May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight
and reward our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Well I bet Santa Claus wasn't the only one who spent the month of December making a list
and checking it twice. I'm sure your children have checked their Christmas lists more than
once or twice this year. If yours are anything like mine then they probably revised about
five times by now. I really hope Santa Claus got the right list. Make for an interesting
warning. The adults in the room have been busy making lists to all the people they need
to remember to buy gifts for. Mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa, dog, cat, hamster,
in-law, neighbor, co-worker, teachers, their angel tree kid. Who am I forgetting?
In the days leading up to the first Christmas and the Nativity of our Lord, Emperor Augustus
wants to make a list of his own. Jesus' parents along with the whole world, the scripture
says, are instructed by the emperor to make sure their name is on a census list. The emperor
wants to count the whole world so that he knows how many people he can tax to fund a
growing military budget. This registration was taking place when Mary is very pregnant,
probably her third trimester. And unfortunately the Roman Empire doesn't take a doctor's
note for pregnant or nursing women. So despite the inconvenience, Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem,
to the city of David, where the prophesied Messiah is to be born. So think about that.
So even as this census is inconvenient for Mary and Joseph, even as it is evidence of
an oppressive Roman government, God still manages to use it for his own purposes to
accomplish salvation on earth. The census gets Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the birthplace
of the much anticipated Messiah. This move emphasizes the Judeo-Christian belief that
there is nothing, there is nothing outside of God's reach. God is sovereign. God can
turn our biggest messes into something beyond our wildest dreams, a truth that is fully
revealed and completed in Jesus. As the story of Jesus' birth moves forward, we learn that
there are things outside the reach of even the Roman Empire. There are things in this
world that even the mightiest can't control. Jesus is born outside the reach of the census
workers. He isn't born in a hospital. He doesn't receive a birth certificate. Jesus, the Son
of Man, the Son of God, doesn't appear on any official list. Now for us, that should
tell us that even the worst kind of evil in this world is finite and temporary and can
only extend so far. It will come to an end no matter how horrific. Whereas there isn't
any part of this world where God's love cannot reach and redeem. The announcement of Jesus'
birth is made by a heavenly host. The Greek actually says a heavenly army. And this army
isn't armed with a sword or a spear, but with the good news of a Savior. The news of
a Savior that promises to bring peace to a war-torn planet. Not by the threat of military
force, but by the promise of love. The news of the Savior is presented to a group of shepherds
whose job it is to count sheep and hopefully not fall asleep. Like the Savior of the world,
they too are undocumented, unregistered. They too are outside the reach of the empire. God
enters this world on the outskirts of town when nobody's looking. Likewise, that's how
God often enters our own lives, isn't it? In the shadows, in the places we least expect
to find God. God in Christ, however, does not intend to remain in the shadows. Eventually,
Christ the King will take his place on his heavenly throne, where he will reign over
all the earth forever and ever. And now the church celebrates this Christ the King on
the last Sunday of the church year, which is Thanksgiving, so don't worry. We have almost
a year. We have almost a year to learn and accept this newborn King as the ruler and
the Savior of our lives. We have almost a year to experience this Christ through the
Word and sacrament as administered through the church. Now keeping this in mind, it makes
sense to celebrate Christmas on the heels of the winter solstice. Christmas in the northern
hemisphere, after all, coincides with the gradual return of light to the world. Believe
it or not, the days are actually starting to get longer again, all the way until mid-June.
Now imagine how disorienting it would be if you woke up tomorrow, and it wasn't Christmas
Day, but June 21st. One, you might think about it this way. You're at a movie theater, it's
the middle of the day, and you come out and the sun is shining brightly. It'll blind you,
right? When you've been sitting in the darkness for so long and you come out to light, it
will blind you. As attested to in the Old Testament, no one can see the face of God
and live. God's truth is too powerful to absorb all at once. Before His death, Jesus says
to His disciples, there are certain things you still can't bear to hear, but I'm going
to send you the Holy Spirit and He's going to guide you into all truth. You are going
to grow into the truth. So unless you're like St. Paul, most of us don't meet God when we
are blinded by the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. For most of us, our relationship
with God and the truth that God is revealing starts in a manger in the little town of Bethlehem.
It starts with a baby. So in a very real way, this encounter with God in a manger is an
invitation to grow up with God. Our relationship with God doesn't start off with a full-fledged
commitment to follow Him as our Lord and Savior, but it starts with a kind of a genuine curiosity,
that curiosity that led the shepherds to leave their flocks to go to that stable that first
Christmas night. Now as we grow up with God, we develop a relationship with God. And as
we develop a relationship with God, we grow to learn about what God hopes for and what
God dreams. And the more we learn about God's hopes and dreams, the more we want to help
God achieve these hopes and dreams. Now the clearest picture that I can think of about
God's hopes and dreams are captured best in Jesus' be attitudes. In the be attitudes,
Jesus makes a list. Jesus makes a list of those who are blessed in God's eyes. And on
this list, He counts those most of us would likely not call blessed, those who most of
our earthly censuses will call estimates, right? Through the listing of the be attitudes,
we learn that God wants to create space in this world for the weak and the vulnerable
forgotten to be loved and valued and celebrated. And when this happens, God says the kingdom
of heaven will be there. And this heavenly kingdom will threaten the existence of our
earthly kingdoms, not by the announcement of a military force, but by the announcement
of another more powerful force, the force of love. A love that is born in the face of
a child who has no home except a manger, a child who will make a home for us through
his own body that is broken for the sins of the world. Like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve,
Jesus is tiptoeing into the world and into our homes unnoticed and undetected by pretty
much everyone except those whom this world too easily forgets, the ones who will be first
in the kingdom of heaven. Now it's not that Jesus is hiding from the rest of us. It's
just that the rest of us have so much going on that we hardly notice His presence. We
have so much on our plates, so much on our to-do lists that when Jesus does show up,
we might not see Him. Now it would be tempting to start to make room for Jesus in your life
by starting to take things off your plate that don't fit. From a practical and theological
point of view, I'm not sure this is going to work. God is the one who initiates our
salvation, not us. Think about it like this instead. Imagine God hands you a baby tonight
and says, take care of this child, feed this child, clean this child, make sure this child
is breathing, make sure this child is alive. I guarantee you the other things that you
thought were important on your list will fall off, right? Your life will be radically reoriented
in a way that you could never have predicted or planned when God hands you a baby. Many
are told that they will never get around to having children if they keep waiting to get
their life in order, their finances in order. Likewise, we will never get around to making
make Jesus fit into our lives if we keep on waiting for the stars to align. You're never
going to get done with the housework. You're never going to get done with all the projects.
You're never going to have to stop going to the grocery store or the doctor or doing the
laundry or spending time with family and friends. These things are always going to be on your
list. So it's simply not about making room for Jesus right beside the grocery store visit
in the gym. It's about prioritizing Jesus so that everything on your list is ordered
by your relationship with him so that all of your life, all of your words, all of your
actions, all of your decisions are the result of knowing him. On Christmas, God is making
room for us to have a relationship with him by giving us the gift of himself as a baby.
Christ, the newborn King. There's no place low enough, off the beaten path far enough
where God can't find us and draw us to himself. The shepherds were the first to know. So
as you hear again or maybe for the first time the good news of salvation, I pray that you
may be moved with the same kind of curiosity that moved the shepherds to leave their flocks,
to leave their lists to the manger on that first Christmas night. I pray that this curiosity
gives you the grace to let go of some of the things that are preventing you from knowing
God, from preventing you from knowing the God who wants to know, who so much wants to
know you, a God who prioritizes you. Unlike the emperors of this world, you are not just
another number or constituent to God. Isaiah says, God has called you by name, you are
mine. A truth extended to the whole world in Jesus. God wants to know you so that you
may become a part of God's force of love that is saving the world. A love born in Bethlehem,
a love born in Christ, the newborn King. Amen.