Discovering Sacred Within

“Discovering Sacred Within”
Luke 2:1-20

Fourth Sunday of Advent & Christmas December 24, 2006
Preached at Kingston Road United Church by the Rev. Richard C. Choe

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“She gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "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. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."

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The meaning of Christmas depends on the memories of your Christmases past. Memories often carry wounds we try to forget. Memories also help us to remember the meaningful events of life experienced.

We gather here with mixed emotions and memories about Christmas. Some of us sitting here are weary of family squabbles and relationship issues. For some, the Christmas season is a long awaited break. For others, this is a season to get together with friends and relatives.

For many children in our neighbourhood, Christmas means lots of presents – an opportunity to open gift wrapped boxes and bags. For many small business owners, good sales over the Christmas season will give them enough encouragement to continue business into another year. But for some parents in our community, Christmas is another painful reminder of their financial shortfall. And for those who have lost loved ones over the years, Christmas brings painful memories along with cherished memories of those who have gone before them.

Whatever our emotions and memories, we are here once again to celebrate the arrival of the Christ child.

There is a faded family memory like a faded photo from my family album. It is a memory of being new to this country as immigrants. Most immigrants and refugees will say that the coldest winter they experience is the first winter in Canada spent away from close friends and relations while searching for a place to make a home in Canada.

My memory is a picture of our family of five sitting around a kitchen table my parents just bought from Consumers Distributing. My mom had prepared a Christmas meal for our first Canadian Christmas. It was a time of respite, a time for catching up with one another from the frantic busy-ness of acquiring Canadian experience. We are raising our glasses to one another in an apartment unit for low income families in Willowridge, Toronto. It was Christmas 1975. I remember the sense of dislocation in a strange new land – along with a sense of timid anticipation that there will be a bright future ahead for our family.

I often wondered over the years how my parents struggled through the early stage of our immigrant life here in Canada – knocking on the doors of factories, seeking employment, being shut out because of their lack of “Canadian” experience.

I wonder what made Mary and Joseph carry on. I wonder what kept the early Christian community like the community of Luke to continue to persevere in the face of persecution.

The community of Luke was a struggling minority religious sect – struggling to survive ex-communication from the synagogues and from persecution from the foreign Empire that occupied their homeland. In the midst of their struggle for survival, the community of Luke dared to “remember” how their faith in Jesus Christ began.

For the early Christian communities, the Easter experience was the primary memory through which they saw and understood the meaning of Jesus the Christ to the world in which they lived. By remembering, they kept their faith. For the followers of Jesus in the community of Luke, remembering the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was seen through their understanding of the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

They remember the humble beginning. They remember the way Mary was called to become God’s servant. They remember how Joseph, Mary’s husband, respected her decision and cared for her. They remember how the angels, God’s messengers, shared the “First Noel” with shepherds – people who lived on the margins of the society, like the way they themselves were marginalised from the religious and political centres of their world.

The birth narrative recorded in Luke speaks clearly of a family and groups of individuals shut out from the mainstream of society. Mary is about to give birth to a child conceived out of wedlock. Joseph could not find a safe place for Mary to give birth in the bleak winter night. In a society where hospitality to a stranger was a religious duty and a civic obligation, not one household provided such an act of generosity to Mary and Joseph. What was the social stigma Mary and Joseph carried that people shut their doors at them? Was it the way they looked? Their accents? Their body language?

Here are some clues. The town of Nazareth was known to be a town of rabble-rousers. Nazarenes were considered to be rebellious even by their fellow Jews. Many revolts against the foreign occupying armies began in Nazareth. It is no wonder there was no room at the inn for a family from Nazareth, a town of agitators. Perhaps no one in Bethlehem wanted to be associated with a family of Nazarenes for fear of inviting trouble by the occupying Roman army. And yet, well aware of the stigma associated with Nazarenes, the community of Luke boldly states that Jesus, the one they confess as their King and Saviour over and against the Emperor of the powerful Rome Empire, was a Nazarene.

I wonder whether the shepherds would have been counted in the census for which taxation was its primary purpose. Like many homeless in our society, it is doubtful that those at the socio-economic margins would have been counted in a census. And yet, the community of Luke “remembers” that the shepherds are the first ones to hear of the arrival of the Messiah. According to the memories of community of Luke, good tidings of God came first to those at the margins of the society.

What do the different locations in the Nativity Story of Jesus of Nazareth inform us? What does it mean to hear the Good News at the margin – a place of dislocation and powerlessness? What does it mean to be at the centre of power – living in a world filled with toys for children and adults? How do middle class Canadians reconcile their positions of privilege with the humble beginnings of the Christ child? Are we called to hear and proclaim the Good News only at the margin?

If you are only preoccupied with moving toward the centre of power, you will soon find that you have become an oppressor to others at the margins. If you are adamant about staying solely at the margin, you will soon find that your neighbours see you as a cynic who can never say anything positive about anything in the centre.

This is what Alton Pollard[i] says, reflecting on today’s passage,
“Aside from Luke, the only other historical record we have of the birth of Jesus is in Matthew. In Matthew, the story of the magi is told, a story of the powerful, the elite. Society's standard-bearers were present: the kings with their gifts. In Luke, on the other hand, only the simple peasants and the shepherds were present. Two disparate accounts, two different segments of the social order are expressing themselves around this newborn child. Is it important or inconsequential that the stories are left to us this way?”

Pollard posits,
“Think about it. For if these two worlds flowed together there would have to be peace on earth. But as long as they do not come together and relate in ways that are mutually exclusive and unjust, there remains a vacuum in our world.”[ii]

Pollard also says that “war, violence, madness, envy, fear, hatred, all the grisly agonies by which our days are tormented persist and our nights are converted into nightmares” when the two worlds keep colliding against each other.[iii]

Mary and Joseph, peasants in a remote colony of the Roman Empire, are travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem to register themselves for the census for taxation by the edicts from the Emperor Augustus. There, Mary gave birth to the Messiah. Shepherds living in the fringe of the society ran to a manger in Bethlehem to receive the Messiah. At first glance there seems to be a one-way movement of people moving from the margin to the centre.

When the secondary memory is only remembered in and of itself, most us can only focus on the movements from the margin to the centre. Perhaps that was a reason why, over the centuries, the secondary memory of the birth narrative of Jesus of Nazareth became as important as the primary memory of the resurrection story of Jesus the Christ. But if we are to remember the secondary story of the birth narrative in relation to the primary story of Easter, we begin to also see the movements from the centre to margin, as well as margin to margin – a merging of the disparate realities of human locations.

Mary and Joseph, according to Luke, eventually returned to Galilee, to their home town of Nazareth. The shepherds returned to the fields and shared the arrival of the Messiah to those who were still living in fear.

My parents kept up their hope for their children throughout their life in Canada as first generation immigrants. It was the warmth of family and knowing that we had one another that gave us strength to carry on as a family. Like the song Hope, the one that pop reggae artist, Shaggy sings, it was the hope that made us to hold on. It was just hope that made us carry on.[iv]

Yes, even in the times when we feel hopeless, it is the hope that makes us carry on. Hope that the two worlds – the powerful and the powerless – will eventually flow into one stream of peace as we work to bring peace a reality in our world. This is what happened at the birth of Jesus from Nazareth. Two worlds – the realities of the powerful and the realities of the powerless – flowed into one. Two worlds – the stark realities of human condition and the possible Reign of God flowed into one. When the two worlds flowed into one, the mundane experience of the birth of a child in a manger in a out-of-the-way colonial town called Bethlehem became a sacred event – God’s child arrived into our world.

By remembering the birth of Jesus the Nazarene, the community of Luke found a renewed hope in God. For if God’s child could be born into a Nazarene family, every child and every human being could be, and ought to be, a child of God. This, I believe is the message of Christmas – for God so loved the world that each and every child is a child of God, and that each human person is called to discover that sacredness within and from one another. Such a journey of discovery is a Call to all humanity. Peace, indeed, is made of each step we take in our journey of life.

By remembering the flowing of the two worlds – the centres and the margins of the human worlds – at Jesus’ birth, the community of Luke understood their call to be sojourners who move between and amongst the centres and margins of their world in order to bring God’s radical transformation for peace everywhere on earth. This is our Call. This is our ministry.

When they remembered the flowing together of the two worlds – human world and the reign of God on earth – at Jesus’ birth, the community of Luke was able to move beyond their experience of dislocation into creating memories of hopeful transformation for all in the world. They turned their wounded memories into healing memories for others.

When we remember as community of faith here at Kingston Road, we are continuing the tradition of our foremothers and forefathers of Christian faith in turning the nightmares of two worlds colliding into a rainbow dream of many streams of worlds flowing into one peaceful world.

Amen.

Merry Christmas!

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[i] Dr. Alton B. Pollard III is a director of the Black Church Studies Program and associate professor of religion and culture at Candler School of Theology and the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University in Atlanta.
[ii] “You will find a child,” Out In Scripture, Christmas Eve, Year C, December 24, 2006.
[iii] “You will find a child,” Out In Scripture, Christmas Eve, Year C, December 24, 2006.
[iv] “Hope” by Shaggy
I remember, wasn't so long ago We had a one room shack and the livin' was low And my mama by herself raised me and my bro Wasn't easy, but we did it with the little that go Worked hard while the suckers cool every day And kept her eyes on the stars when the skies were gray Gave us drive to survive, really showed us the way Now I really understood what she was tryin' to say

She said, "Son there'll be times when the tides are high And the boat may be rocky, you can cry Just never give up You can never give up," uh-uh In this life you could lead if you only believe And in order to achieve what you need You can never give up You can never give up And this hope That keep me holding on On and on And this hope That makes me carry on On and on Home grown, couldn't have made it alone I got a wonderful life, two kids on my own With a strong foundation that was carved in stone And my mama for the love that made my house a home Made me wonder some time if this was meant to be All this for a humble little guy like me And all I ever really wanted was a family To teach my kids the same value that she gave to me She said, "Son there'll be times when the tides are high And the boat may be rocky, you can cry Just never give up You can never give up, uh-uh In this life you could lead if you only believe And in order to achieve what you need You can never give up You can never give up And this hope That keep me holding on And on And this hope That makes me carry on On and on We nah turn no stepper, things a go better Never make yourself be overcome by pressure Cool ya me bredda, have faith instead a Sid-dung and a watch an all a fight one another Blaze like fire, nah go retire Got naf sleep and a him inspire We fi reach higher a that him require Haffi mek we mark before the time is expire And this hope That keep me holding on And on And this hope That makes me carry on On and on And this hope That keep me holding on And on And this hope That makes me carry on On and on There's hope, yeah Hope keeps it alive, yeah, uh Hope keeps it alive, yeah, uh And it strikes an iron, uh Hope keeps it alive, yeah, yeah Hope keeps it alive, yeah Only the strong survive, yeah Keep it carry on, keep it carry on, yeah Uh-uh I'll keep it carry on, yeah I gotta carry on, gotta carry on and be strong Uh-uh-uh Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-uh And this hope That keep me holding on And on And this hope That makes me carry on On and on.