Christmas Day- God enters the ordinary

 

Isaiah62:6-12; Psalm 97; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:1-20

With all the celebration and decorations surrounding Christmas we can sometimes miss the ordinariness that was a part of the birth of Jesus.

There was nothing special about when Jesus was born. Jesus wasn't born on Yom Kippur, which was the highest holy day in the Jewish year- the Day of Atonement. That would have been a very interesting and theologically appropriate time for Jesus to be born. … But he wasn't, he was born on an ordinary day. The kind of day where you buy your groceries, go to work, clean the house, play with your kids, have coffee with friends. That's the kind of day Jesus was born on.

Jesus was born to an ordinary couple- Joseph and Mary. He wasn't born to a king and queen. Or to a high priest and his wife. We probably couldn't pick Joseph and Mary out of a crowd. Joseph was a carpenter, and Mary seemed to be an ordinary peasant girl. … Jesus has some royal blood, being from the family of King David. But that might have been relatively common in people whose families were from Bethlehem, the city of King David. King David had 20 children. So, in a short amount of time, that family could get pretty big. … For example, I’ve heard that 16 million men can say they are descendants of Genghis Kahn. …

Jesus was born in an ordinary way- which is messy, and painful, and often dangerous.

He was born in a fairly ordinary place. … He wasn't born in a palace. He wasn't born in the temple. He wasn't born on Mt. Sinai where Moses received the law. … It was slightly unusual in that Jesus wasn't born in his parent's home. He was born as a visitor. He was probably born in a one room home. There was no room for them in the guest room so they were welcomed to stay with the family in the one room where they lived. … The animals had a space at the back where they would stay at night and the family room would often have either a wooden manger or a kind of bowl dug out of floor which would be used to feed animals. … Jesus was born in a place were people lived their lives- where they cooked, cleaned, ate, slept, and lived everyday life with those they loved. Jesus was born, and swaddled, and they placed him in an ordinary manger, a kind of feeding trough for the animals. The place of his birth would not have been considered special. … He was born in the ordinary way, to ordinary people, in an ordinary place, among other ordinary people. In many ways Jesus' birth was very ordinary.

Part of the story is not very ordinary. … Angels appeared to announce the birth of Jesus. But, they didn't appear to Caesar, or King Herod. The Angels didn't appear to the high priests of the temple, or the religion experts. … The angels appeared to Shepherds. Ordinary, run of the mill, bottom of the social ladder, shepherds.

Luke says (2:9-14), 

"... there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.' Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”".

This was no ordinary message for these ordinary shepherds.

This isn't the first time an angel has appeared in Luke's biography of Jesus. An angel appeared to announce the pregnancy Elizabeth, who would give birth to John the Baptist. The Angel Gabriel appeared to the young virgin Mary and announced that she would miraculously conceive a child, not by the ordinary way, but through the working of the Holy Spirit. This ordinary girl. A virgin. Betrothed to be wed, would conceive a child in a supernatural way.

Continuously, we have this pairing of the ordinary and the extraordinary. An ordinary girl with an extraordinary pregnancy. … Ordinary shepherds are visited by extraordinary angelic beings. … This extraordinary child who is called Jesus (which means God Saves), and Immanuel (which means God-with-us), savior, and Lord- this extraordinary child is born, on an ordinary day, in an ordinary home, to an ordinary couple, and placed in an ordinary straw-filled manger used to feed ordinary animals. Most people went on with their day unaware that anything special happened.

That is the incarnation- God invades the ordinary. "The Incarnation" is really just a big word for what the author C.S. Lewis described as “the author writing himself into the script of the play". The Creator of the universe is embraced as a baby. A real baby. A human baby. A drooling, giggling, cooing, crying, burping, laughing, pooping, fragile, hungry, sleepy, baby. God enters the ordinary. Out of God's amazing love, God the Son comes to us and places himself as a fragile baby into a human mother's arms.

Jesus, the Son of God, God Himself, lived as one of us. an ordinary life. He scraped his knee as a boy. He had friends and played. He learned from his parents. He grew up to be a carpenter like his father. He didn't start preaching until he was 30. Most of Jesus' life was lived in an ordinary way. That is what the incarnation is about- God enters the everyday ordinary-ness of human life as one of us. That is what God wanted. God wants to be our Father. The one who is present in our daily lives- our ordinary daily lives.

God became incarnate in Jesus to save us. And what does it mean to be saved? It means to be in God's presence- to accept God's presence in your life. It means that through Jesus, God can be our Father. That is what God has done through the ordinary events of that first Christmas. God has become a part of our everyday ordinary lives. And through our ordinary lives God will bring about the extraordinary.