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“A Child is Born”

photo of Greg preachingSermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Luke 2:8-14
given December 24, 2007

In a few hours, it will be Christmas day.  All of the preparations should now be complete.  The presents have all been purchased and scattered beneath the tree.  The special decorations are giving our homes a festive touch.  Those of you who have bought into the heresy of an artificial Christmas tree are feeling pretty smug right now, because you have not had to pick up one single pine needle from the carpet.  But, I guess I should let you in on a little secret.  The real tree people – and we are quite arrogant about being real tree people – we are embarrassed for you!1

Christmas has given birth to numerous practices that have quickly become traditions; such as Christmas trees with lights and ornaments, festive wreathes, stockings hung, and a jolly old elf that brings gifts to everyone who has been good…and everyone who has been pretty good…and everyone who has been good about 50 percent of the time and not-so-good about 50 percent of the time…and everyone who has not been good even half of the time.  In fact, in my analysis of Santa’s gift-giving practices, he pretty much just gives gifts to everyone regardless of their behavior!  And there is splendid theology there, because that’s the way it is with God’s love.  God’s love is so rich and so deep, that God sent his Son, not to the good, but to the whole world.

Joseph and his young wife, Mary, make the journey to Bethlehem.  It is a difficult journey for Mary because she is due to give birth any moment.  Once the couple reaches the small village, they hunt for a place to stay, but not a room can be found.  The innkeeper offers his stable.  It’s not much, but it’s the best he can provide.  Joseph and Mary bed down in the straw surrounded by animals, and it’s not long before Mary goes into labor.  She delivers her firstborn son.  He is a healthy and handsome baby, and they name him “Jesus.”
Last year, a few weeks before Christmas, Kathy Bostrom, a Presbyterian pastor, found herself in the hospital, recovering from her second major surgery of the year.  She was immediately reminded that a hospital is not a haven of quiet and peace and rest.  She had a roommate who smoked in the bathroom and turned the television on at all hours of the night.  Across the hall an elderly woman cried out in pain every five minutes, day and night.  Each time there was a “code blue,” emergency personnel raced down the halls.

One night as she lay in her hospital bed, hooked up to so many machines she could not even move without help and close to tears from the riveting pain, she heard a faint sound.  In the midst of all the agonizing cries, the blaring TVs and the beeping monitors, she swore she heard a different type of sound.  It was a soft, sweet, gentle song; but then it was gone.  She wondered: “Am I imagining things?”  It was entirely possible with all the medications coursing through her veins.

A few hours later, still awake and attempting to block out the sounds of the woman wailing across the hall and the loud, angry voice of her roommate swearing on the telephone, she heard the strange, beautiful sound again.  She wondered, “Could it possibly be?  No, I must be hearing things.”

But, when the nurse came in to check her vital signs, Kathy asked her: “Was it me, or was there a very different sound breaking through the harsh sounds of this place?”

As the nurse wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around her bruised arm, the nurse responded, “It’s tradition here.  Every time a baby is born in the nursery, they play Brahms’ Lullaby on the loudspeakers.”

Drifting through the harshness of those halls – a lullaby on the loudspeakers.  And, for the first time since she had come through the emergency room, she smiled.  She felt hopeful and a sense of peace washed over her.  A lullaby on the loudspeakers: a baby is born!  During the remaining time she spent in the hospital, her ears were always poised for the sounds of that lullaby.  Amidst the horrible sounds of pain and misery that surrounded her, she strained to hear the sound of life, of hope, of new beginnings.2

And that is why we have gathered tonight.  In a world of too much suffering, violence and injustice, we have come to hear the sound of life, of hope, of new beginnings.  The birth of Jesus was a life-changing event – not only for Joseph and Mary – but for the entire world, because this birth was special.  This one was like no other.  This was the one that prompts us to declare: “God is with us.”  And if God is with us, that changes everything.  It means that the future can be better than the present.  It means that hostilities can cease and people can learn to get along with each other.  It means that peace on earth is not simply a fantasy of the foolish or a pipe dream of the poets, but a real possibility, because God never tires from guiding us to a world where people learn to live together in peace.

Christmas fires our imaginations so that we can envision a future that is different than the present.  Perhaps the greatest casualty of the information age is the increasing devaluation of our God-given capacity to imagine another reality.  Author Neil Postman puts it plainly when he says: “We have all the data that we need to solve problems.  We do not need more data.  We already have more facts than we could possibly consume.  What we are dying of is a lack of dreams and a failure of nerve, and no computer can give us those.”  It has been said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  But it is also true that those who cannot imagine a different future are condemned to repeat the present.3

Christmas is a time to retool our imaginations.  It is a time to remember that God is with us, and seeks to lead us to a better tomorrow.  For our part, we must open our lives to God and strive to discern God’s marvelous possibilities for our world, and then to commit ourselves to making that new world a reality.
During the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, the young Jewish girl, Anne Frank, wrote in her diary while she hid from the enemy.  She described the dream that held her and gave her the strength to endure to the end.  She wrote: “It’s a real wonder I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible...yet I cling them...I cannot build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death.  I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness.  I see the suffering of millions, and yet, if I look to the heavens, I think...cruelty is going to end, and peace will return at last.”4

When the angels announced the birth of Jesus they spoke of God’s desire for peace on earth.  To some that is an impossible hope that has no chance of ever coming true.  But it is a dream that those of us who celebrate the birth in Bethlehem must never stop dreaming.

NOTES

    1. Brett Younger, “The First Christmas Carol,” posted on the Lectionary Homiletics website for December 22, 2002.
    2. Kathy Bostrum, The Presbyterian Outlook, 20 November 2006.
    3. Joanna Adams, “It Takes Imagination,” preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta on December 10, 2000.
    4. Ibid.

       

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