Year 1, Proper 28, Evensong

Sermon for Christmas Eve, December 24, 2013

Solemn Mass

By the Reverend Stephen Gerth

Year A:Isaiah 9:2-4,6-7; Psalm 96:1-4,11-12; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

Unlike Matthew’s Bethlehem, in Luke’s Bethlehem there is no star in the east, no one presenting, gold, frankincense and myrrh, no Herod ready to kill all the young boys his soldiers could find. Unlike Matthew, Luke’s narrative doesn’t echo the story of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. It’s about God’s Son,a king he has made shepherd of his people. And this Son is quite unlike the shepherd David, whom God had made a king. Unlike David, who “had beautiful eyes and was handsome,”[1] there was nothing exceptional about the appearance of Jesus.

In Christian writing, Luke and Mark are often used more selectively than Matthew, John or even Paul, since their gospels present a Jesus that challenges many of the ways way people came to understand him. One example—and there are others: Mark’s Jesus dies alone, not knowing there will be a resurrection.[2]

Luke’s Jesus is poor. Aside from the story of his transfiguration in the presence of Peter, James and John,[3]in Luke only Jesus’ words and deeds show his glory, show who he is. Even in the familiar story of his birth, it’s easy for me to forget that the glory and light in the heavens, surrounded, not the newborn king, but the angel who came to speak to the shepherds.

In this story of Jesus’ birth, as profoundly as anywhere in any of the gospels, Luke proclaims his understanding that the kingdom of God really does not come with great signs and wonders, as Jesus himself will explain in Luke’s narrative. He said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed . . . for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”[4]

A week ago Friday I went up to New England to visit my family there—my dad and stepmother, my brother and his family. I spent the night with my brother and sister-in-law and with their three little girls. My sister-in-law is Swedish. The six and three year-old girls have names that work equally well in Swedish and in English—the six year-old is already a fluent speaker in both, and it seems to me the three-year old is well on her way. The baby just turned one at the beginning of December. A year ago, Ralph and Ulrika couldn’t agree on a name for her. I confess I was surprised when I learned she would be called, “Sydney.” Six months later I got a note from Ulrika that they were legally changing Sydney’s name to Elise. I was delighted. Last week as I watched Elise “scooch” across the floor over and over again, with a big smile on her face, trying to follow her sisters around, the name seemed just right.

God’s son had one name—although Matthew tried to give him a second name, Emmanuel—God with us.[5]But even in Matthew, Mary’s son is named Jesus[6] and that’s what he’s always called. “Jesus” is Greek form of the Hebrew “Joshua”—which means “[God] saves.”[7]This is the name that is right because “Savior” is who Jesus is, with respect, more than “Emmanuel,” God with us, but the God who saves—who shows human that God’s love for us is for this world and for the world to come.

In the long narrative of the Old and New Testaments there are many themes that recur. One of the most beautiful images of the Almighty comes from the story of Adam and Eve, who “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” But, “the man and his wife hid themselves.” In time to come, the Lord God’s prophets were no more successful with humankind than God himself had been. But finally, there was the ordinary child, who like a shepherd, not a judge, would find a way to remind the world that every person, like he himself, is a child of his father, a daughter and son of God.

Sometimes it just takes time for God to find us, for us to find that we are all children of God, for us to find our names, for us to know that God already knows us and loves us.

Merry Christmas.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] 1 Samuel 16:12

[2] Mark 15:34-39

[3] Luke 9:29-36

[4] Luke 17:20-21

[5] Matthew 1:23

[6] Matthew 1:25

[7]The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2ed. (New York: Oxford University Press 1978), s.v. “Jesus.”