|
Text: Luke 2:1-20
W Christmas (Feast of the Nativity) No Place for Jesus In the name of the Savior born to you this day, dear friends
in Christ: We heard in this morning’s
well-known Gospel lesson how the Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord, wrapped
the infant Jesus in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, “because there
was no place for them in the inn.” No
place in all of Bethlehem for the baby Jesus except for a ramshackle shed
standing in a pen for livestock – a place which probably wasn’t anywhere near
as clean or picturesque as the ones in the nativity scenes you see on Christmas
cards. It’s only one of many glaring ironies in the earthly life of
our Lord – but I think it’s an important one.
I mean, the reason that Mary and Joseph have come to Bethlehem in the
first place is because it’s David’s town, the birthplace of the greatest king
in Israel’s history. You remember
David. He was the shepherd boy the Lord
chose to be king of his people Israel.
And the funny thing was that he was the last person anyone else would
have chosen for the job. Even his own
father, Jesse, didn’t give David a thought when the prophet Samuel came and
told him that one of his sons was the one God had chosen to be the king. Jesse proudly paraded his seven older sons
before the prophet, all strapping young men with good looks, quick wits, and
strong shoulders. The Lord rejected them
all to the surprise of everyone. Finally
the exasperated prophet said to Jesse, “Haven’t you got any more sons?” Jesse replied, “No … well, not except for
little David, the grubby, freckle-faced runt of the litter who’s out taking
care of the sheep; but you can’t possibly want him.” The prophet said, “Go fetch him. That “little runt” is your next king.” And so it happened that the Lord raised David
up from obscurity even in his own family, took him out of the sheep pen, out of
dusty little Bethlehem, and eventually gave him a magnificent palace in the
city of Jerusalem from which he reigned over Israel at the height of its
earthly glory. And now, ten centuries later,
Joseph, who is of the house and royal line of David, has brought his tiny
family back to this sleepy village because this is where he must register for
the census – the census that Caesar Augustus has commanded be taken largely to
ensure he’s getting all the taxes he has coming from his kingdom that extends over an area and population a thousand
times greater than that of David on his best day. And so, in what is a curious reversal, Jesus,
the long promised and infinitely more glorious king in David’s line, the One
the Lord said would rule forever over a kingdom – a kingdom that will make even
the empire of Caesar Augustus look like a nest of beetles in a dung heap – this
king goes from his splendor in heaven above to David’s humble boyhood home –
the place from which David had been raised up from nothing – and now the true
King goes to lower than nothing – specifically to a bed of straw precariously
raised by slender shafts of wood just a few inches above the slimy muck on the
floor of a sheep pen. It’s no place for
any infant, much less the One who is the Lord of glory; but here he is out with
the animals because even in the lowly village of Bethlehem, there’s no place
else for Jesus. … No place for Jesus in the town
where the prophets said he would be born, no place for Jesus in the nation that
had been praying for his coming for two thousand years, no place for Jesus in
the homes, the hearts, or the minds of God’s chosen people. They all crowded him out with their worldly
cares and personal concerns and pushed him away to the farthest and darkest
fringes of their existence. And you know, some things just never
seem to change; for here we are two thousand years later living in a nation and
culture that purports to be generally Christian, and yet it’s trying for all
its worth to push the same Jesus out of the very holy day the Christian church
created to celebrate his birth. If
you’ve been paying attention to the news at all this year, you know that now more
than ever there are those who are intent on making sure everyone else conforms
with their point of view that there is no place for Christ in Christmas. Whether it’s political correctness run amok,
school officials and community politicians trying to avoid lawsuits, or a
certain left leaning legal organization promoting its rather strange vision of
what American liberty should be (a liberty that says, “You can’t do this. Don’t even think of doing that. And don’t you dare say publicly any of the
following religious words…”)—anyway, for whatever their reasons, now we are
being instructed to say “holiday trees” rather than “Christmas trees”, and
store employees whose businesses depend on Christmas shopping to put them in
the black are told to say “Season’s greetings” to their customers rather than
“Merry Christmas”; meanwhile schools are having “Winter Music Assemblies”
rather than “Christmas Programs”, and in some places they’re even taking Christ
out of the Christmas carols people sing. But then, this shouldn’t surprise us
that much, nor, do I think we should be very discouraged by it. I mean it really isn’t the job of public
schools, politicians, the sellers of merchandise, or the community at large to
promote the Christian faith. So, when
they cave in to the voices of the many people who are offended by the name of
Christ, it just doesn’t bother me that much.
In fact, as far as I’m concerned, it helps highlight the distinction
between on one hand the world at large that is either openly hostile to Jesus
or that only pays him lip service, imagining themselves to be Christian simply
because they set up a tree and exchange gifts on December 25th, and
on the other hand, the community of Christ’s truly faithful people – that is,
the church—that’s where I expect the name of Christ to be upheld. So, if I’m looking to be discouraged by
people taking Christ out of Christmas, that’s where I’ll look, in the church;
and sadly, this year I’ll find plenty even there to be discouraged about. Many of you have probably heard that today
many of the huge “mega-churches” across the county are closed. I’m talking about those congregations that
have ten or twenty thousand members and that have names that sound more like
country clubs or wineries than churches:
Vineyard, Willow Creek, Oak Ridge, Saddleback, and so on. Their leaders got together, talked about it,
and decided to cancel Sunday services today because it’s Christmas, and, well,
they said, “Christmas is a time for families”.
Funny, I would expect the churches to say that Christmas had something
to do with Christ, a time when the people of God stand in awe of the
mystery of his incarnation and praise the Father for sending his Son into the
world – and all the more so when Christmas falls on Sunday, the day we regularly
gather for worship; but no, Christmas dinners and gifts exchanges with the
family have been deemed more important and so have crowded Jesus out of his
place even in the Church. Of course, we don’t need to go to the mega-churches (and all
the other smaller ones) where the doors are closed this morning to witness this
phenomenon. You’ve probably noticed that
the crowd in here is a bit sparse this morning – just as it is, I suspect, in
the vast majority of the Christian churches across our county that are open
today. And while I’m sure that some
folks have traveled and are worshipping with their families in other churches,
and perhaps some are ill this morning and couldn’t make it, I’m equally sure
that others simply decided that their time today on Christmas was simply too
precious to waste any of it receiving the Lord Jesus through his Word. But let’s bring it closer to home, shall we? I mean it’s awfully easy to point fingers at
the Grinches at the ACLU, and all those atheists, non-Christians, nominal Christians, politically correct
politicians and school boards – along with the closed mega churches and even
those of our own number who decided to stay home today – all of whom could be
accused of crowding out Christ and leaving no place for him in Christmas; but
what about us? What about you? Just a bit ago we sang, “Let every heart
prepare him room” … I wonder, what sort of place have you and I prepared for
the King of Glory whose birth we celebrate today? If you could envision your life, your efforts, energies, and
priorities as house, which room would be the one for Jesus? Where, effectively speaking, would he be
staying? Would it be the entry? That place from which you stand and meet
visitors at the door, you on the inside of the threshold and whoever it is
that’s standing there outside on the porch?
How often does it happen that you know Jesus is asking to come in and
you leave him standing out there, “No thanks, I haven’t got time or place for
you today”? Or better yet, when you peek
from behind the curtains, see who it is, and pretend not to be home? And who knows, you might do this because you
don’t want to give him the time today, or because you look around the place,
see it’s a mess, and don’t want him to see it that way. Or maybe the place for Jesus is the living room or rec room,
wherever it is you’ve got the family TV. I’ve never quite understood it, but
I’ve noticed sometimes kids these days will have their friends over at the
house just to watch TV together or maybe to play video games. There’s no real interaction taking place
between the kids, all their attention is glued to the screen. And I wonder if Jesus isn’t sometimes that
kind of guest in our lives. “Oh yeah,
Jesus is here, right here beside me; I’m just ignoring him.” Or maybe it’s the dining room, where he’s
invited to meals in prayer and then it’s promptly forgotten that he, the true
host of the meal, is a guest at the table. Or maybe Jesus is the visitor who gets the special
treatment: we’ll put him in the guest
room, the one nobody ever goes into except to dust and clean. The one with the fancy new bed linens and its
own private bath – the place that’s all for show and that has very little to do
with the way we really live. Or perhaps
the place for Jesus is in the attic, in a box of memories that we pull out and
look at once in a while when we’re feeling nostalgic. Maybe he’s in the utility closet – stored
away, but handy, sort of like the mop and bucket that we pull out only when
we’ve really managed to make a mess of our lives. I could go on naming different rooms, but I’m sure you get
the point. At various times, the
behaviors I’m describing can be said of all of us; and when they are, we too
are guilty of crowding the Lord out of where he properly belongs in our lives
and assigning him to a place that really is no place for him. And to go a step farther, I think a big
reason we do this is because we often live with a skewed perception of what
kind of guest he is – or that he wants to be in our lives. We think sometimes that his coming means a
big hassle for me. His knock at the door
is about as welcome as one from the Jehovah’s witnesses. He wants to talk about religious stuff – and
who’s got time for that? “Look, I know
what I believe about you and that’s enough.
Now just go away, leave me alone, and don’t bother me any more. You’re my Savior. What else do I need to know?” Or, other times the perception may be that
his coming means he wants something from me.
I mean, he is the Lord, after all.
And so while he’s here I’m going to have to jump through hoops to try to
please him. So I’ll bring out my best
behavior, shower him with the best I can afford, and put up the act of perfect
hospitality for as long as I can – all the while secretly hoping his visit
doesn’t last longer than I can maintain the façade. I think if we saw him differently, the way he really is,
we’d be much more willing to let him come in and find his own place in our
lives. And that’s exactly what we get in
the Christmas story. In it God himself
chose his place in the world. And there
is a message for us in the place of his choosing. He didn’t come to a palace in a great
city. He didn’t come to one of the fine
houses in Bethlehem – or even to one of the humbler ones. He came to a rickety shed in a filthy sheep
pen. He chose a place held up on wooden
shafts just a couple feet above a stinking mess. That mess is a picture of the sin on your
soul – and the manger in which his body was held is a picture of the cross on
which he would be slain. And with this
in mind, we see that he comes to cleanse us – to die as the sacrifice for our
sin and to free us from its curse. His
knock at the door means that he’s here to get to work. Imagine the doorbell ringing, and when you
answer it there’s a whole cleaning crew there.
They want to clean your house, top to bottom – and no charge. It’s a gift.
What would you do? I, for one,
would take them to the messiest places first.
That’s the place for Jesus in your life. But there’s more than cleaning going on. I think it’s important to see that when God
becomes flesh, he comes as the (adopted) son of a carpenter to be raised as a
carpenter. The message is that he’s not
just here to clean, but also to build.
Imagine now the doorbell ringing and this time it’s a home building
crew. They’re here to fix your home up
right: new wiring, new plumbing, bigger,
wider, more energy efficient windows, you name it – oh yes, and they build
cabinets and furniture too. Again, no
charge for their services. So, what
would you do? I’d say hand them the key
and say, “Let’s get on it”. That’s what
Christ’s coming means. He’s not here to
take places from you – he’s here to build a place for you, a new, glorious, and
everlasting place in the kingdom of God.
He’s here to furnish the rooms of your life with meaning and purpose
now. And yes, it’ll mean knocking down
some walls, and raising a lot of dust – but the end result will be more than
worth it. Dear friends, today – as I’m sure they will for years – the
arguments rage on. Well-intentioned
Christian people are fighting to keep Christ in public displays of Christmas
piety. They believe it’s essential to
witness Christ to the world in such ways.
Let me suggest something different – something better. A plastic, internally-lighted, image of a
baby in a crèche on the courthouse lawn is really no place for Jesus. If we want to show Christ to the world, we
should do it by giving him the place he seeks in our lives, and letting him
live through us, cleansing us of our sin and building us up in faith, love, and
hope. That’s the place for Jesus. This Christmas and every day that follows,
may our gracious God and Father give us the grace to let him in to the place he
belongs. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
