her. Most of what people think they know about Mary are stories that develop much later in the history of the church. Luke, who we just heard from, mentions her the most.  She is named 12 times in Luke, but all of these are in his infancy narrative.  She appears in two other stories in Luke, but is not named in those.  In Matthew, she is named 5 times.  Four of those times are in his infancy narrative, and then she is talked about two other times, being named once, although it’s a reference to her, not something directly involving her.  In Mark, she is named only once, and like in Matthew it is simple a reference of a crowd saying that Mary is Jesus’ mother, and then there is one story in which she is not named.  In John she is not named at all, but there are two stories make reference to her.  And that is all that we have in the gospels.  Not really a lot to go on. But when we compare Mary against other characters in scripture, especially women, the fact that we know as much about her as we do, and that she is referenced in all four gospels, is quite extraordinary.

But we then have this image of her, and of this night, that isn’t very realistic. The first nativity scene is attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, in 1223, and it is said that he created it in order to refocus people’s attention on the worship of Christ rather than materialism and gift giving, the more things change the more they stay the same. Now, more than likely, your nativity set looks like this one, with Mary kneeling all serenely next to Jesus. And I know all the mom’s out there, this is exactly what you looked like after giving birth right? Maybe your Mary even has blue eyes like this one, and she appears to be at least in her 20s and maybe even older.

And yet, Mary was a young girl, probably around 13-14, although by Jewish law girls as young as 12 could be married. It was even younger under Roman law. But usually they would become engaged and be married when they were able to have children, and usually to a much older man. The fact that we never hear about Joseph when Jesus is an adult could indicate that that’s what happened, although that’s pure speculation. But, what couldn’t happen, or wasn’t supposed to happen, was for a young girl, not yet married to get pregnant, with the potential penalty being death. However, Joseph, rather than deal with Mary strictly, instead acts out of love and seeks to put her away quietly. But, he is then is visited by an angel who tells her not to be afraid, and that he should take Mary as his wife for the child of from the Holy Spirit, and so following God’s command, Joseph does as instructed.

Mary does go to spend three months with her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant unexpectedly in her old age, something Linda and I can understand, but other than that we don’t know anything else about Mary’s pregnancy, except that, according to Luke, just at the time that she is due to give birth, she and Joseph have to leave their home in Nazareth in order to travel to Bethlehem because of things that are happening that are totally outside of her control. Sound familiar? We traditionally have imagined Mary travelling to Bethlehem on a donkey, but that’s not in scripture. And, since we know that Joseph and Mary were poor, it’s more likely that they walked the 90 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, which was probably a five to nine day journey, depending on how far Mary was able to travel each day. And so ladies, can you imagine walking 90 miles while you were 9 months pregnant?  Can you feel her exhaustion? The way her feet and back must have ached? The way the weight of the baby bore on her and wore her out? And just like every woman I’ve ever known who is nine months pregnant, she was probably just ready to be done with the whole thing.

And then to make matters worse, as they get to Bethlehem, maybe with Mary already in the early stages of labor pains, they find that there is not a place for them to stay. Bethlehem, normally quiet and unassuming, must have been booming and full of activity, with others coming into town to be registered. Was Mary feeling panicked? Was Joseph overwhelmed? At the very time in which Mary needed to have family, and in particular the other women in her life around to help her in giving birth, she finds herself alone, except for Joseph. And let’s be honest guys, we’re not really much use in that moment. I can say that when Linda gave birth to Samantha, I was so grateful for our doula who was assisting me because I didn’t have enough hands to be able to do all the things Linda was asking me to do, and I can’t say anything else because Linda will hurt me. But, I was even more glad for the doctors and nurses who ended up having to perform and emergency c-section when the baby got stuck. Was Mary wondering what was going to happen? Was she going to survive? Was the baby going to survive? Would they be good parents? Where were they going to stay?

And as the labor pains got worse, and the situation began to get more desperate, was there anyone else to help besides Joseph? Was there anyone else there to wipe her brow, to calm her fears and tell her everything was going to be okay? Can you hear her crying out… Oh Joseph, help me, make it stop?... What do I do Joseph?... When’s it going to be over?.... What’s happening?... “My God, my God,” she might be saying, “why have you forsaken me?” Can you hear her crying out into the night? Can you hear her crying while all around her is the bustle of the town which is teeming with life and energy? Does she feel alone and isolated, abandoned and forgotten? And then in the midst of this we are told that the child is born, and if you don’t believe in miracles then you have never watched a child being born, because if you have ever seen a newborn infant, and held it in your arms, then you know that not only are miracles possible but that they happen every day.

But, Mary doesn’t have a basinet or crib to lay the baby. Instead she wraps the child in swaddling clothes and lays him in a manger, which is a feeding trough. Tradition says that maybe they were in a barn, or perhaps a cave, to give them some protection from the elements, but again, there is no scriptural witness to that. They may have just been out in the mud and muck of the street. But even if they were in a barn, or something similar, this image too has been sanitized, because if you’ve ever been in a barn, or around barnyard animals, there is a certain odiferousness that goes along with that. And the shepherds, living in their fields, bring a whole other set of smells. Does that image match what you think of that first Christmas? I doubt it. Can you picture this scene? Can you smell it? Can you feel the mud and the muck and the cold of the night?

When we sanitize the picture of that night, we begin to miss the importance and reality of Christmas. We don’t have Christmas because everything is great, we have Christmas because things are broken, because things are beyond our control, because things don’t happen the way we want them to, and if any year is going to remind us of that it is this year. If you had told me in March when we first stopped worshipping in person that we wouldn’t be in the sanctuary for Easter, and then if you had told me we would still be out at Christmas, I would have doubted your sanity, and yet here we are, in a less than ideal situation. It’s messy and chaotic and unknown.  It’s full of brokenness and confusion and disarray. We long for something more, we yearn for things to be under our control, we desire for perfection to come around. And yet, that’s not Christmas, it’s not Christmas now and it was not Christmas then, for it was most definitely not a silent night.

We live in a world that’s messy and broken, and yet into this world a child was born, a child which caused the angels to sing and rejoice, that in the midst of despair and disappointment came a miracle, and there was joy and hope, love and peace, promise and fulfillment; in this moment God was doing something extraordinary and becoming one of us. This is the story of the birth of our savior and it’s smelly, it’s noisy, it’s painful, it’s chaotic, it’s lonely, it’s aching, and it is also joyful, and exciting and awe inspiring and wonderful. It is a miracle and it is the story of a broken world redeemed and given new hope, new life and a new promise. God was not doing this in spite of the messiness and the brokenness, God was doing this because of those things. Christmas happens not because life is idyllic and always full of joy. If life was like that we wouldn’t need Christmas. We need Christmas because are a broken. We need Christmas because life is messy. Just as Christmas today is not what we might want it to be, or need it to be, so too was the first Christmas not the ideal, sanitized story we imagine it to be.

And in the midst of it all was Mary, a young girl, not surrounded by her family at the time she wanted them so badly to be there, perhaps like many of us this Christmas. And she had to have been scared and worried and anxious. And yet in the midst of it all, she does not give up on her faith. She does not lose hope.  She does not give up on God. Instead she continues to see the blessings in her life, and cries out that her soul magnifies the Lord. She says to God, Here I am, knowing that the path will not be an easy one, but she remains faithful and steadfast, just as God remains faithful and steadfast to her. It doesn’t eliminate her troubles. She doesn’t get to stay at the Ritz Carlton attended by the finest doctors, but she trusts in God that God is present even in the darkest moments, that she is not alone.

 It was not a silent night, but that first Christmas reminds us that Christmas is not about perfection. Christmas is about brokenness, and in this year especially we need to be reminded of that fact, that perhaps this year we need Christmas more than we have ever needed it, to be reminded that we are not alone, that God loves us, and because of that God sent Jesus the Christ, who is the light of the world, who breaks into our world, who overcomes the darkness and says come and follow me, and he was born in backwater village, to peasant parents, including a young mother who wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a feeding trough. And it all started because when God called on Mary, Mary responded here I am. Christmas is a time for miracles. That first Christmas is full of miracles, and so we too are called to participate in Christmas miracles, and they begin when we stand in the darkness, in our brokenness, looking out at the light, and say to God, like Mary does, here I am Lord. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.