Isaiah 9:2-7; Matthew 1:18-25
Christmas Morning: December 25, 2011
Christmas
falls on a Sunday about every six years.
And it usually leaves the pastor in kind of a quandary. Everyone has already heard the Christmas
story on Christmas eve…we’ve got it already.
No need to come back the next day and hear it all over again,
right? Clearly, that idea is not lost on
many people J.
So,
this every six year thing got me to wondering whether there might be an
opportunity in all this. And in thinking
about it – in thinking about the problem of hearing the same story read in church
within 12 hours, I remembered that in fact we have two stories…two Christmas
stories, and most years, when Christmas doesn’t fall on a Sunday, we only hear
one. So on those blessed years when
Christmas does fall on Sunday, we have the opportunity to hear both stories…and that’s a really good
thing.
You
see, usually we only hear the story from the gospel of Luke. You all know it – probably by heart: In those days a decree went out from Emperor
Augustus, it begins. Mary and Joseph go
to Bethlehem to be registered, and while they were there, the time comes for
her to deliver. She gives birth to her
firstborn son and wraps him in bands of cloth and lays him in a manger, because
there was no room for them in the inn.
Then
it goes on that in that region there were shepherds – and the angel came and
told them of this baby born in Bethlehem.
All the angels in the heavenly host sing glorious songs of great joy,
and when they leave, the shepherds head to Bethlehem and find Mary, Joseph, and
the little baby Jesus lying in the manger wrapped in bands of cloths.
It
is this story that our Christmas pageants tell.
It’s this story we sing in carols every year. You can’t find hardly one Christmas hymn in
our hymnal that doesn’t reference Luke’s version. Charlie Brown read from the gospel of Luke in
his famous Christmas special. If we
didn’t read this version of the Christmas story at least once every year, most
of us would feel like we didn’t hear the story of Christmas at all.
But
there is another version of the story.
The gospel of Matthew also has a birth story – a Christmas story. The gospel of Matthew tells of Jesus’ birth
to Mary and Joseph. But it is not the story
that comes to our minds eye when December 25th rolls around every
year.
Why? Well because, frankly, Luke’s story is better. In Matthew, we do get an angel, but he comes to Joseph in a dream, not Mary in real life. The angel tells Joseph that Mary’s pregnant, tells him not to leave her, and tells him to name the baby Jesus. Then, we’re told he wakes up, and, quoting now, “he took Mary as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had born a son; and he named him Jesus.” This does not make for a good Christmas pageant. First of all, how do you act out in Christmas pageant form that Mary and Joseph had no marital relations. Second of all, the birth part is told as almost an aside – “until she had born a son.” There’s no idyllic scene, no countryside, no shepherds or choirs of angels, no swaddling clothes. It’s such a little story.
In
fact, it raises the question, do we need Matthew’s version at all. I mean, why do we need this little story that
is basically the Luke story in a boring nutshell. Does Matthew add anything or have anything to
say to us at Christmas time?
The
message of Luke’s birth story is a message for the whole world. It’s a message for the outsiders. Luke wrote to gentiles and Greeks. Luke saw the birth of Jesus as a sign that
God is with the poor, the broken, the vulnerable, the non-righteous, the
outcast. As the angel says to the
shepherds, this is good news of great joy for all the people!
Matthew
on the other hand writes a story for the insiders. Matthew writes to the Jews – the religious
ones. Matthew writes to the people who
come together every week and read the Torah, listen to the rabbi, pray, chant,
recall the stories their peoples have been telling for thousands of years. Matthew writes to the people who call Yahweh
their God, who claim the ten commandments as their starting place, who see the
Exodus as emblematic of what God wants for the people and who hear in the
voices of the prophets the hope for all the world.
In
other words, Matthew writes to us. We
are the modern day insiders. We are the
religious folks…the ones who read our bible every week, come to church to learn
the scriptures and listen for the word of God.
We know the stories, we have names and images for God, we have an idea of
who we think God is in our lives and how God moves in this world. We are the intended audience of Matthew – the
insiders. Every year we hear the story
of Jesus’ birth that’s meant for everyone else.
And that’s great – because it’s great to be reminded that this story is
not just for some people. But this
morning we hear the birth story that’s meant for us.
And
where Matthew’s birth story is short on plot, it is long on symbolism and
theology. The story of Jesus’ birth in
Matthew is meant to connect Jesus to
the Jewish story and faith. Matthew is
the gospel that starts out with a long genealogy: painstakingly proving that Jesus
is a descendent of David. Every part of
the story of Jesus’ birth shows him as a fulfillment of scripture. Through the whole gospel, Matthew goes to
great lengths to show that Jesus is not something new – Jesus is a fulfillment
of the entire Jewish faith. He’s the new
Moses. He is the embodiment of religion.
In
Matthew, Jesus is not a leader of a new religion – he’s a leader for the
already religious…and as such, Jesus calls the people back to their roots –
back to the Torah and the prophets. The
message of Jesus’ birth is a message for the religious community that when God
comes in human form, God comes as the law
in human form. “Emmanuel,” or
God-with-us, means God’s law and prophets among us in the person of Jesus.
As
insiders, the message of Jesus’ birth is: We are called to a higher way of life – a life
of righteousness and justice. And it’s a
hard message. We tend to like the Luke
message better. In Luke, you get the
idea that Jesus is a corrective to religion.
In Matthew, you get the idea that Jesus is a religious corrective to a
community that had lost its way. Both
messages, in my humble opinion, have their place…their very important place in
our world today. There are times and
places when we need religion completely shattered – we need a message for the
non-religious that doesn’t drip with self-righteousness. But there are times we, the religious, need to
be reminded of what good religion is. We
need to be reminded that our tradition – at its best – is our backbone. Because our religious tradition is about how
to be a people of God – set apart from the world.
Matthew
is the only gospel to use the word, “church.”
And the word in Greek is “ekklesia,” which literally translated means,
“called out.” The church is called out
from the world. We are called to be a community that organizes itself based on
God’s law as made known in the prophets and Jesus…which is a community that
cares for the least, a community that stands outside of the culture in which it
is situated, that worships only one God, and not a nation or ideology, or
political party, or material goods.
When
we lose our distinctiveness, our separateness, we lose our ability to be an
alternative for the rest of the world.
We lose our ability to show a way to live that brings life to all, not
just to some.
We
often shy away from a religious message that focuses on our separateness from
the world – because it feels elitist and snobby. And that’s a good instinct, probably. But in shying away from that, we dilute the
message of the gospel of Matthew…which is there is a different way to live than what the world might have us think – and
that’s good news. It’s good news that
there is an alternative: good news for
us, and especially good news for those who get crushed by the world on a
regular basis.
Matthew
tells his birth story in a way that takes the emphasis off the characters and
puts it squarely back on scripture, history, Israel, the Torah, the
commandments. It’s a little story with a
big message: you are a people called to
be different in this world, God says, and here is my very own self in human
form to show you what that looks like.
My words, my prophets, have not been enough – so I’m sending my very own
being to live as a human being among you that you might see with your own two
eyes what it means to live by the Torah so that you can be the community I want
you to be.
It’s
good we have all the gospels. Because
the message of Jesus is not just for the insiders – it’s not just for the
outsiders – it’s not just for the saved – it’s not just for the lost. The message is for all of us. No matter who we are or where we find
ourselves at any given point in life, there is a message of salvation – of hope
– for us in our scriptures.
This
morning – this Christmas morning as we gather in this sanctuary while so many
are still suffering in our world, Matthew reminds us…the church…the insiders…that
what saves us is a life that sets us apart from the world. Or rather, what provides the possibility of
salvation for the whole world is when we live a life that is set apart from the
world – when we offer an alternative. We
don’t just come to church to figure out how to live as individuals – we come to
church to enact every week a different kind of community, a new kind of world.
And
so, this morning, we pause for an hour – we take a step out of the world of
presents and sweets, of Christmas trees and stockings – and remind ourselves of
the fact that the world needs us: a religious community centered on a life of
love, of serving others, of caring for the least and the last, of healing the
brokenhearted, of offering peace in response to hatred, of loving enemies. I’m not saying Christmas is about getting
everyone to believe what we believe and behave as we think they should
behave. I’m saying Christmas is, for us
– at least in part – about reminding ourselves that the world does need an
alternative…and our scriptures – embodied in the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus – are what we have chosen to
guide us in what that alternative looks like.
Mary
gave birth to a son, and Joseph named him Jesus: And in Jesus is embodied the whole of our faith,
the whole of who we can be as the church, the whole of the law and the prophets.
What a big message in a little story. Merry Christmas. Amen.
