READINGS

1. Luke 2:1-14

HOMILY

The reading sets us up with a clash of powers at the very beginning.

The first person we hear about is the emperor Augustus and his decree.

It seems actually that Luke was a bit muddled about exactly which census was going on at this time, but that's really quite unimportant.

The important thing is Caesar Augustus was trying to get everybody to register in place and know who was who.

At the very end of today's Gospel, we get a multitude of the heavenly host: so many more angels so much more power, so much more glory, utterly beyond the power and imagination of anything that Cesar Augustus or his lackeys in different parts of his empire could possibly come up with.

So the very first thing this is about is how real power is to be found in the strangest places.

So Joseph, being of the family of David, goes to the city of David called Bethlehem and here all the prophecies are starting to be fulfilled.

The great promise of the Son of the Most High, who is going to come in the one called the firstborn of the Lord, who was going to come in the Holy Place.

This is going to be in the city of David, rather than in the holy place in Jerusalem.

He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.

As we saw in the Gospel of the Annunciation, she was the Holy Place. In the Holy Place, the son was born.

She wrapped him in swaddling cloths

This obviously the priestly garment appropriate to a baby when the Son the Most High came out of the holy place dressed as a priest immediately the tunic signifying the entry into creation was put upon him.

and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

Apparently, there's a pun with the word manger: the Hebrew word can be pronounced two different ways - can either be Jerusalem or manger.

Here the significance is that this holy place is in the city of David.

David gone back to his pastoral roots outside the city of Jerusalem, which he hadn't yet taken.

So the promise to him that got blown up into the Temple into Solomon's temple and into the temple in Jerusalem is here finally being fulfilled off stage, off centre, in the virgin giving birth to the child and placing him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The word for the inn κατάλυμα (kataluma) is apparently much more a mysterious place: it's the same as the upper room that the disciples met in.

So, it's not necessarily an inn, it's a mysterious place.

These are all references to the temple, the holy place, where this was actually happening.

So that no-place turns out to be the place - the place of all places.

Then we have the marvellous intervention of the shepherds.

In that region, there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flock by night.

Let's remember two things about these shepherds: first of all, the first temple priests who'd been expelled by Josiah were referred to as shepherds who with their angels, because priests and angels go together, had been expelled out of Jerusalem into the countryside nearby where they allied with the Assyrians and foreign hosts eventually against Jerusalem and they're greatly criticized.

Those rejected priests or shepherds with their angels.

Here they are mysteriously fulfilling Micah's prophets that the watchtower that they would be watching in the tower of Israel.

So the prophet Micah has the shepherds watching in a special tower close to Jerusalem, the Tower of the Flock.

Here are the shepherds watching by night.

Notice that most shippers don't watch their flocks by night - the flocks are in safe space -, but here they're not yet in a safe space, so the shepherds are watching.

Let's remember something about shepherds: at that time, they were a despised profession.

They were considered to be dishonest, smelly and not the kind of people you wanted to have around.

It would certainly not be trustworthy as witnesses; and yet, they are being asked to become the first witnesses to the fulfilment of the promise.

So the despised shepherds (despised by the old temple priests and despised as the lowliest of professions) are the ones to whom the angel of the Lord comes announcing with great joy using the language of Isaiah (the one we get in our first reading today):

it was born in this day in the city of David, a saviour who is the messiah, the Lord 

He's effectively recapitulating the promise in Isaiah.

for a child has been born to us, a son given to us authority rests upon his shoulders and he is named wonderful counsellor mighty God everlasting father, Prince of peace 

These are different translations of the same phrases.

His authority shall go continually and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.

So the angels are saying:

• this is the fulfilment of the Davidic promise this is the firstborn;
• this is the one who, with great joy, has been promised;
• he's going to come in;
• he's the one who is, in fact, going to sort out all the sinfulness;
• he's going to be able to make peace;
• he is going to be that great atonement mechanism, atonement dynamism that you lacked, without which you cannot have peace.
• you are going to be able to be forgiven;
• you're going to be able to come and live together.

This is the promise of the prince of peace

Then the angel fulfils the Isiahonic sign

this will be a sign for you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger 

In other words, again fulfilling Isaac, showing how his eyes being fulfilled, in the city of David, but offstage and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying:

Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace amongst those whom he favors

The really important thing about all these angels coming together, it's the sign of the fullness of creation.

When you get angels giving glory to God, it's the sign of that glory at last, has been returned.

The glory of Israel that had been expelled from the temple was associated with the mother of the Lord.

At last, that which is going to make creation come utterly alive and enable us to participate as children, as sons and daughters of God, actually alive on the inside of the creation, no longer dwelling in darkness, no longer bowed down by our sins, by violence, the possibility of us coming alive and being able to be stretched into being the fullness of creation: that's what the angels are announcing.

And the power is so much greater than anything that any human authority could come up with, that it can't even be imagined.

This is why Luke sets up the parallel between Caesar Augustus and the angels.

And yet, it's only by coming and seeing the sign, accompanying the sign, watching the sign grow, realizing that the sign has come from the Holy Place and is the firstborn, that therefore this is the one who is going to perform the sacrifice, the Davidic firstborn performing the sacrifice.

And that actually this will be the self-giving, which inaugurates us stopping having to sacrifice and thus becoming self-givers, who are able to learn to see the other in ourselves and ourselves in the others.

And so avoid cruelty, avoid war, learn the ways of peace.

This is what's being announced: the opening up of the new creation through the birth of the Son.