Taking the unsweetened Christmas story into our resolutions

This sermon was prepared for the first Sunday after Christmas when I suspect many are tired of Christmas and want to get back to normal. We have to hope we don’t – go back to normal, that is – because then the “lowly” and demeaned are left out as normal. It is to them, the likes of the shepherds and Mary and Joseph, that the glory of God takes us. The gospel text is Luke 2:15-21.

This week, the danger is that life will get back to normal, that we will go back to our old ways, to the old gods which hold our thoughts, and that this coming year, 2024 will be just like any other year with its low expectations and vague hopes for world peace, a lottery win a nice holiday and just getting by.

But if we go back to normal won’t Mary’s pain have been in vain? Time turns on Jesus’s birth. There was a time for us “before Christ”, and there is time after his birth, a new time, the time when we know God’s favour – the day of the Lord, the years anno domini – the time that will surely never be the same again.

I suspect that those who will be glad to “get back to normal”, relieved it’s all over will have imbibed too much sugar or tried to do too much.

How much sugar we take with our Christmas is a good question. The way most people know the Christmas story is through sugar-coated carols and cards. Christmas can get so sweetened that we have difficulty getting the real flavour of Christmas as presented, unsweetened, by the gospel writers, Matthew, Luke and John.

There’s usually a “free from” aisle in our supermarkets these days. I suggest that we keep this aisle in church as a free from aisle. Free from sugar and syrup so that we can get into the meaning of Jesus’ birth. Luke, Matthew and John didn’t tell these stories lightly or sweetly. They tell them deeply, from the depths of a whole community’s memory and experience. And they tell their stories darkly – there is a dark reality to all the elements of their stories. We need to feel their weight, not their lightness. We need to feel their weight to grow in worship, resilience and love for the lowly and the stranger.

Our gospel this morning begins after the angel left the shepherds. An angel had appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. The angel brought good news to them that was to cause great joy for all people. A child, wrapped in cloth, lying in an improvised cot was the sign. The great company of the heavenly host join the angel and the shepherds. They praise God for the news singing at the top of their voices, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests”.

This morning’s gospel begins with the shepherds deciding to go to Bethlehem to see for themselves what God had made known to them. They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. They made known what they’d been told about the child. Their hearers were amazed and Mary treasured their words and pondered them in her heart.

With Mary we treasure their words and ponder them in the heart of the church. But, please, no sugar because if we put sugar in we miss the point that Luke is here making as he paints the picture of those on whom God’s favour rests, around whom God’s glory shines and through whom, and for whom, God chooses the way of saving the world that is lost.

God’s glory shines around the shepherds. These were men who lived out in the fields, on the wasteland around Bethlehem on land which was no good for anything else than grazing sheep. They were there in all weathers, warding off wolves and thieves, working nights, protecting the lives of their sheep, their livelihood – doing the work which was to inspire Jesus’s own self understanding of being the good shepherd. They were an underclass, living rough. Around them the glory of God shines. The press release of the birth isn’t carefully planned for maximum impact in the corridors of power, but is focused in the isolation of these shepherds.

The sweetened versions of the Christmas story, the sweetened Nativity, can never convey the darkness and will always shy away from the poverty. It is the unsweetened versions, given to us by the gospel writers which shows us where God’s favour rests – around the shepherds, on Joseph (a poor artisan carpenter in an obscure village) and Mary – a young girl whose song of praise Jesus will have heard growing up. In her song, the song we know as Magnificat she praises God for looking “with favour on the lowliness of his servant”.

Lowly is the collective noun for those who have been demeaned. The word lowliness is used throughout the Bible to denote misery, pain, persecution and oppression. In our unsweetened version of Jesus’ birth story, Mary embodies the experience of her people, the Jews – their whole history threaded with misery, pain, persecution and oppression. She knew God’s favour rests there, with her people – and those who have joined Mary have come to realise he favours all like her, all those in misery, pain, persecution and oppression. The glory of God is all about them – Mary, Joseph, the shepherds – and all the lowly who make up the extended holy family, and those who want to relate to them as relatives. The love of God is for them – to turn life round in their favour.

Poet W H Auden puts these words into the mouths of the shepherds in his Christmas Oratario For the Time Being:

We never left the place where we were born,
Have only lived one day, but every day

Have walked a thousand miles yet only worn
The grass between our work and home away.

Lonely we were though never left alone.
The solitude familiar to the poor
Is feeling that the family next door,
The way it talks, eats, dresses, loves, and hates,
Is indistinguishable from one’s own.

Tonight for the first time the prison gates
Have opened.
Music and sudden light
Have interrupted our routine tonight,
And swept the filth of habits from our hearts.
O here and now our endless journey starts.

We’ve come to the end of the year, the end of the Christmas holidays is in sight. We may be relieved it’s all over – we have, after all, consumed far too much sugar. 

But, let’s not go back to normal. 

Let’s join the shepherds just as their endless journey starts when they find a baby wrapped in cloths, lying in a manger – the sure sign that starts us off. 

Let’s join Mary treasuring the words of the angels and pondering their words in our hearts. 

Let’s join those who are demeaned, those who are lowly. 

Let’s make our resolutions for the new year, for new time, a resolution everyday undergirded with daily prayer to join with them; those who suffer misery, pain, persecution and oppression.

Renowned black preacher and theologian Howard Thurman has this to say:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

How about that for our new year’s resolution? How about that as resolution for the rest of our lives? That is coming alive in the unsweetened story of Jesus’s birth and being part of God’s favour and glory.

The gospel of the day – Luke 2:15-21

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’

So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.