The Real Nativity

Kelly Latimore, La Sagrada Familia

This, the gospel writers tell us, is where we find the sacred.  Not in a palace, not in a world where all is right and good, but in a barn.  In the midst of fleeing refugees.   In our precious nativity story is brokenness: poverty, homelessness, political unrest, and violence.  And angels.  God chose to be found in brokenness.  This is not the Good News most people were expecting, then or now.  

When people are hurting, struggling, heartbroken… there God is.  God did not fix the world and put a bow on it and say, “Well if anything is broken, it’s your fault; you were not good enough or faithful enough.”  No!  God didn’t tell us we could fix it all, either.  The gospels don’t promise us an absence of suffering.  Rather, the gospels show us that God is found right in the middle of our messes.  And so the Christ child is born in a barn, and the holy family flees for their lives. And God is the heart of compassion that accompanies us in our struggles and our fear, and sends angel choruses to sing for us when we are alone at night.  

Brea Congregational United Church of Christ

December 9, 2018

Expecting God in Unexpected Places

Luke 3:1-7    In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.  3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,  4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, 

            “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 

            ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, 

                        make his paths straight.

5         Every valley shall be filled, 

                        and every mountain and hill shall be made low, 

            and the crooked shall be made straight, 

                        and the rough ways made smooth; 

6         and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

Advent is the beginning of a new church year.  This year, our readings are from the Gospel according to Luke.  The birth story of Jesus is a mashup of Matthew and Luke’s Gospels.  Mark’s gospel says not a word about Jesus before he gets baptized by John.  John’s Gospel (Not the Baptist: different John!) has the Word creating the world at the beginning of time.  He doesn’t mention anything so humble as being born a human baby.  

It’s not Matthew’s year, but I need to bring up an important theme in Matthew’s story of the baby Jesus.  In the Gospel of Matthew, the new Jewish King is born, and prophecy is fulfilled.  Matthew is big on prophecy.  King Herod takes notice, and not in a good way.  Does anybody remember the slaughter of the innocents?  That is the story where Jesus was a child refugee, fleeing violence.  He found refuge, in Egypt.  Chapter and verse: Matthew 2:12-23. That story is the basis of the old Coventry Carol, whose third verse you may not know.  

Herod the King, In his raging
Charged he hath this day

His men of might, In his own sight
All children young to slay.

Historically, that probably never happened.  Yet it has happened, in a thousand times and places since then: leaders and law enforcement slaughtering their own people, families fleeing for their lives from violence.  It happened this year among the Rohingya in Myanmar and in several countries in the Middle East, and at our own borders. So whether or not it actually happened as Matthew told it, that story is true.  We live in a broken world.

Luke tells a different story, of a homeless woman giving birth in a barn.  If Jesus was born in Southern California, it would have been in a garage.  Luke tells of angels witnessed only by low wage workers on the graveyard shift:  we know them as shepherds. Whether or not it actually happened as Luke told it, this story is also true.

And this, the gospel writers tell us, is where we find the sacred.  Not in a palace, not in a world where all is right and good, but in a barn.  In the midst of fleeing refugees.   In our precious nativity story is brokenness: poverty, homelessness, political unrest, and violence.  And angels.  God chose to be found in brokenness.  This is not the Good News most people were expecting, then or now.  

I was at the hair stylist a week and a half ago, and I was annoyed to find I didn’t have my haircutter’s whole ear. Another client was there.  And she was a talker.  Somehow she started talking about the homeless situation.  She explained to me how homeless people were all either mentally ill or addicted, and wanted to live that way.  In other words it was their fault they were homeless.  So I parroted off some numbers for her: less than half of the people evicted from the Santa Ana river encampment were in that demographic, “either in drugs or in need of them” as one social worker put it. Many of the rest were newly homeless, due to soaring rents.  She didn’t hear a word I said.  And she kept talking.  I couldn’t walk away.  I was trapped in my chair with goop on my hair.  So I tried to listen.  I tried to understand the thinking behind her staunch belief that people could only be homeless because of their own failings, not the astronomical cost of housing, governmental inaction, and Nimbys- as in Not In My Back Yard will I allow you to build low cost housing or permanent shelters.  I dared not bring up the topic of immigration: I could guess what would happen. 

I began to understand her thinking. She was a good person, a caring Christian.  Her city government was right and good and doing everything it should.  Therefore her world was in good order.  And in order to believe that story, she had to refuse to see the suffering and need happening in her own city.  If she did see it, she would have to admit our brokenness.  So she divided the world into “us”: the good people who are right and therefore are not in need, and “them”: the people who have problems, who are the problem.  This is how she keeps those problems at a safe distance from her and her good world.  Anything different, to her, was fake news; it couldn’t be true or she would lose her identity, her conviction that she was right and good, and therefore entitled to an orderly world. 

This is a belief system that both Matthew and Luke refute in their gospels.  Matthew says it in a spiritual way, in his Beatitudes:  “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”  The beaten down are blessed?  Not the right and the good in their orderly worlds?  Luke does it in a blunt and earthy way: “Blessed are the poor.”  Full stop.  That is our Good News.  ‘Prosperity Gospel’ is not gospel.  Being blessed, being seen and loved and cared for by God when you suffer whatever the cause, that’s Gospel.  There is no “us” and “them” in the Kin-dom of God.

We know this because of our shelter program. We do not fear or judge them, because we have eaten with them and talked with them, and we know they are us.  The ranks of homeless and refugees are growing in California.  Jaime O’Neill got a taste of homelessness when his retirement home went up in smoke a month ago (1) in the ironically named town of Paradise.  Fortunately he had a pension and a credit card, so he was able to feed himself and his wife, and after a few weeks they found a home to rent in Sacramento.  But in the meantime he was flustered enough to forget to buy a razor for a few days, so when he was buying underwear and toothpaste and wearing few days of scruff, in line at the store, he looked and felt the part of a homeless person, and people treated him that way.  Now he gets it.  Homeless people are not “them.” They are us, without homes. 

I have my own warped version of the gospel: I’m not doing enough.  You might identify progressive Christians by this mantra: “We’re not doing enough.”  As if it’s my job to fix everything.  None of the gospels say, “Blessed are the guilty, who think it’s their job to fix everything.”  We are invited to participate in God’s Kin-dom.  The way to do it is not to feel guilty, but to let the hinges of our hearts’ doors swing gently and easily to welcome Christ’s coming.  Where we didn’t expect it.  Our call is to find ways to make it easy and joyful to share and care and remove the barriers between “us” and “them.” 

When people are hurting, struggling, heartbroken… there God is.  God did not fix the world and put a bow on it and say, “Well if anything is broken, it’s your fault; you were not good enough or faithful enough.”  No!  God didn’t tell us we could fix it all, either.  The gospels don’t promise us an absence of suffering.  Rather, the gospels show us that God is found right in the middle of our messes.  And so the Christ child is born in a barn, and the holy family flees for their lives. And God is the heart of compassion that accompanies us in our struggles and our fear, and sends angel choruses to sing for us when we are alone at night.  

Luke’s gospel is the most socially aware, putting rich and poor side by side.  He doesn’t say being rich is bad, but he has some pretty clear ideas about what people should be doing with their money.  Luke’s is also the most politically aware of the gospels.  Our reading today introduces John the Baptist by listing all the political and religious rulers of that time and place.  You know, the ones John was thumbing his nose at by doing his own made-up rituals in the river Jordan.  He should have been doing proper rituals at the Temple in Jerusalem, whose high priests were appointed by Rome.  John was putting lie to the idea that people were good, doing things right, and their world was in order.  That was unacceptable to the Power that Be.  Neither was John trying to fix everything.  He was… baptizing.  Interesting. As far as the “good” people, the “us” people were concerned, John was just inciting “them” to rebellion, promising some mysterious new leader.  It cost him his head.

The seats of power were in Rome and Jerusalem.  And where was John the Baptist?  Out in the desert wilderness, the land of lawlessness, chaos, and possibility. Where the Spirit can grow a new thing free of political control.  Luke says, “the word of God came to John son of Zecharaiah” – that is the biblical way to introduce a prophet.  And then Luke quotes the ancient prophet Isaiah to describe John’s work.  

            Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 

            Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, 

            and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth.

All is not good.  Major repair is needed.  It sounds like road reconstruction.  Read that as a metaphor for transformation.

What John actually did was baptize people.  This was not Christian baptism, our sacrament of initiation into the church and the faith. This was a renewal of their Jewish faith, a cleansing and a fresh start.  Of course he was getting them ready to receive Jesus and his message, but they didn’t know that yet.  They were just expecting God to do something wonderful among them, despite all signs to the contrary.

What are we expecting this Advent?  Some of us are weighed down by the bad news we witness.  So much brokenness in our communities, our nation, our planet.  We are not good.  All is not right. And the world is not in order.  It would be easy to assign blame to “them” – Either the suffering or those in power who allow, and sometimes cause, that suffering.  Let’s be careful, on this Sunday when we light the Advent candle of Peace, not to divide the world into “us” and them.”  That only makes things worse.  We are all broken, and in need of reconstruction, and God knows that’s OK.

So let’s take a cue from John, and prepare ourselves for something new.  What in us needs a new start?  Where among us will we discover Christ anew in this season? Hopefully we will meet the sacred here on Sunday mornings and on Christmas eve.  But we can also discover new life and transformation all around us, and sometimes in the places we least expect it.  

A child born in a barn, a refugee.  This, our Gospels claim, is the full presence of God among us.  I hope you will remember that when you see those nativity scenes.  This is Good News, because no matter what we face, God will meet us there.  Helpless? God is there.  Afraid?  God is there. Homeless?  God is there.  Grieving? God is there.  Nothing that we face we face alone.  In the long dark night, angels sing.  In the midst of the brokenness, God arrives. That is our Good News. Amen.

1) “The Camp fire took my home. Now I understand that no one ends up sleeping under an overpass by choice.” Jaime O’Neill, L.A. Times Op-Ed, Dec. 7, 2018.