That Little Baby?!?
Christmas Eve – December 24, 2011
If you happened to be here this past Sunday at the 10 o'clock service, you got a chance to see our kids in action for the annual Sunday School Christmas play. This year, we shared in their wonder and excitement as they told the story of Jesus' birth from the perspective of the animals. A little lamb had fallen asleep and lost her shepherd when he raced off to Bethlehem to see this thing that had taken place, and so she and her animal friends set off to find the shepherd – telling us the story of Jesus and Joseph and Mary and angels along the way.
It was a wonderful, joyful pageant, as it always is. But there was one line that has stuck with me all week. It's been playing over and over in my head since their rehearsal last Saturday morning. As the animals come to Bethlehem and come face to face with the One they have been told is the Savior of the world, one of the animals looks at this child and says in confusion, “That little baby?!?”
As in, “I'm supposed to believe that that little baby is the savior of the world?” It doesn't quite seem to fit. With all the trouble in the world – with sectarian insurgents in Iraq threatening their fellow citizens now that the US war there has come to an end; with oppressive government regimes menacing normal, everyday people who just want a chance to pursue life and liberty and justice; with people who were already living on the margins tossed over the financial edge by a tropical storm that wiped out their homes and their livelihoods; and with others forced by drought and political instability to leave their homeland and walk hundreds of miles carrying their children on their backs, in hopes that when they arrive at the refugee camp, they will be welcomed and not turned away because there is no place for them; with fears of unemployment and economic insecurity stalking our hearts and feelings of loneliness and loss and depression overcoming many as we face the first Christmas without a certain loved one to share it with – with all of this tragedy and sorrow, what we need, to paraphrase a song from the 80s, is a hero... “and he's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast, and he's gotta be fresh from the fight... he's gotta be sure and it's gotta be soon, and he's gotta be larger than life...”
We need a hero, a larger-than-life hero – but what we get is a baby. Small wonder that that innocent animal in the Christmas play was confused - “That little baby?” The idea that a baby can do anything to resolve the problems that face our world seems absurd. Laughable. Ridiculous. Babies are wonderful – great fun to play with, lovely to snuggle and cuddle – but they are weak. Powerless. Vulnerable. Not exactly hero material.
Joseph and Mary faced the same kinds of uncertainties, as they were forced by occupying powers to leave their home to travel in the late stages of Mary's pregnancy to a strange town far away, hoping someone would take them in in a show of hospitality so she wouldn't have to deliver her child on the street. The shepherds were no strangers to struggle either, watching their flocks in the field by night, eking out a subsistence living, just barely living hand to mouth, looked down upon by those of the upper classes. Their world was filled then, as now, with anxiety and uncertainty, violence and oppression and greed, with hurt and desperation, and longing for a hero. A rescuer. A Savior.
It is into this world that angels keep appearing. We're only in the 2nd chapter Luke's gospel, but this is not the first time angels have come. They keep popping up everywhere, declaring to everyone they meet that God has not forgotten them in their trouble. Gabriel came to Zechariah and Elizabeth in their old age to tell them that they would have a son, John that Baptizer, who would go before the Lord to prepare his way. Not too long after that, Gabriel goes to Mary, announcing that she had found favor with God and would bear a Son named Jesus, which means “God saves” - that he would be called the Son of the Most High, the Son of God – “for nothing will be impossible with God,” Gabriel says. And again, on this silent, holy night, an angel comes to the shepherds with “good news of great joy,” exclaiming that God is on the move in their troubled world, that God is acting, even NOW, to bring about a reversal, to turn the world right-side-up, that God is transforming this dark, broken, fearful existence into a world overflowing with God's light and healing and hope. The angel comes this night announcing the imminent arrival of the hero, the Savior the world has long waited for, and the sign that all this is true? “That little baby” - wrapped in bands of cloth, lying in a manger.
An unlikely hero, it's true, but then God rarely works in the ways that we'd expect. This is the good news of great joy for all people, for Mary and Joseph, for shepherds watching their flocks, even for us - that God, the ruler of the universe, the creator of the world, is born to us, born for us, this day. God comes down, Word made flesh, Love Incarnate. God becomes one of us, and comes, not with conquering armies, but in the vulnerability of a baby. God comes, not to strike fear into our hearts, but to fill our deepest needs. God comes, laying aside the glory of heaven to be born in the mess and muck of a stable - poor, humble, vulnerable, human – so that we can know we are never alone. This is how God loves us – with a love that does not stay far off, but comes near, taking on our flesh and blood. This is the way God overcomes the world, not with a sword, but in the love of a baby sent to be one of us, sent to save us by being God with us, holding us with a love that will never let us go. That little baby? Yes, that little baby – Savior. Messiah. Lord. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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