Night watch
Commentary
Rembrandt's grand painting of The Company of Captain Frans Cocq has captured lingering reflective gazes from generations of appreciative viewers (you might want to display a copy of the painting somewhere in your worship space or on your printed materials). The characters are lifelike and dynamic -- one can see the freeze-frame effect of muscles in motion and clothing and other paraphernalia in scattering disarray. The troupe, with Captain Cocq and his lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch foregrounded, is a company of civil guards setting out to make Amsterdam safe during the long darkness. For various reasons, including a varnish that darkened and hid many of the peripheral, shadowed figures, the painting became known as "Night Watch."
That latter name is expressive as well of the themes in today's lectionary passages. Christmas Eve is the time of the night watch ... the time of Isaiah's prophetic word that calls for watchmen to scan the darkened skies in expectation of God's great deliverance ... the time of Paul's eschatological hope expressed to Titus ... and the time when shepherds kept watch over unfolding events they did not fully understand.
Christmas Eve ought to be more than just a time of solemnity. There should be some almost giddy excitement that calls out chuckles and nervous laughter. This is the night when the silence of God is broken in a most astounding way. This is the night when the angels who last danced at creation are once again energized for an impromptu heavenly ball. This is the night when no blackness can withstand the brilliance of divine energy. This is the night for telling tall tales that happen to be true. In the words of G. K. Chesterton from his poem titled "The House Of Christmas":
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost -- how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
Christmas Eve is the time for the great night watch of expectation, when "the hopes and fears of all the years are met ..." and life is forever changed.
Isaiah 62:6-12
Chapters 56-66 of Isaiah form the third main section of the prophecy. In these poetic verses the prophet is his most eloquent. Gone are the judgments of chapters 1-39. Gone are the wrestlings of the suffering servant (chs. 42-53). Now all eyes are fixed on restoration and renewal and recompense and revival. The day of the Lord that loomed in threatening punishment earlier has now turned into the freshness after the storm. Out of the darkness comes light. Off from the battlefield emerges a victorious leader. Intent on ending the night strides the creator of the dawn.
Isaiah paints a word picture: the city besieged by enemies (including the covenant God who comes against it in vindictive fury) has survived the dark night of the corporate soul. Watchmen are urged out of their exhausted sleep to run up to their high lookouts and scan the horizon for news of the battle's outcome, and whether dawn will return to drive away this supernaturally oppressive darkness (v. 6). They are urged by the prophet to rail upon the covenant God until God gives in (vv. 6-7), and becomes as faithful to the promises of the covenant as God has challenged the people to be.
Verse 8 begins a mighty covenant song in which all that was accomplished in the Exodus is again put in the mouth of God. God swears to be the savior of God's people, as God was when Moses led the nation out of Egypt. Something new is added to the picture here, though. Instead of the covenant promises that pointed the people toward the land of Canaan as the end of the journey, here the messianic kingdom is a city. Jerusalem and the temple mount (called Zion) become a new and composite portrait of God's presence with the people, and the beginnings of the eschatological age. This is the theme picked up in the book of Revelation when, in chapter 21, the city of God descends as the new Jerusalem and God is able then to take up permanent residence among the redeemed.
What does Christmas have to do with this? Two things. First, the prophetic vision sees clearly that God will soon interrupt human history with a great act of salvation that will involve a theophany in Palestine. This is exactly what happened in the coming of Jesus. Second, when this theophany takes place, the Messianic Age will begin. Here is where we need to understand the relationship between Jesus and the prophetic day of the Lord. While the prophets saw all that the day of the Lord involved as happening in a single climactic event, Jesus split the day of the Lord in two, bringing the beginnings of the eschatological messianic kingdom with its blessings before finalizing the full impact of the judgments associated with this divine interruption. In other words, at Christmas we get to enjoy the beginnings of what the prophets told with glee, while still awaiting the covenant curses that will unfold in terrifying judgment. So Christmas Eve is truly a most holy night, and those who keep its watch are blessed indeed.
John Betjeman captured the connection well in his poem "Christmas." He writes of busy streets, crowded with last-minute shoppers, of lights and church bells and sleet and colored glass. He pictures decorations that make festive the houses and warm the demeanor of gothic church buildings. He speaks of rushing and bustling and shouted season's greetings, and nostalgia that grips communities like a pleasant virus. And then he peers into the hearts of those who have become religious exiles, wandering from the cozy faith of their forebears: girls in slacks remembering Dads who used to question their dress; "oafish" louts who think at this time of year to Mums who chided them with loving berating; children who whisper in beds about presents that will appear miraculously with the light of dawn. But also, Betjeman listens to their unvoiced questioning about Christmas tales, that if they actually might have veracity, would affect the whole of our outlook in this often seemingly God-forsaken world. He writes, in poetic rhyme:
And is it true? and is it true?
The most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And if, perchance, it is true, this ancient biblical Christmas story, there is a wonder that puts the rest of the seasonal tinsel to shame:
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.
Titus 3:4-7
Titus was a Gentile convert to Christianity who was left by Paul to shepherd the congregation on the island of Crete around 62 (A.D.). The church is well established and trying to find its ongoing identity as it faces the reality of the delay of Jesus' return.
Paul calls for an eschatological morality to pervade the Christian community (such as behaviors suitable for those who live already now as if they were home with the Lord in the fulfillment of his coming messianic kingdom). This lifestyle is based upon two things. First, there is the character of God (vv. 4-5). Paul says that it is the "kindness and love of God" that is displayed in the first coming of Jesus. This must be understood out of Old Testament prophetic perspectives on the day of the Lord. That singular event, according to the prophets, would bring three things: fires of cleansing judgment on both the wicked in Israel and also on the corrupt nations around; salvation of a faithful remnant of God's people; and the beginning of the glorious Messianic Age when all would be restored to beauty and joy and holiness and peace and prosperity. What Paul now understands is that the day of the Lord has been split in two so that the blessings of the future kingdom have already begun to appear through Jesus (clearer knowledge of God; greater certainty of God's faithfulness; miracles attesting to the healing of the Messianic Age; the generous power and passion brought through the coming of the Holy Spirit; and, above all, the raising of the dead as an assurance of eternal life), while the punishments of judgment day have been stalled for a time. This shows how much God desires to love and bless God's people, and those who know this ought to live similarly. So it is for those who keep watch on Christmas Eve. They understand what is going on.
Second, the presence of the Holy Spirit means that God's people have new capabilities of living holy lives (vv. 5-7). It is God who is already living within us, and therefore calling us to live as if we are part of God's ways and God's ethics and God's lifestyle.
Christmas Eve is a time to keep joyful watch. The darkness of evil that remains in this world will not write the final pages of human history. God has played God's trump card, and therefore all who bet on God are expectantly watching the cards turn and the wheels spin until the jackpot is announced.
Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20
Several things can help make these familiar verses come alive again tonight. In summary, the story of the baby Jesus is the wrong message at the wrong time to the wrong people.
It is the wrong message because, as Luke so eloquently develops in chapter 1, God is about to enter human history with great power to upset the current balance of powers. The high and mighty will be brought low, according to both Mary's and Zechariah's songs. This is an act of power. But how does it transpire? Through a helpless baby that cannot even sustain life on its own. George MacDonald captured the irony of this in his powerful verse:
They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
Second, the timing for this seems wrong. God makes God's move, according to Luke, in the days of Caesar Augustus. But Caesar Augustus has already brought peace and prosperity to earth! Why should there be a need for anything else? The doors of Mars' temple were closed for 22 years! The great Pax Romana is in force, and all creatures celebrate Caesar's birthday with holiday festivity -- work stops, cards and presents are given, and great feasts are eaten with music and partying. Yet we who live this far from Caesar's great days realize how fleeting was their peace and how inequitable their distribution of prosperity. Already in Luke's day, people were longing for a great Pax to come, and here Luke announces the Pax Christi which will never end.
Third, the message of God's great act is announced to the wrong people. We think of shepherds like David of the Old Testament, who was loved by God, or we think of boys in their father's bathrobes in a Christmas pageant. But shepherds in first-century Palestine were the lowest of the low. They were not allowed to enter places of worship because they were considered perpetually unclean (both because of their constant contact with excrement as well as their supposed immoral interactions with the sheep on cold nights). They were not allowed to give testimony in courts of law because they were considered chronic liars. They were viewed as vagrants and thieves, always stealing from other people's property, and yet it is to these outcasts that the message of good news comes.
Of course, when we know the values of the kingdom, and the character of Jesus, we understand. But we ought not to pass through the watches of Christmas Eve without sensing some of the awkwardness of what Luke is saying, and the character of the company we keep on this "night watch."
Application
Don Richardson wrote a powerful tale called Peace Child that corresponds to these lectionary passages. Don and his wife and their young son were missionaries among the Sawi people of Papua, New Guinea, in the 1960s. The people were pleasant, but the work was hard because no one had reduced the Sawi language to writing, nor provided any translation. That was to be Don's work. A further difficulty arose when Don found the men applauding Judas in the story of Jesus' Passion. Don learned that one of the most profound expressions of manhood among the Sawi was that of what they called "fattening the pig for the slaughter" -- a euphemism expressing prowess at making friends and then betraying those friends for a cannibalistic ritual.
Needless to say, Don was frightened. Was he being befriended in order to be eaten? Would his son be served at the next community festival?
Before the missionary couple had time to think about what their next move might be, war broke out between the Sawi and a neighboring tribe over hunting territory. As the fighting progressed, the Sawi began to whisper about the possible need for a peace child. "What was a peace child?" Don asked. "Sometimes," said the Sawi elders, "when tribes battle too long and the cost is too great, one of the tribal chiefs will grab a newborn from its mother's arms and run with the child across the battlefield and throw the screaming infant into the lap of a woman from the hostile tribe. This is the peace child. He is the symbol that one tribe wishes friendship with the other. The peace child will be raised as a member of the other tribe, but will always be seen as someone who came from the other side. As long as this person from the other side lives among the new tribe, its people will pledge themselves to peace with the other tribe."
Don was intrigued. He asked a further question. "But what if someone from the new tribe kills the peace child?" A look of shocked horror washed over the faces of the Sawi. Kill the peace child? No one would ever do that! It just wouldn't happen! No people could be so immoral or bad!
Of course, Don now had a new story to tell. Once upon a time there was a tribe in heaven that found itself at war with the tribe on earth. After generations of conflict, the Chief of heaven's tribe grabbed his own son and brought him across the lines of battle and placed him in the lap of a young mother from the tribe of earth. A Peace Child!
There is more to the story, including the treachery by which the people of the earth tribe killed the Peace Child. But on this Christmas Eve, those who are sent up as watchmen on the walls in this incessant human/divine conflict, see the Chief of heaven's tribe coming with the Peace Child. And a great celebration erupts in the village square as peace is declared.
An Alternative Application
Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20. The Gospel Lesson has great power in and of itself. The preacher may dwell on one or more among many themes. First, there is the idea of "peace" in a troubled world, then and now. Why is peace so rare? From where will it come? How did Jesus bring peace? What of that peace do we taste and touch and experience tonight?
Second, there is Mary. We ought not to neglect her, or to miss telling her story. A teenaged girl, perhaps no older than fourteen or fifteen ... a surprising change of fortunes expressed through the blessing of a child (see, for instance, Bret Hart's wonderful short story "The Luck of Roaring Camp") ... a lifelong journey with difficulty ... a symbol for the union between earth and heaven, lingering forever in the person of Jesus.
Third, some of the ideas presented above about whom ought to hear this message might beg for elaboration. If, indeed, the shepherds were the outcasts of society, who might be on God's list for announcing the good news this year? How might that announcement get to those people? What will be our role in the process?
Fourth, the meaning of Bethlehem might be brought out. The name means "house of bread" or "house of food." Those in poverty (generally true of shepherds) are told where they might find satisfying nourishment. Think, then, of the story of Naomi and Ruth in the Old Testament. Naomi left Bethlehem (the house of bread) and became a pauper in a distant land. Ruth left behind all that fed and nourished her in Moab, choosing to look for substance with Naomi in Bethlehem, and found food worth staying for. Who is hungry today, and how will they find their way to Bethlehem?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 97
This is it. All bets are off tonight, because somewhere in a feeding trough at the back of an old stable, God decided to make an appearance. God has done a mighty thing and come among us ... as a helpless baby. God shows up all right. But can this be right? God as refugee?
Most of us would prefer this "Psalm of enthronement," as scholars call it. We like this. It's time for a party. "Let the earth rejoice!" And so we should. But, a refugee God? A God whose foundation for rule is "righteousness and justice"? Wow.
Maybe it's time to sit down and think this through.
The psalms, of course, cannot be stretched to do our twenty-first-century Christian bidding. And yet much of what we understand of lordship and praise, of the dominion of God comes from these incredible verses. Further, we do believe and trust that the God who is described in this psalm is the self same one who is soon to need a change of diapers in the hay. This Creator God, enveloped in clouds and making the very earth to tremble, seems to be trying something new tonight.
Can we see it? Can we ourselves try to grasp what it means for the Creator to come among us as a helpless infant? What does this say to us of power? What does this say to us of justice and right action? How are we to be different, now that the Lord of glory has made an entrance like this?
Let this birthing night ask these questions. Let this labor give birth to new understandings and brighter clarity. If God's enthronement can move from mountains melting and heavens proclaiming to a baby with tiny hands that grab around your fingers, can we not also imagine different lives for us?
Could we perhaps open our eyes to the possibility that power lives, not in coercion, but in vulnerability? Might we examine the notion that justice and right action are not only the foundations for God's rule in this psalm, but also the foundation stones for our lives? If God can rule from such a foundation, imagine a church built on those same blocks! If God can come among us in this moment in weakness and vulnerability, can we not go forward in the same way, full of love? Full of hope? Full of new life?
Because God does come like this, we know that the answer to the foregoing questions must be "Yes." And it is this yes, this answer that moves us forward as God's people in a new time.
So Merry Christmas. Let each of us celebrate this day with that same loud "Yes," shouted with rejoicing and with joy.
That latter name is expressive as well of the themes in today's lectionary passages. Christmas Eve is the time of the night watch ... the time of Isaiah's prophetic word that calls for watchmen to scan the darkened skies in expectation of God's great deliverance ... the time of Paul's eschatological hope expressed to Titus ... and the time when shepherds kept watch over unfolding events they did not fully understand.
Christmas Eve ought to be more than just a time of solemnity. There should be some almost giddy excitement that calls out chuckles and nervous laughter. This is the night when the silence of God is broken in a most astounding way. This is the night when the angels who last danced at creation are once again energized for an impromptu heavenly ball. This is the night when no blackness can withstand the brilliance of divine energy. This is the night for telling tall tales that happen to be true. In the words of G. K. Chesterton from his poem titled "The House Of Christmas":
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost -- how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
Christmas Eve is the time for the great night watch of expectation, when "the hopes and fears of all the years are met ..." and life is forever changed.
Isaiah 62:6-12
Chapters 56-66 of Isaiah form the third main section of the prophecy. In these poetic verses the prophet is his most eloquent. Gone are the judgments of chapters 1-39. Gone are the wrestlings of the suffering servant (chs. 42-53). Now all eyes are fixed on restoration and renewal and recompense and revival. The day of the Lord that loomed in threatening punishment earlier has now turned into the freshness after the storm. Out of the darkness comes light. Off from the battlefield emerges a victorious leader. Intent on ending the night strides the creator of the dawn.
Isaiah paints a word picture: the city besieged by enemies (including the covenant God who comes against it in vindictive fury) has survived the dark night of the corporate soul. Watchmen are urged out of their exhausted sleep to run up to their high lookouts and scan the horizon for news of the battle's outcome, and whether dawn will return to drive away this supernaturally oppressive darkness (v. 6). They are urged by the prophet to rail upon the covenant God until God gives in (vv. 6-7), and becomes as faithful to the promises of the covenant as God has challenged the people to be.
Verse 8 begins a mighty covenant song in which all that was accomplished in the Exodus is again put in the mouth of God. God swears to be the savior of God's people, as God was when Moses led the nation out of Egypt. Something new is added to the picture here, though. Instead of the covenant promises that pointed the people toward the land of Canaan as the end of the journey, here the messianic kingdom is a city. Jerusalem and the temple mount (called Zion) become a new and composite portrait of God's presence with the people, and the beginnings of the eschatological age. This is the theme picked up in the book of Revelation when, in chapter 21, the city of God descends as the new Jerusalem and God is able then to take up permanent residence among the redeemed.
What does Christmas have to do with this? Two things. First, the prophetic vision sees clearly that God will soon interrupt human history with a great act of salvation that will involve a theophany in Palestine. This is exactly what happened in the coming of Jesus. Second, when this theophany takes place, the Messianic Age will begin. Here is where we need to understand the relationship between Jesus and the prophetic day of the Lord. While the prophets saw all that the day of the Lord involved as happening in a single climactic event, Jesus split the day of the Lord in two, bringing the beginnings of the eschatological messianic kingdom with its blessings before finalizing the full impact of the judgments associated with this divine interruption. In other words, at Christmas we get to enjoy the beginnings of what the prophets told with glee, while still awaiting the covenant curses that will unfold in terrifying judgment. So Christmas Eve is truly a most holy night, and those who keep its watch are blessed indeed.
John Betjeman captured the connection well in his poem "Christmas." He writes of busy streets, crowded with last-minute shoppers, of lights and church bells and sleet and colored glass. He pictures decorations that make festive the houses and warm the demeanor of gothic church buildings. He speaks of rushing and bustling and shouted season's greetings, and nostalgia that grips communities like a pleasant virus. And then he peers into the hearts of those who have become religious exiles, wandering from the cozy faith of their forebears: girls in slacks remembering Dads who used to question their dress; "oafish" louts who think at this time of year to Mums who chided them with loving berating; children who whisper in beds about presents that will appear miraculously with the light of dawn. But also, Betjeman listens to their unvoiced questioning about Christmas tales, that if they actually might have veracity, would affect the whole of our outlook in this often seemingly God-forsaken world. He writes, in poetic rhyme:
And is it true? and is it true?
The most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And if, perchance, it is true, this ancient biblical Christmas story, there is a wonder that puts the rest of the seasonal tinsel to shame:
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.
Titus 3:4-7
Titus was a Gentile convert to Christianity who was left by Paul to shepherd the congregation on the island of Crete around 62 (A.D.). The church is well established and trying to find its ongoing identity as it faces the reality of the delay of Jesus' return.
Paul calls for an eschatological morality to pervade the Christian community (such as behaviors suitable for those who live already now as if they were home with the Lord in the fulfillment of his coming messianic kingdom). This lifestyle is based upon two things. First, there is the character of God (vv. 4-5). Paul says that it is the "kindness and love of God" that is displayed in the first coming of Jesus. This must be understood out of Old Testament prophetic perspectives on the day of the Lord. That singular event, according to the prophets, would bring three things: fires of cleansing judgment on both the wicked in Israel and also on the corrupt nations around; salvation of a faithful remnant of God's people; and the beginning of the glorious Messianic Age when all would be restored to beauty and joy and holiness and peace and prosperity. What Paul now understands is that the day of the Lord has been split in two so that the blessings of the future kingdom have already begun to appear through Jesus (clearer knowledge of God; greater certainty of God's faithfulness; miracles attesting to the healing of the Messianic Age; the generous power and passion brought through the coming of the Holy Spirit; and, above all, the raising of the dead as an assurance of eternal life), while the punishments of judgment day have been stalled for a time. This shows how much God desires to love and bless God's people, and those who know this ought to live similarly. So it is for those who keep watch on Christmas Eve. They understand what is going on.
Second, the presence of the Holy Spirit means that God's people have new capabilities of living holy lives (vv. 5-7). It is God who is already living within us, and therefore calling us to live as if we are part of God's ways and God's ethics and God's lifestyle.
Christmas Eve is a time to keep joyful watch. The darkness of evil that remains in this world will not write the final pages of human history. God has played God's trump card, and therefore all who bet on God are expectantly watching the cards turn and the wheels spin until the jackpot is announced.
Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20
Several things can help make these familiar verses come alive again tonight. In summary, the story of the baby Jesus is the wrong message at the wrong time to the wrong people.
It is the wrong message because, as Luke so eloquently develops in chapter 1, God is about to enter human history with great power to upset the current balance of powers. The high and mighty will be brought low, according to both Mary's and Zechariah's songs. This is an act of power. But how does it transpire? Through a helpless baby that cannot even sustain life on its own. George MacDonald captured the irony of this in his powerful verse:
They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
Second, the timing for this seems wrong. God makes God's move, according to Luke, in the days of Caesar Augustus. But Caesar Augustus has already brought peace and prosperity to earth! Why should there be a need for anything else? The doors of Mars' temple were closed for 22 years! The great Pax Romana is in force, and all creatures celebrate Caesar's birthday with holiday festivity -- work stops, cards and presents are given, and great feasts are eaten with music and partying. Yet we who live this far from Caesar's great days realize how fleeting was their peace and how inequitable their distribution of prosperity. Already in Luke's day, people were longing for a great Pax to come, and here Luke announces the Pax Christi which will never end.
Third, the message of God's great act is announced to the wrong people. We think of shepherds like David of the Old Testament, who was loved by God, or we think of boys in their father's bathrobes in a Christmas pageant. But shepherds in first-century Palestine were the lowest of the low. They were not allowed to enter places of worship because they were considered perpetually unclean (both because of their constant contact with excrement as well as their supposed immoral interactions with the sheep on cold nights). They were not allowed to give testimony in courts of law because they were considered chronic liars. They were viewed as vagrants and thieves, always stealing from other people's property, and yet it is to these outcasts that the message of good news comes.
Of course, when we know the values of the kingdom, and the character of Jesus, we understand. But we ought not to pass through the watches of Christmas Eve without sensing some of the awkwardness of what Luke is saying, and the character of the company we keep on this "night watch."
Application
Don Richardson wrote a powerful tale called Peace Child that corresponds to these lectionary passages. Don and his wife and their young son were missionaries among the Sawi people of Papua, New Guinea, in the 1960s. The people were pleasant, but the work was hard because no one had reduced the Sawi language to writing, nor provided any translation. That was to be Don's work. A further difficulty arose when Don found the men applauding Judas in the story of Jesus' Passion. Don learned that one of the most profound expressions of manhood among the Sawi was that of what they called "fattening the pig for the slaughter" -- a euphemism expressing prowess at making friends and then betraying those friends for a cannibalistic ritual.
Needless to say, Don was frightened. Was he being befriended in order to be eaten? Would his son be served at the next community festival?
Before the missionary couple had time to think about what their next move might be, war broke out between the Sawi and a neighboring tribe over hunting territory. As the fighting progressed, the Sawi began to whisper about the possible need for a peace child. "What was a peace child?" Don asked. "Sometimes," said the Sawi elders, "when tribes battle too long and the cost is too great, one of the tribal chiefs will grab a newborn from its mother's arms and run with the child across the battlefield and throw the screaming infant into the lap of a woman from the hostile tribe. This is the peace child. He is the symbol that one tribe wishes friendship with the other. The peace child will be raised as a member of the other tribe, but will always be seen as someone who came from the other side. As long as this person from the other side lives among the new tribe, its people will pledge themselves to peace with the other tribe."
Don was intrigued. He asked a further question. "But what if someone from the new tribe kills the peace child?" A look of shocked horror washed over the faces of the Sawi. Kill the peace child? No one would ever do that! It just wouldn't happen! No people could be so immoral or bad!
Of course, Don now had a new story to tell. Once upon a time there was a tribe in heaven that found itself at war with the tribe on earth. After generations of conflict, the Chief of heaven's tribe grabbed his own son and brought him across the lines of battle and placed him in the lap of a young mother from the tribe of earth. A Peace Child!
There is more to the story, including the treachery by which the people of the earth tribe killed the Peace Child. But on this Christmas Eve, those who are sent up as watchmen on the walls in this incessant human/divine conflict, see the Chief of heaven's tribe coming with the Peace Child. And a great celebration erupts in the village square as peace is declared.
An Alternative Application
Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20. The Gospel Lesson has great power in and of itself. The preacher may dwell on one or more among many themes. First, there is the idea of "peace" in a troubled world, then and now. Why is peace so rare? From where will it come? How did Jesus bring peace? What of that peace do we taste and touch and experience tonight?
Second, there is Mary. We ought not to neglect her, or to miss telling her story. A teenaged girl, perhaps no older than fourteen or fifteen ... a surprising change of fortunes expressed through the blessing of a child (see, for instance, Bret Hart's wonderful short story "The Luck of Roaring Camp") ... a lifelong journey with difficulty ... a symbol for the union between earth and heaven, lingering forever in the person of Jesus.
Third, some of the ideas presented above about whom ought to hear this message might beg for elaboration. If, indeed, the shepherds were the outcasts of society, who might be on God's list for announcing the good news this year? How might that announcement get to those people? What will be our role in the process?
Fourth, the meaning of Bethlehem might be brought out. The name means "house of bread" or "house of food." Those in poverty (generally true of shepherds) are told where they might find satisfying nourishment. Think, then, of the story of Naomi and Ruth in the Old Testament. Naomi left Bethlehem (the house of bread) and became a pauper in a distant land. Ruth left behind all that fed and nourished her in Moab, choosing to look for substance with Naomi in Bethlehem, and found food worth staying for. Who is hungry today, and how will they find their way to Bethlehem?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 97
This is it. All bets are off tonight, because somewhere in a feeding trough at the back of an old stable, God decided to make an appearance. God has done a mighty thing and come among us ... as a helpless baby. God shows up all right. But can this be right? God as refugee?
Most of us would prefer this "Psalm of enthronement," as scholars call it. We like this. It's time for a party. "Let the earth rejoice!" And so we should. But, a refugee God? A God whose foundation for rule is "righteousness and justice"? Wow.
Maybe it's time to sit down and think this through.
The psalms, of course, cannot be stretched to do our twenty-first-century Christian bidding. And yet much of what we understand of lordship and praise, of the dominion of God comes from these incredible verses. Further, we do believe and trust that the God who is described in this psalm is the self same one who is soon to need a change of diapers in the hay. This Creator God, enveloped in clouds and making the very earth to tremble, seems to be trying something new tonight.
Can we see it? Can we ourselves try to grasp what it means for the Creator to come among us as a helpless infant? What does this say to us of power? What does this say to us of justice and right action? How are we to be different, now that the Lord of glory has made an entrance like this?
Let this birthing night ask these questions. Let this labor give birth to new understandings and brighter clarity. If God's enthronement can move from mountains melting and heavens proclaiming to a baby with tiny hands that grab around your fingers, can we not also imagine different lives for us?
Could we perhaps open our eyes to the possibility that power lives, not in coercion, but in vulnerability? Might we examine the notion that justice and right action are not only the foundations for God's rule in this psalm, but also the foundation stones for our lives? If God can rule from such a foundation, imagine a church built on those same blocks! If God can come among us in this moment in weakness and vulnerability, can we not go forward in the same way, full of love? Full of hope? Full of new life?
Because God does come like this, we know that the answer to the foregoing questions must be "Yes." And it is this yes, this answer that moves us forward as God's people in a new time.
So Merry Christmas. Let each of us celebrate this day with that same loud "Yes," shouted with rejoicing and with joy.
