Christmas Eve service - Luke 2: 1-20

The kids are cute and a little predictable in the way they try to fit themselves into the story. We can figure out who is interested in fairies or astronomy, whose dad might be named “Mike”. Like any of us, they’re trying to find where they can fit into the picture. And despite the historical, cultural dominance of Westernized Jesus (blond hair, blue eyes), more and more people are focusing on the universality of Jesus: seeing him as from their own ethnicity and heritage or experience and identity.

But much of this is lost in all of pressure to find the perfect gift, to bake the perfect batch of goodies, to decorate the perfect homestead. We’ve become too distracted with fitting in with society’s version of what success and life should be. We’re trying to find where we fit into the artificial ranks of popularity, prestige and prosperity.

We gather tonight to put that aside for a few moments, to focus again on why this time is so special. The longest night of the year has passed; the days are getting longer. We celebrate the gift of life, of divine power that can come to all of us in ordinary ways.

The story of giving birth at inconvenient times or in unconventional places is not a new one. We have admired already the rise of an individual to greatness from humble beginnings, of the underdog winning over insurmountable odds. These are themes and plotlines that are common to our history.

What is different, what is unique, what is so compelling is not what we might use to put ourselves into the Christmas story, but the realization that the Christmas story is already within ourselves. When God came to earth as an infant, to journey among us, with us, as us, faith shifted from what the high priests could do on our behalf, to what our own spirit might be able to do and be. The quiet voice of our conscience, our gut feeling about a person or a situation, the first instinct of reaction is where eternal wisdom, knowledge and truth may be found.

And that may be as good a sermon message that I would want to finish with, from this pulpit – except I have some more to add. It is bittersweet that this celebration of Christmas is marred by the fact that this is my last service in this church as minister. But that is life, too. Gathered here in the congregation, mixed with the energy and excitement of Christmas’ arrival and birth is the sadness, regret and uncertainty of death and loss.

Back in Jesus’ family tree, we can trace the lineage back to a Moabite woman named Ruth who had married a son of a woman named Naomi. If you remember this story, you know that life turned rather nasty for them when their husbands died. Naomi decides to return to her hometown of Bethlehem and her daughter-in-law Ruth accompanies her. Upon her return, Naomi declares that her name be changed to “Mara” which means “bitter” because life has treated her so horribly.

I mention this because there is some scholarship that thinks that the name “Mary” is a derivation from the name “Mara.” There is much that is bittersweet in the nativity story. For Mary: a young teenager, giving birth far from home, no family support, no midwives, so much fear and anxiety. For Joseph: a conflicted husband, trying to support the birth of a son that was not his, alone with his labouring wife, no one at 911 to talk him through the delivery, so much fear and anxiety.

This was the end of their life as they know it. From this point on, their life was not their own. Not only was there worry and uncertainty about raising an infant, of colic, ear infections, and every fevered cry, but this was the Saviour, God incarnate. As much as everyone was happy at the safe arrival of a baby boy, the pressure and anxiousness must have put a bittersweet flavour on the proceedings.

Yet, Mary rejoiced, treasuring the memories and stories of shepherds and angels. She had a ministry of motherhood; this was her clear focus and purpose, and that resolve was a comfort. She knew her goal and vision was the care of the child, that she could do. If she let herself get caught up in matters of Christological implications of an incarnational avatar, then all would be lost. By concentrating on who she was and what she could do, as a mother of a son, wife of a husband, citizen of Judea, God’s will would be done.