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Church of the Crossroads
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2005
Neal MacPherson

“INTO SUCH A WORLD AS THIS”

As I have re-read the Christmas story in the company of others, in preparation for this service, I have been led to consider the world into which Jesus was born so long ago. Luke, the Gospel writer, wants us to understand that Jesus was born in the midst of empire. That is why he begins his account: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”

The Roman Empire, in its administration of Pax Romana, was intolerant of any religious movements that were bent upon change and renewal. Especially suspect were the nationalistic dreams of the Jewish people living in Palestine. The Empire was tolerant of religion that was passive and accommodating to the Empire’s desires, but had no use for religion that envisioned any kind of change in the world. Into such a world Jesus was born.

Into such a world as ours, Jesus is born once again. Our world is also a world defined by empire. As a senior advisor to President Bush said to Ron Suskind, a journalist, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will, we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

We do live in the midst of empire. And like the Roman Empire of old, the American empire does not appreciate religious communities who are committed to the vision of a world at peace, to the vision of a world in which sharing by all will mean scarcity for none, to the vision of an earth that is protected from environmental degradation. Yet, for us, this is what the birth of Jesus represents. For he is Emmanuel, God-with-us, and in his birth God has come to dwell among us forever. We believe that in the presence of God, who in Jesus has come to be with us, all of life is sacred, and there can be no room for needless warfare or hunger or deprivation.

We cannot expect these commitments to be welcomed by the empire in which we find ourselves. The empire in the midst of which we live wants a Christendom that is passive and does not address the failures of the empire to bring about a world at peace and unafraid. The empire does not want a Jesus whose birth awakens our hopes and dreams for peace and justice in the earth.

At the same time, the worldly context into which Jesus was born and is born again is not the only dimension to the story. Along with the worldly context, there is also the personal and human context. For Jesus did not come in splendor and notoriety. He came in obscurity, unnoticed by the world. He was born to a woman named Mary with no named father. There is a good possibility that he was an illegitimate child. Joseph, putting aside all awkwardness and embarrassment, chose graciously to claim Jesus as his own son. The story goes that the birth itself took place in an animal shed because there was no room in the inn. The baby was laid in a feeding trough for animals. Simple shepherds, rough, unmannered and poor, attended his birth.

And so it is that Jesus is born in the midst of empire, yet among the least, the poor, the outsider. And through the ages, Jesus has come to those who know their need of God, the destitute, the oppressed, the homeless, the hungry, the poor in body and spirit. In Jesus, God comes to be with the least of God’s children. May we be counted among them. Oscar Romero once spoke these words in a Christmas Eve homily:

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

God, in God’s own wisdom, comes into a world such as world as ours, and to human beings such as us. How amazing and wonderful for God to enter life in this way. The birth that has such incredible implications for the world must first take place in the human heart, our hearts, granting us peace and wholeness, strength for the living of our lives and courage for our faithful witness in the world.

Each and every Christmas Eve, we celebrate the birth as if it were for the first time. That is the wonder of Christmas. Into such a world as this and into such lives as ours God comes. He is Emmanuel, God-with-us. All thanks and praise be to God.

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