Christmas Stories

Scripture: Luke 2-16

For more than a month, we get ready for Christmas.  At church, we celebrate the ancient tradition of advent, which occupies so much of our time and attention that we call it a “season.”  We read biblical passages that anticipate the birth of Christ; we light candles; we decorate the sanctuary; we gather toys and gifts to donate to those who have fallen on hard times.

Outside of church, we engage in other sorts of rituals.  We unpack the nativity scene, the decorations, and the ornaments.  We put up the tree.  We cook and bake and devour vast amounts of food.  We labor to find just the right presents for just the right people.  We marinate in Christmas music that starts in November and that follows us ubiquitously into cars, malls, stores, elevators, restaurants, even restrooms.

In this connection, I’ve noticed that a number of contemporary Christmas songs ask a question that sounds something like this: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Christmas could last all year long?”  And I have to confess: I wonder.  After all, the way we do Christmas is pretty exhausting.  And I’m not sure how many of us would enthusiastically agree to spend the next fifty weeks doing the same things we have done for the last two—let alone at the same pace.

Also, this time of year can seem a little artificial.  It should have a special quality—and it does; it shouldn’t feel like the rest of the year—and it doesn’t; but, as Prince Hamlet said, “there’s the rub.”  After all, we spend most of our lives in the other eleven months of the year.  So there is always the risk that we may elevate this season to such a height—and accelerate it to such a frantic dash—that it will lose its relevance to how we actually spend the overwhelming majority of our time on planet earth.

I think that this is what makes Luke’s description of the events immediately preceding the birth of Jesus so instructive.  It doesn’t seem like a particularly inspiring collection of verses; to the contrary, it reads like a pretty bland recitation of relatively non-momentous facts.  It almost sounds like an entry in the “local news” sidebar of the Bethlehem Daily Tribune: “census brings Joseph home after long absence; ‘gee, it’s great to be back,’ he declares.”

Indeed, everything about the text reinforces its ordinariness.  The emperor issued a decree—that’s hardly surprising.  Decreeing things is what emperors do, and this one did a lot of it.  As you may recall, Augustus came into power after the assassination of Julius Caesar and during a period of political upheaval and military rule.  After defeating his rivals, Augustus restored the trappings of the republic, but historians tell us that in many respects he remained a dictator.  The most famous statue of Augustus—the Augustus of Prima Porta housed in the Vatican Museum—portrays him with his right arm raised commandingly, as if issuing just the sort of decree Luke describes.

Next we’re told that this particular decree required the registration of everyone who was under Roman rule.  Now, this passage has prompted a vigorous and unresolved debate among biblical scholars because little, if any, historical evidence confirms that such a census occurred during this period.  So, what’s going on here?  Was Luke thinking of the census that is mentioned in Acts 5:37 but confused about its date?  Was he giving us a nod toward Psalm 87, which seems to link the registering of people with the birth of the Messiah?  Was he doing a little stage management by offering an explanation as to how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem, thereby fulfilling an ancient prophecy?

For today, let’s put those questions aside and shift our focus from why Luke tells us about the census to how Luke does so.  If you look carefully, you’ll notice that this passage is characterized by a severe economy of words and by no drama whatsoever.  This seems particularly striking because these verses are surrounded by drama.  Immediately before it, we get Mary’s beautiful magnificat (“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”) and Zechariah’s spirit-driven prophecies about the birth of John (“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and redeemed his people”).  Immediately after these verses, we get angels appearing to shepherds and “a great company of the heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest.’”  Chapter 2 of Luke comes to us as an interruption in the midst of exaltation. 

The verses about the census are dry, low-key, and journalistic.  They probably have something to do with the government wanting to tax its citizens—a practice, as Ben Franklin observed, that is as inevitable and predictable as death.  Certainly, these verses don’t make particularly good fodder for hymns or Christmas carols or holiday pageants.  In his Messiah, Mr. Handel decided to skip this rather prosaic part of the story entirely.

And that leads us to the most surprising part of this very unsurprising first advent: Luke’s declaration that Joseph went to be registered with Mary, who was “expecting a child.”  Surely, this wins any contest of the greatest understatements in the history of the written word.  In fact, it may be that the only real competition comes in the next verse: “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.” 

So, how does Luke describe the events immediately preceding the birth of Christ?  He portrays them as the stuff of everyday, ordinary life.

But what do we do in the days immediately preceding Christmas?  We labor—sometimes to the point of despair and dismay—to make them as special, as non-everyday, as extraordinary as we can.

Do you sense something of a disconnection here?

Now, permit me to say that I’m as fond of Christmas preparations as anyone I know: I love reading the familiar verses and singing the old carols; rediscovering the silly ornaments that Lisa and I have accumulated over the years; getting together with friends to celebrate the season; searching for gifts that will bring smiles to the faces I adore; smelling the fresh-cut Christmas tree as it warms in the living room and the sap starts to flow again.  I am no Grinch, even if I do wish that my heart was bigger, more accommodating, and open to greater levels of commitment and empathy and forgiveness than it seems currently able to sustain.

So please understand that I am not asking you to downplay Christmas or to ignore its obvious specialness.  I get all that.

No, to the contrary, I am inviting you—as I think Luke does—to see that Christmas also lives in all the simple, mundane, unspectacular weeks that will follow.

It lives in the midst of business as usual, where decrees are issued and taxes come due and people obey laws and couples become engaged and children enter this weary and restless old world.

It lives in the miracle and wonder and blessing that we celebrate on December 25^th —and also in the miracles and wonders and blessings that may cross our paths on all the days that follow. 

It lives in readiness and in celebration—and also in the midst of drudgery and in the uneven and uncertain path that we call work-a-day existence.

It lives when our hearts are filled with inexpressible joy—and also when we are burdened with unimaginable horror and sorrow over the headlines in the newspaper.

I think that the special genius of this passage in Luke is that it moves us past the idea of getting ready for Christmas and into the idea of getting ready for anything—because God may become stunningly present for us even in the highly improbable context of a governmental head-counting.

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I am sure that many of you have seen the photograph and the videos that went viral a couple of weeks ago on the Internet about New York Police Department Officer Larry DePrimo.  DePrimo was on patrol on 44^th Street in New York on a very cold night when he noticed an elderly man lying on the sidewalk.  The man had no socks or shoes, and DePrimo became concerned.  He ran into a nearby store and bought the man a pair of sturdy one-hundred dollar boots.  DePrimo knew that this was the kind and compassionate thing to do; what he did not know was that a tourist took a photograph of him doing it.  That picture was posted on Facebook; it promptly garnered hundreds of thousands of “likes”; DePrimo was identified; and the picture and the tale spread like wildfire.  Everyone agreed: it was a great Christmas-time story, and so it is.

But, of course, there are countless Christmas stories.  Many of them happen during the other eleven months of the year.  Many of them unfold over a number of years, or even decades, or even lifetimes.  All of them bring a ferocious light that presses back against the relentless darkness that always threatens to consume us, but that finally cannot, because God won’t have it.

Here are just a few of those stories, gleaned from a single website (the CNN 2012 Heroes page, if you're interested), after only about fifteen minutes of looking around on the Internet:

For the past two years, Dr. Benjamin Labrot has practiced medicine from the decks of a 76-foot-long refurbished ship called the Southern Wind, where he serves not only as the chief physician but often as captain, cook, and lab technician.  Sailing a nonstop circuit between Haiti, Honduras, and Panama, Dr. Labrot and a crew of volunteers have managed to provide critical services to about thirteen thousand people—many of whom had never before received any medical attention at all.  Dr. Labrot acknowledges the challenges and the rewards his work entails.  He says: “I had to postpone many aspects of my own personal life.  I don’t have a home.  I had to give up a lot.  But I gained everything.”  This Christmas story has been going on for two years, now—two years and counting.      

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world.  It has no social safety net.  This means that, when someone goes to prison, they have two choices: they can bring their children to prison with them; or they can leave their children to fend for themselves on the street.  Since 2005, 28-year-old Pushpa Basnet of Nepal has taken those children in.  This doesn’t require much of her.  She just has to feed, clothe, teach, and launder for the forty children who live with her; take them to visit their parents in prison; and help their parents learn a trade so they’re in a better position to be caregivers once they’re released.  This Christmas story has been going on for seven years.  And Pushpa Basnet is still a very young woman.

A common problem bedevils children who are diagnosed with certain types of cancer: the treatment severely compromises their immune systems.  As a result, the disease does not just steal their health—it steals their childhood, preventing them from such basic activities as playing with other kids.  Well, one day a woman named Nancy Zuch, whose daughter Morgan was battling cancer at the time, noticed something: the hospital where Morgan was receiving treatment allowed her to play with another child who was in the same condition.  Morgan went on to recover, and Nancy went on to found a preschool in her daughter’s name.  The Morgan Center is a cheerful, bright, colorful, and meticulously sanitized space—the only one like it in the world—where children who are fighting for their lives can gather together to do the stuff kids loves to do: sing; read stories; make arts and crafts projects; laugh; play.  This Christmas story has been going on for nine years … and it has a beautiful future.

Stan Brock, on the other hand, did not appear to have a particularly beautiful future when he was a teenager.  He dropped out of school at sixteen and found himself herding cattle for a living.  He barely scraped by, sometimes going for days without food or water.  Indeed, just about the only thing he could say for himself was that he was working hard and developing some amazing skills with a lasso.

And that’s where he was when a television show called Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom discovered him in the nineteen-sixties.  It turned out that the show needed someone who could lasso big and unfriendly animals—you can see a video of Stan wrangling with a buffalo on YouTube if you like—so they took him on.  His new role gave him security, a certain measure of fame, and the opportunity to travel the world.  But he never forgot where he came from: “I understand what it is like to be penniless, homeless, and uninsured,” he says.

So, after he learned how to fly an airplane, Stan offered to bring medical support to areas that otherwise wouldn’t receive it.  In 1985, he turned this avocation into a nonprofit organization called Remote Area Medical, which has involved more than 70,000 volunteers, has held over 600 medical clinics worldwide, and has helped more than half a million people.  Stan Brock sleeps in his company headquarters at a ramshackle old schoolhouse in Tennessee; he has no assets other than a bicycle and some tools; and he does not accept an income from the enterprise he runs.  “I guess I’m your basic indigent CEO,” he says.  This Christmas story has been chugging along for more than a quarter of a century.  And it ain’t over yet.

In each of these stories, a moment of clarity, insight, and inspiration came to someone.  Stan Brock realized the importance of medical care in remote areas after a horse kicked him in the head in the Amazon.  Nancy Zuch observed one fragile child playing with another and recognized the potential.  Pushpa Basnet saw innocent children going to prison—because that’s where their parents were—and concluded that this was an intolerable state of affairs.  Benjamin Labrot sat down and wept when he discovered that he could not carry all the medicine that his patients needed in his backpack—and he resolved to find a way to carry more.  Officer Larry DePrimo says that he was moved to buy that pair of boots after the homeless man for whom he had expressed concern looked him in the eye and said “God bless you.”

Maybe that’s how Christmas stories work for all of us.  We stumble across a blessing.  We realize we need to carry more.  We encounter an injustice that we cannot ignore.  We see a new way to bring people together.  We get kicked in the head.  And so we set out to write our own Christmas story—one that may start tomorrow or that may already be underway; one that may last for sixty minutes or sixty years; one that may begin its unfolding in any season, under any circumstances, at any moment, even in the most ordinary of moments—even at this very moment.

So, what moves you toward Bethlehem?

What gifts do you bring?

What causes you to raise your eyes and to look beyond the madness and the malevolence and the materialism of this world and to see—at long, long last to see—the faint but unmistakable glimmer of an irresistible star?

Amen.