Christmas Eve

Luke 2:1-20

When I think about this night I often think about a painting. It’s not a very Christmassy painting. It is a painting of Mary weeping over her son after his body was taken down from the cross. It was in the family home of a man named Martin Kober for a long time. It was an old painting that had always been a part of the background of the family.

I remember at my grandma’s house she had a velvet painting of a mountain scene. It was just always there. It was like the wood paneling it hung on. It was just always there- a part of the background.

Martin Kober’s painting was like that. It hung on the wall of the family home, in the background. It hung on the wall for many years until one day the painting was knocked off the wall when the kids were playing with a tennis ball. The family left the painting behind the couch, perhaps to keep it from being knocked to the ground again. There the painting sat for nearly 30 years, unseen, gathering dust.

One day Martin decided to have the painting appraised to see if it had any value. He blew the dust off and took it to an art expert. To his surprise the expert confirmed the family legend. The expert believed that the painting was the work of the Renaissance painter, Michelangelo, and was painted around 1545. It could be worth as much as 300 million dollars.

I think about this painting at Christmas because I think we do something similar with the Christmas story. It is so familiar. Most of us grew up with the image of the nativity. It was on Christmas cards. We saw nativity scenes set up in people’s yards, or at the church. These kinds of scenes were just always a part of the background at this time of year.

So when it comes to preaching on this story I find it really challenging because we all know the story so well. The shock of God coming to us as a baby is lost and is replaced with a yawn. For most of us the story is a nostalgic and cozy image that is the furthest thing from shocking. We miss the theological drama of it because it is so familiar.

It is like Martin Kober’s Michelangelo. It is familiar, so it is treated as common. It is in a place where tennis balls can knock it off the wall. It is permitted to be hidden behind the couch and gathering dust. It is not treated as valuable. It is not treasured.

I think we realized the true value of the Christmas story we would pick it up from behind the couch and blow the dust off it. My role tonight is to be a bit like the art expert. I hold up the painting and pull out my magnifying lens. I turn the painting over and look at the back. And I ask you to sit down as I tell you that you have an incredible treasure on your hands.

The image that the Gospels paint for us is a high contrast image. The darks are very dark, and the lights are very bright. … The baby is the brightest figure in the scene. He is God with us. In a mysterious way, to encounter this child is to encounter God. He will be for us the clearest image of God. He will teach us the profundity of God’s love in a way that we couldn’t have been imagined before he arrived. It is through him we will be challenged to love our enemies, and those on the margins of society. He will challenge us to not just tolerate, but love those who are different than us. He will show us God’s deep willingness to forgive us, and seek us out when we are lost. He will teach us to be transformed from the inside, out. Jesus will become the way we really know God. As Colossians 1:15 says, “He is the image of the invisible God”.

This bright image is set against a dark background. The backdrop for the image is one of political oppression. The Roman Empire covers a vast area around the Mediterranean ranging from England to Iraq. The empire brought a certain kind of peace, but it was always by threat at the point of a sword. The image painted for us shows us that it is the kind of world where people can be moved about like chess pieces at the whim of the emperor, so if the emperor says go to your hometown to be counted, you go. He doesn’t care if you have a pregnant wife. Later in the story we will meet king Herod who we are told is willing to destroy children to protect his throne. … The baby is not laid to rest at home- He is born away from home, at the command of an emperor, and placed in an animal’s feeding trough. … The scene painted for us by the Gospels is a dark scene.

The theological drama of this scene is symbolized in the book of Revelation ch 12 where we read, 

“a woman … was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads. … the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God”.

 This baby is born into a battle. The background is painted in very dark colours.

The scene is painted this way because we live in a pretty dark world. Life is a battle. We rest from the battle on occasion, but we don’t usually rest very long before we are faced with a new challenge- a sickness, or a family member’s sickness, the death of someone close to us, addiction, an identity crisis, a lost career, a bankruptcy, a betrayal, or abuse. And those are the battles we face if we are living in a place or relative prosperity, never mind places that are dealing with wars, or earthquakes, or food shortages, or terrorism, or thousands of people living in refugee camps. … The scene is painted dark because life is often dark.

In the midst of that darkness is born a bright light. The Gospel of John says it this way, 

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:4-5).

 He came to shine in the midst of our darkness. So, appropriately, he was born not in a palace to a king and queen, but he was born in a strange place and laid in a manger to a poor couple. His birth was announced, not to the emperor, but to shepherds who, in their poverty, worked the night shift. … He came as God-with-us to be in our darkness with us and to shine in the midst of it. He comes and gives us strength and hope in the midst of the battles we face. He didn’t shy away from the dangers and sufferings of life, he embraced them. He took them on as he died on the cross and gave the struggle of life meaning through his resurrection. He gives all of our struggles meaning if we allow him to shine his light into our darkness.

The picture that is painted for us by the Gospels is a high contrast image. It is a dark image with a bright image of a child. It is a familiar image that hangs in the background of our lives. For most of us we almost don’t see it because it is so familiar. However, if we realized the true value of the image painted for us by the Gospels we would learn to treasure it. Through this image we are invited into a profound relationship with God who loves us more than we can imagine. Through this image we are invited into a life of meaning and substance. Through this image we are called to be transformed people that overcome the darkness that surrounds us. Through this image we are called to believe that God’s love is more powerful than the violence of the empires of this world. This evening may God grant us a renewed sense of the value of this image. AMEN