“Good News Amidst the Ambiguities of Life”
Christmas Eve 2020
Luke 2:1–20
Christmas is normally a time of great joy. The news is good — God has come in human flesh. The story in Luke 2 exudes the fullness of heaven’s joy come to earth. But, if you look closely at the biblical readings surrounding this holiday, the joy of Christmas is ambiguous and short-lived.
Christmas Eve is one of the highpoints that pastors prepare for over many weeks. As they set out on their preparation they consider the people who will gather for worship on this evening. They know there will be legions of people, many familiar, yet many who who are not. Yet, it is understood that all come with the expectation of singing their most loved carols, lighting candles, reliving childhood memories and wanting an engaging and celebrative pastor. But chiefly, the pastors know more importantly — that every soul needs to hear “good news of great joy.”
This year, no churches will be filled with people. Many church buildings will be dark. More people will access Christmas Eve worship via a digital device than any time in human history. Yet, the need for sharing that “good news of great joy” is as important as ever. As a popular Christmas song long ago pleads, “we need a little Christmas right this very moment.”
So, I’m thinking of my clergy colleagues still in the ranks who have been shaking their brains, wringing their hands, standing before cameras and strategizing with digital engineers to prepare and present Christmas eve worship. I know that both personally and homiletically, my preacher friends have wrestled with a choice: to focus on joy or ambiguity during the Christmas season. The angels sing out God’s glory, yet we live — like Jesus’ family — in a world of upset, threat and suffering. How can the preacher affirm a joyful realism during this year’s digital Christmas worship?
The mood of Christmas this year parallels the proclamation of Jesus’ birth in Luke’s gospel, the lectionary reading for Christmas Eve (Lk. 2:1–20). We are looking for joy in a time of personal, national, and global uncertainty. The government’s attempts to provide relief for anxious, economically imperiled people has been complicated again. Epidemiologists have heralded warnings for weeks about gathering with extended family. Local retailers and those small business owns who depend upon consumer spending are seeing their year-end sales falling short of historical norms. Still, for others it will be a “blue Christmas” as a result of personal loss — separation, divorce, estrangement, or the death of a loved one.
As the carol proclaims, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in you tonight.” The Christmas readings mirror this ambiguity. Mary and Joseph are citizens of an occupied territory. The Roman occupying force is brutal; taxes are levied to support the imperial government. Mary and Joseph journey to Bethlehem to pay tribute to a foreign government and, to add insult to injury, the only shelter they can find for the birth of their child is a stable.
The angelic messengers deliver the good news, first, to shepherds “living in the fields,” enduring the elements without a roof over their heads. There is nothing romantic about this theophany; the life of the shepherd is lonely, harsh, and unappreciated. Their job is necessary for society, but their social status is of the lower rungs — like those in our society who do tasks that most of us would abhor having to do. In the most unlikely place, the angelic voices ring out. There is a democracy of revelation, described in Luke, in which God gives glad tidings in the least expected places — to sanitation workers hauling trash before sunrise, to first responders on the beat on a bitter cold day, to single parents working menial jobs just trying to make-do, to immigrants crossing the border by night.
There is no complacency in Luke’s proclamation of Jesus’ birth. But, perhaps, that is good news. For eventually, most of us will find ourselves on the receiving end of this good news, of God with us, in the most unlikely and often painful places of our lives.
This year we all have stories anew that tell of dwelling in those painful places, big and small. So, Christmas comes for many tinged with the realism that life is difficult. But, make no mistake, this is the world in which the Christ-child comes — the world of those grieving loss of loved ones, homeless families, frightened immigrants; a world of care and uncertainty. This is precisely where “we need a little Christmas” — not false hope or a good-time God, but an all-season spirituality, grounded in a love that embraces the dark night and the joyful dawn.
Christmas joy comes around again and in spite of the ambiguities of life. While the splendor which has marked Christmas Eve worship for us our entire lives is different this year, the joy prevails:
‘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.
