If we are warm, well-fed, clothed, sheltered, money a plenty, safe, protected, and able to indulge in all kinds of Christmas season excesses tonight, how are we going to appropriate an identity with the Christmas story tonight?
Perhaps we are more honestly identified with the privileged members of the Roman Empire who enjoyed the benefits provided by their being members of the Emperor's wide sprawling entourage.
No one of any status was on the look out for a lowly couple in journey who could not find proper shelter for a woman in the late stages of her pregnancy. The Emperor-identified people were on the side of the tax collectors, who according to the story caused the journey back home to Bethlehem for the census to verify the number of potential tax payers.
For the most part, we as American Christians have been in comfortable lifestyles, like those in who were identified with the Emperor and having influence, safety, power, and privilege. In the history of our American Christians ancestors we know that they forced the Christian message upon people who lived more closely with the oppressed circumstances of Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. Early American Christians brought the message of the love of Jesus to the people who were already in our land, and to the slaves who were forcefully brought to our land. To these people, we brought the love of Jesus rather ironically with the hypocritical "do as Jesus did, but not as we are doing to you."
Why would this preacher be so negative about our hypocrisy on this Christmas eve, of all nights?
To remind us about the total irony of the Christmas Story.
God's unique Son is born into a family of nobodies who were so less than ordinary that they would be unnoticed.
But what does the Christmas Story do? It promotes a realm of understanding about this seeming ordinary birth with magical realism. The Roman Senate does not confer upon Jesus the title god or son of a god, rather a heavenly choral senate of angels register their affirmation of the divine child through songs and a massive light show, and for whom, for a senate or court of influential people? No, but lowly shepherds get the first scoop and first invitation to birth site. Lowly shepherds are the nobility of heaven's kingdom.
But can people of means, power, knowledge, and privilege also have access to this special birth? Enter the foreign magi, persons of wisdom and means; they too are included in the invitation to the site of the special birth.
But this birth of one who is called God's special child has its opposition. Herod must uphold the Emperor's exclusive right of being humanly divine, and opponents must be eliminated. There is open opposition to the meaning of this special birth. Ironically, when everyone is God's child by virtue of God's image upon us, it becomes silly for people to compete over such designation.
Friends, how can we appropriate this Christmas story tonight in our time and in our lives, indeed a time when the current dangers of war has shut down Bethlehem for Christmas? The good news of the Christmas story tonight is to receive the birth of the Christ again and again as the continuous opportunity for conversion to our better selves, yes even the selves who would see that no poor couple would be left in the cold but would be taken care of with the best possible health care.
The opportunity awaits us tonight for the birth of Christ to convert people in all kinds of situations, rich, poor, of different ethnicities, religious, social, economic, and educational conditions. And how shall our conversion of Christ be known tonight? By the harmonious reciprocity between ourselves. Rather than the birth of Christ be but a reminder of our own past failures and hypocrisy in being Christ-like, we should see this Christmas Eve as opportunity to more fuller conversion in being more Christ-like with each other. And being more Christ-like might mean some social and economic leveling where the rich find the poor as the fulfillment of their destiny to be more perfect sharers of the gifts of their lives.
Let us celebrate the birth of Christ tonight in us through the evidence of Christ-like behaviors in us that bring love, peace, and justice to fruition in our world.
Merry Birth of Christ in you tonight. Amen.
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