A Christmas Sermon

Glory In The Lowly Place

There is a census being taken. That is where Luke begins, and it is worth pausing there for a moment, because it is such an ordinary, bureaucratic, even tedious detail. Caesar Augustus has issued a decree. The machinery of empire is turning. Every person must return to his own town to be registered. The world is being counted, catalogued, administered. Power is asserting itself in the most mundane way power knows how, by requiring people to prove they exist on its terms.

And into that world, into that particular moment of imperial paperwork and long roads and crowded inns, the Word of God steps. Not with a counter-decree. Not with a rival army. Not with a sign in the heavens that stops the census in its tracks. He steps in as a child, born to a young woman far from home, laid in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

This is the story the Church gathers to hear every Christmas. It is a story that rewards slow attention, because its power is not in its drama. Its power is in its quietness, and in what that quietness conceals.

The Central Claim

John's Gospel does not begin with a census. It begins before time. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John reaches back behind every human story, behind creation itself, to tell us who this child in Bethlehem actually is. He is not simply a remarkable person. He is not merely a great teacher who will one day arrive. He is the eternal Word, the one through whom all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.

And then John says the thing that changes everything. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Greek word there, dwelt, carries the image of pitching a tent, of taking up residence among a people. The Word of God, through whom the galaxies were spoken into being, pitched his tent in human flesh, in a specific body, in a particular village, in a manger in Bethlehem.

This is the claim at the center of Christmas. Not that God sent a message. Not that God inspired a prophet. But that God himself came, in person, in flesh, and made his dwelling among us.

What The Shepherds Heard

Luke tells us that the first announcement of this arrival did not go to Caesar. It did not go to the high priest in Jerusalem or to the scholars who had studied the prophecies for generations. It went to shepherds, out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. That fear is worth taking seriously. The glory of God is not a comfortable thing. It is not a warm feeling or a pleasant atmosphere. When it appears, people fall on their faces. The shepherds were terrified, and the angel's first words were do not be afraid.

Then comes the announcement. Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord. And the sign you will find is a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.

Notice the sign. Not a throne. Not a palace. Not a display of power that would settle every argument about who is in charge. The sign is a baby in a feeding trough. The glory of God, which had just lit up the night sky and terrified a group of working men, was directing them toward the most vulnerable, most ordinary, most unguarded image imaginable.

Then the heavenly host appeared, and they were praising God, saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors. The glory is in the highest heaven, and the peace is on the earth. The two are connected. The glory has come down so that the peace might arrive. That is the movement of Christmas. God descending so that humanity might receive what it could never reach on its own.

The shepherds went. They hurried, Luke says. They found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. And when they had seen him, they reported the message they were told about this child. They became the first preachers of Christmas, these men who smelled of sheep and fields, who had been frightened out of their wits an hour before.

What John Saw

John's prologue is the theological lens through which we understand what the shepherds witnessed. He was in the beginning with God. All things were created through him. In him was life, and that life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

John is telling us that what happened in Bethlehem was not a new idea. It was the fulfillment of everything God had been doing since the first word of creation. The same Word who said let there be light has now entered the darkness in person. Not to observe it from a safe distance. Not to comment on it from above. But to shine within it, from inside it, as one of us.

He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. John does not soften that. The Word came home and was turned away. The inn had no room. The world he made did not recognize him. There is grief in that line, and it is honest grief, because Christmas is not a story about a world that was ready and waiting. It is a story about a world that was not, and about grace that came anyway.

But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

This is the gift that Christmas carries. Not a sentiment. Not a season. Not even a beautiful story, though it is that. The gift is the right to become children of God, to be born from above, to receive a life that no census can count and no empire can administer.

And we observed his glory, John says, the glory as of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Full of grace and truth. Both. Not grace without truth, which would be sentimentality. Not truth without grace, which would be judgment. But the Word made flesh, full of both at once, holding them together in a single human life.

The Manger And The Mirror

It is worth sitting with the humility of this for a moment, because we can hear the Christmas story so many times that we stop being surprised by it. But consider what it means that the eternal Word chose this particular entrance. No credentials. No announcement in the halls of power. No demonstration of force. A young mother, a bewildered father, a borrowed space, a feeding trough.

God did not arrive the way we would have written the story. We would have written a story where power is met with greater power, where the arrival of the King is unmistakable and overwhelming. But the Word became flesh in the way that required faith to see. The shepherds had to trust the angel's word and go looking. They had to believe that the sign of a baby in a manger was actually the sign of God's arrival.

That same quality of faith is still required. Christmas does not remove the need for trust. It deepens it. The claim that this child, born in poverty and obscurity, is the eternal Word through whom all things were made, is not a claim that forces itself on anyone. It is a claim that invites. It is a claim that says, come and see.

And when you come and see, what you find is not a display of power that overwhelms your questions. You find a God who was willing to be small, willing to be vulnerable, willing to enter the mess and limitation of human life, so that no part of your own mess and limitation is beyond his reach.

This is the pastoral heart of Christmas. Whatever you have carried into this place today, whatever weight or grief or uncertainty or longing, the Word became flesh means that God is not a stranger to it. He did not watch human suffering from a comfortable distance and then send instructions. He entered it. He was cold in that stable. He was dependent on the care of human hands. He grew up in an ordinary town. He knew what it was to be misunderstood, to be turned away, to be far from home.

The glory of God arrived in the lowly place. That is not a contradiction. That is the gospel.

A Charge For Christmas

As we come now toward the Table, it is worth remembering that what we do here is connected to what happened there. The same Word who became flesh took bread and broke it and said, this is my body. The Eucharist is Christmas continued, the Word still giving himself, still making his dwelling among us, still offering grace and truth to all who come.

The shepherds went back, Luke tells us, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told. They had gone to see a baby in a manger and they came away with a song.

That is what Christmas does when it is received rather than merely observed. It gives you something to sing about that no census can take away, no empire can silence, no darkness can overcome.

The light shines in the darkness. It shone in Bethlehem. It shines in this room. And the darkness has not overcome it.

Glory to God in the highest. And peace, his peace, to you.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. Luke 2:1-20; John 1:1-14.

The Book of Common Prayer. Church Publishing, 1979. Collect for Christmas Day and the Order for the Eucharist.

Cranfield, C. E. B. The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Cambridge University Press, 1959.

Wright, N. T. Luke for Everyone. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

Hooker, Morna D. The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Hendrickson Publishers, 1991.

Barclay, William. The Gospel of John, Volume 1. Revised edition. Westminster Press, 1975.