“Christmas Eve Service Meditations”

December 31, 2005

Scripture Readings:    

Isaiah 9: 2, 6-7; Luke 1: 26 - 35; Luke 2: 1-7; Luke 2: 8-14; Luke 2: 15 - 20

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr 

Blue Point Congregational Church

The Angels’ Experience: 

Okay, there was a high risk, but that was part of what God wanted his creatures to know: that he was willing to risk everything to get close to them, in hopes that they might love him again.

It was a daring plan, but once the angels saw that God was dead set on it, they broke into applause – not the uproarious kind but the steady kind that goes on and once when you have witnessed something you know you will never see again.

While they were still clapping, God turned around and left the cabinet chamber, shedding his robes as he went.  The angels watched as his midnight blue mantel fell to the floor, so that all the stars on it collapsed in a heap.  Then a strange thing happened.  Where the robes had fallen, the floor melted and opened up to reveal a scrubby brown pasture speckled with sheep – and right in the middle of them – a bunch of shepherds sitting around a campfire drinking wine out of a skin.  It was hard to say who was more startled, the shepherds or the angels, but as the shepherds looked up at them, the angels pushed their senior member to the edge of the hole.  Looking down at the human beings who were all trying to hide behind each other, the angel said in as gentle a voice as he could muster, “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

And away up the hill, from the direction of town, came the sound of a newborn baby’s cry.

 

The Shepherd’s Experience:  

The night started like countless other nights.  They were tending their sheep.  They were not thinking of angels or messiahs.  They thought of getting through the night with their sheep.  It was cold.  The shepherds cupped their hands and blew warmth into them.   They caught the heavy smell on their hands of lanoline and dirt.  They heard the crunching of the stones under the hoofs of the sheep.  A bleating came from one or two beyond in the darkness.   The small fire that they lit threatened to go out.  They passed around a skin filled with wine.  “Here this will keep you warm.” 

Then the “thing” started to happen.  At first there was a loud sound.  Later some said it was like the sound of rushing water.  Others thought it was like rocks falling down hill.  But, still other insisted that it was the sound of clapping, clapping like the arrival of an Emperor victorious from war.   They jumped up from the fire.   Their sheep started running.  As they moved to calm them down thousands of shooting stars cascaded around them.  Then they felt what they later called the “shiver.”  Only it was not a shiver of cold.  It was a shiver of warmth.  It was as if they were children and they felt their mother’s robe ripple down from the top of their heads, stroking their shoulders and arms, brushing their abdomen and encircling their legs.   “Look up!”  One of them cried.  Then where the robe  and the stars had come from, where moments ago there had been the midnight blue sky now was glowing with golden light.

In the middle of the light were angels.  The angels were looking down at them looking up at them.  Both groups stared, stunned by the sudden encounter of the two worlds, heaven and earth, laid bare to the other.  It was the pure smell of the angels that got the shepherds to huddle together.  It stung their nostrils and made their eyes water. 

One angel with tremendous wings that were bigger and somehow deeper than the others came forward and spoke.  It spoke very slowly.   The angel was building the sentence word by word.   Each word the angel had to dig from the most ancient truths of heaven like diamonds emerging from under a mountain

Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  And this shall be a sign for you.  You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 

The shepherds didn’t know how long they had stood there.  It could have been seconds or hours.  They were aware of being known by the angels better than they knew themselves.  They could hardly believe it.  But there it was just as real as the sheep.   Joy, joy, joy! 

So they went to look for the infant.  They went to Bethlehem and hunted through the streets.  They went to the outskirts of town.  Finally, finally, they found the manger.  Sure enough there was the babe, the mother, and the animals just as the angels had described. 

The new born’s appearance was haunting.  It had vestiges of old age.  Its little hands were wrinkled.  His hair was thin.  His skin had a translucency.  His cheeks were thin.  The expression on the infants face was very innocent and very wise at the same time.  With eyes half open the child seemed to bask in an undifferentiated unity with everything around it.  As if it was recalling his unity with the heavenly Father from which he came.  It was true what the great angel had said, Glory to God in the highest.   This child in this manger on this particular night drew all of creation into a convergence of communion with him.   It reached from one end of the earth to the other.  It reached from the dawn of history to the eternal future.  It reached altogether to the heavens.

The shepherds kneeled before the baby.  Some whispered, “Messiah.”  One uttered, “Son of God.” 

When it was all over the shepherds started back through the streets.  They asked people they saw, anyone, if they too had seen the angels.   At the door of the inn they saw a Roman soldier.  He had a strange expression on his face.  One shepherd thought he looked completely lost.  Another thought he looked completely found.   It was so unusual that one dared to ask the soldier if he had seen angels bringing good news.  The soldier insisted he hadn’t.  “No!  I tell you!”  The others grabbed the one who had dared to approach the Roman authority and pulled him away.  They asked him if he wanted to get himself killed.  He said that he didn’t care.  If he died that day he didn’t care because he had seen the Messiah.  The other joked, “But don’t you want to live twenty more years to tell people how you don’t care if you die today!”

They returned to the fields.  They hoped the angels would return.  There were other things that happened.  They felt their backs aching from pushing and pulling the sheep.  Some things got them angry.  Some things made them sad.  They angels never did return that night, or any night.  The midnight sky stayed midnight.  It didn’t matter though.  Ever and again out in the fields the shepherds remembered.  In their quiet low voices they would repeat what they had heard from the angels that night, as if taking a diamond out of their pocket to watch it reflect the light. 

 

THE SOLDIER’S EXPERIENCE

A Roman soldier knocked on an inn door in the town of Bethlehem.  He heard people scurrying inside, muffled voices, a shout, silence and then the door opened.

     “Good evening.”  Said the inn keeper.

     “I want a room.”  Demanded the soldier.

     “Room?  We are very crowded tonight…perhaps…”  The soldier knew immediately what it would take to get him a room. 

     “You know there are a lot of bandits and thieves on the back streets.”  He casually drew his sword.  “You want your neighborhood to be safe.  Don’ you?  Every bandit in this country knows that because of Roman rule if he is caught he’ll be either gutted on the spot or hung out to rot on a cross.”    The inn keeper knew he was right.  They needed the Romans to keep law and order even though they hated them.  Rome was good for business.  They made the roads all over the empire safe for travel.  Travelers were the people who came to his inn.  He knew if he told the soldier they had no room in the inn they could very well direct the thieves right to him. 

     “Of course, we have plenty of room.”  The inn keeper moved the people away from the most honored spot in the room.  He snapped his fingers and his two sons went to get the soldier wine and food. 

     When the inn keeper delivered the tray he said,

     “God, I’ll be glad when this census is over.”

     “Don’t look so disgusted.  It’s no inconvience to you.  In fact, it’s just another reason why you should be grateful for Roman rule.  All these extra people coming to town just means more business for you.”

     “Yes.  But they have so far to come.  Some all the way from Nazareth and beyond.  It seems there could have been another way.”

     “It’s not up to me.”  Said the soldier.  “It is up to Quirinius and the Emperor Augustus.  Who are you to complain.  My home is thousands of miles away in Italy.”  At that the inn keeper bowed and left the soldier.  He ate and drank and thought.  Although he was at the best table in a crowded inn he was alone.  Everyone else had someone else.  Yes, his wife and kids were thousands of miles away.  She had been pregnant when he left.  The baby was due just around now. 

He had joined the army when he was young and just married.  He though that by becoming a soldier it was a way up in life.  He had envisioned a career of great status and power.  He had been promoted a couple of times.  But then, it stopped.  He saw time and again, younger more inexperience men ranked higher than he was.  Such was his dismal illustrious career.  He had felt that he was going to travel to exciting exotic places.  But, here he was stuck in a poor country, on the outskirts of anywhere in a beaten down town. 

He had for so long anticipated something breaking.  But it was so long in coming he felt that if it ever did, which he doubted, he would wind up babbling like a child and throwing rocks into a heap.  He considered his constant failure was propelling him into idiocy.  He even thought he had seen stars falling from the sky that night, and a golden glow over the fields.   The knowledge of his personal limitations had destroyed his self confidence.

He tried to bolster himself up.  He listed out his hopes.  He thought maybe if he just made a little more money.  Or, maybe if he got promoted one more time.  Maybe if he could see his kids more.  That is all he wanted he thought.  He waited to see if he felt better. He rubbed his hands over the candle to warm them still cold from the night air.  Then he quit rubbing them and drank more wine.  The fact was nothing seemed big enough.  He wondered if something was wrong with him.  He didn’t know what would make him feel better, what would console him.  He didn’t even know what he was hoping for.  Then he wondered if he would be too stupid to recognize it even if it did come.  Would he even know it if it was right in front of him? 

There was another knock at the door.  The inn keeper answered.  He said they had no room and to go to the stable behind the inn.  The people said that they could not go there because it was full already.  They said that there were shepherds gathered in the stable. 

The soldier got up.  He thought he had better investigate.  He thought of the shepherds with disgust.  These must have been the bunch that ran past him on the road a little while ago.  They stank.  They belonged to the field and the sheep.  What were they doing in town?  He was under orders to look out for anything suspicious.  What the Romans feared far more than bandits was insurrectionists with secret plots to overthrow the Emperor.  These people were everywhere in Judea.   They came out like bats at night. 

So he slipped out the door to check it out quietly.  He didn’t want anyone to know he was there.  So he snuck up behind the stable and looked through a chink in the boards.  He couldn’t believe what he saw.  There was a bunch of mangy shepherds, kneeling down in the straw and manure and worshipping this baby.  A little skinny Jew baby.  He couldn’t have been more than a few hours old.

They called him “Messiah!” which was the king that these Jews were always talking about.  The Messiah was the king that was suppose to come and conquer the Romans and set up state of the chosen people.  It was the most ridiculous thing he had seen yet.  This Jew baby, so poor that he was born in a stable, and placed in a manager.  This was the king that was to overthrow Ceasar!   Technically they were insurrectionists.  Technically it was his duty to break them up.  But, he didn’t.  The mother looked pretty.  She reminded him of his wife.  And the baby made him wonder if his wife had had a boy or a girl. 

Someone uttered something like the “Son of God.”  The soldier looked at the baby again.    Maybe there was something he missed.  After all the Roman gods would disquise themselves as human.  Hope fluttered in his chest.  But, this baby was too weak and too realistic looking to be a God in disguise.  He was a totally human baby, no doubt about that.  No God could be a god and human at the same time.  How crazy would that be? 

Looking at the impoverished baby and mother he shook his head.  What a way to start a life.  He felt even more sorry for the boy than he had for himself earlier.  Of all the places ot be born.  This baby was born in a stable in a little nowhere town in a little nowhere country.  He has less chance to make than I do, thought the soldier.  He will be completely forgotten if he lives at all. 

He returned to the inn.  He wasn’t hungry anymore.  He was disgusted that the inn keeper had no idea what was going on.  He told him to take the rest of his food out to the stable.  His hear ached.  He tapped his chest.  He wore the best armor he could find, but it could be pierced on such a night by nothing but a baby.  Maybe he missed his family more than he knew. 

He picked up his goblet to finish off the wine.  He made a silent toast, “Good night, little Jew baby.”  And drained it down. 

Then he stepped out the door and stood on the street not knowing what to do next, not knowing which way to go.  It was all so strange.  This is when a shepherd dared to walk up to him and ask, “You know too.  You saw the baby.  I can tell by the look in your eye!”  The soldier replied, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” 

“Yes you do.”  The shepherd insisted.  He drew his sword.  The shepherds friends grabbed him and dragged him away saying, “Do you want to get yourself killed?”  And he replied that he didn’t care if he died.  After what he had just seen he could die and his life would be complete. 

The soldier envied the shepherds, ignorant and stinking as they were.  He envied their zeal.  The men seemed to be living an extravagant hope.  So fully alive that they could die at that moment and not mind.  He wished more than anything that he could feel that way.  He wished that someday he could witness something that would make him believe and declare,  “Truly this is the Son of God.” That would be big enough.  To be witness someone to be part of something that would change the whole world.   He laughed at himself. 

He felt a warm shiver cascade down his body.  He thought the direction of the wind was changing.