Minding your own business can be dangerous...

Sermon for the Eve of the Nativity - Luke 2:1-14

The danger of Christmas is our own passivity. I mean it comes upon us every year. We know it is coming. December 25th. It’s already on our calendars before we even think about it. Then we get inundated beginning around September, whenever Wal-Mart puts out Christmas candy and decorations. We bemoan it. We groan. Having to listen to Mariah Carey scream out “All I want for Christmas is youuuuuuuu”, months before we even know what we want or even need. 

The season stalks us and then we do all we can to make everything special. We have to make cookies with the kids like grandma did with us. Have the annual Gingerbread House contest. Attend all the school programs. Watch Charlie Brown Christmas on TV even though we own the DVD. Buy a tree. Decorate it. Protect it from the cat. Bring body armor to the mall to make it out alive with whatever gifts we think our family might want. Wrap them. Read a story to the children, send out the cards, see A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie. Then after all of that – Church. Gotta come to church. Light the candles as we sing Silent Night. Go home. Open the presents. Drink some Gleuhwein. Get up late. Make biscuits ‘n gravy. Play games or visit grandma. The next day, the 26th, it’s all over. Get ready to take down all the decorations, put the music away, take out the garbage. Go back to work.

Does that about sum it up for you? All these things we do to try and make Christmas. Try and have it have that special little zing to it. Maybe you have even come to church every week. Twice if you came on Wednesdays. Really trying to adore Jesus and let him take root. Have this be that super-spiritual Jesus-mass for you.

All of this stuff…It’s all good. You’re fine doing it. All of it. Keep it up. Important traditions there. Important work you are doing. But… You knew it was coming, right? The “but”? But, remember one thing, no amount of preparation or work on our part will make or break Jesus. No amount of trial or error, no amount of holiday boredom or exhaustion will add anything to Jesus for you.

How do I know this? I’ll tell you. One word. Shepherds. Yes, we have Mary, and Joseph and the baby Jesus. We have Caesar sending them to Bethlehem because he wanted to know how awesome he was. We have the stable and the manger. We even have the angels who come to the Shepherds. We have all of that stuff, right? But the Shepherds. The Shepherds are the hiccup. Why?

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.

Do you hear it? I’ll read it again.

Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.

There are shepherds in the nativity account, but they weren’t searching for Jesus. They weren’t going into Bethlehem. They weren’t in Jerusalem or at church, or the mall. They were sitting in the fields doing their jobs. Being Shepherds. Nothing more and nothing less. Watching the sheep. As far as we might know, they may not have even been religious. They did a job that would have kept them from going to services very often. Someone would always have to be on duty. Grazing large flocks would mean continual movement. No real central location or feedlot. Eat up the grass here, move on. Only not that night – And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

They had been minding their own business and suddenly – BOOM! God stepped in. Terrified them. Made them wonder about it all. Not knowing what was happening and God had to speak to them through that preacher, that angel - Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

They had been minding their own business. No conscious need for this message and yet God made it so. He broke in through all the regular regimen these poor shepherds had going for them and upset everything. God being the great interrupter. Throwing off your groove. Scaring you to death only to say to you – “Peace.” All because you need it. I need it.

We get ourselves so encapsulated by all the rigmarole. All the stuff. It causes us to be snafued by the difficulties of life, of ourselves, the world. In steps Jesus. Not asked for by us very often, unless we find ourselves at our wits end. Jesus coming to us like an untimely illness to knock us over. An unexpected deadline that catches us off guard. That first contraction to the pregnant woman, jolting us into a new reality in our midst. Well I’m not ready for you Jesus. Too bad. Here I am for you. Breaking in when we least expect him, or need him. Telling us we have a Savior whether we think we need one or not. He is here, whether our hearts are ready. Whether we have had time to plan. He is here for you. And sometimes that is the best way. No presumptions. No preparations. No possibility of pretense or pretending. No chance to hide our sin. Just Jesus and you. Taking you for who you are, and snatching you from all that may try and kill you.

Jesus is that one now stepping into your life. Saying, I’m here for you as Savior, which means rescuer. To rescue you from all your sin. From the Christmases of past, present and future that you hope have been the best without him, that your life and soul now lie in his hands, held in the arms of God made flesh for you. To allow everything else to go badly or just be normal, and to have Jesus become yours, because he is. That is Jesus. He gives himself to you. Whether you Christmas is going awesome or an absolute train wreck. Jesus is still here for you. To snatch you from everything that tries to make this Christmas as Jesus-less as possible.

As we come to the Table tonight, there is no better place to find this Jesus than in the way he gives of himself – His body and blood, broken and shed for your sake. Because, you see, God became man so he might die because he knew when he came preaching to us, “I forgive you all your sins” we’d kill him for it. And yet, here he is for you on his Table, body broken and blood shed, that he might be present as forgiveness for all our sin, forever. As Lutherans it is one of the many things we still share with our brothers and sisters of the Catholic Church. We hold to the truth that in that bread and wine, Christ is not symbolized, or imagined. It is not just a snack to break up the service. In the mysteries of faith we believe that the bread and wine are his actual body and blood because he says they are his.

It is hard to believe that sometimes. Looking at the world we live in, to think that God would give himself in such a way when there are so many other ways he could. The good news of the Gospel, in part, is that my thoughts on the subject don’t matter. It is Christ who comes. Who speaks. Who gives. So tonight, as you come forward, hear those words again. I will place Jesus in your hand, you will dip him in the cup of his blood, and you will devour him as though you have no other hope. Nothing else besides Jesus. Because the angels have come to sing to you this night as we await his birth, to tell you that you have a Savior, the Lord, lying in a manger, the mangers of your hands, to be for you the God you need. The God who comes to you and does not wait for you to have completed your to-do list or Christmas shopping. He doesn’t care. If he can take each of us away from the Christmas of the world and make this the Christ-mass of his Son being for you in every way necessary, then that is Christmas for you tonight. Merry Christmas. Thanks be to God. Amen.
TW