NewCreation

Homily for Christmas Day (Luke 2_1-14)

Happy Christmas, and welcome sisters and brothers to this homily for Christmas Day. The reading is the Midnight Mass reading, the one which we have from St. Luke's Gospel, and it 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, because the important thing is Caesar Augustus was trying to get everybody to register in place and know who was who. But 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 Caesar Augustus or his satraps and 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 was going to come, in the one called the firstborn of the Lord who was going to come in the holy place — and yet this is going to be in the city of David rather than in the holy place in Jerusalem. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. Read: the firstborn. She — as we saw in the Gospel of the Annunciation — she was the holy place, and in the holy place the Son was born. She wrapped him in bands of cloth, or swaddling clothes, as it is said. This is obviously the priestly garment appropriate to a baby: when the Son of 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. Here the babe is wrapped in swaddling clothes and placed in a manger. Apparently there's a pun with the word "manger" — the Hebrew word can be pronounced two different ways, and can either mean Jerusalem or manger. 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 — and 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 center, in the virgin giving birth to the child and placing him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. And the word for inn… In Cataluña, it 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 again the 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. And then we have the marvelous intervention of the shepherds. "In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night." Well, let's remember two things about these shepherds. First of all, the first Temple priests who had 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 are greatly criticized, those rejected priests or shepherds with their angels. Here they are, mysteriously fulfilling Micah's prophecy: 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. And here are the shepherds watching by night. Most shepherds 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 watching. And let's remember something about shepherds. Shepherds at the time were a despised profession, and they were considered to be dishonest, smelly, and not the kind of people you wanted to have around. They would certainly not be trustworthy as witnesses. And yet they are being asked to become the first witnesses to the fulfillment of the promise. So the despised shepherds – despised as the old Temple priests, and despised as the lowliest of professions – they 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. Since what the angel says is: "To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, 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 Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." These are different translations of the same phrases. "His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom." So the angels are saying: this is the fulfillment 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're 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. And then the angel fulfills the Isaianic sign: "This will be a sign for you — you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." In other words, again fulfilling Isaiah, showing how Isaiah is being fulfilled in this, the city of David, but off stage. "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host 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 is the sign of the fullness of creation. When you get angels giving glory to God, it's the sign that glory at last has been returned — the glory of Israel that had been expelled from the Temple, that 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, which 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 — and 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 us becoming self-givers who are able to learn to see the other in ourselves and ourselves in 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. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.