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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Isaiah 7:10-14
Romans 1:1-6
St. Matthew 1:18-21
To the saints who are in Accident, and are faithful in
Christ Jesus:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph 1)
Who speaks to us on this eve of His nativity, saying,
Do not fear to take Mary as your wife? Is marriage really that scary? Don’t answer that. But really, people get married all the time and it is a party. In fact, Jesus’s first miracle and sign is done at a wedding where He turns water into wine. From this we are to take away more than “Jesus is a fun guy”. We are to see that God chooses to work out His great Salvation in the middle of insanity, in the very midst of regular life.
Yes. Though we like to sing Silent Night, this night was anything but. This is why I believe its important that we make a distinction. According to the Bible, Jesus Was Not Born in a Barn or Stable But a House. A house in the middle of hosting every one of their family members in town for the taxation, which is theft, and in town for the Feast which required a pilgrimage to the Temple.
Thus, the First Christmas was very much like your Christmas: chaos in the home. Only now someone is about to give birth, but there’s no room. We’ll make room in the storage next to where everyone feeds their animals they used to get here. The verse from St. Luke 2 goes, “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (v. 7).
The word translated as Inn is our culprit. We know it has to be more than an Inn, because its the same word Jesus uses in St. Luke 22:11 saying, “Tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’” Guest Room there is our word and now we know that we are dealing with a house.
Why is this important? Just as it is important for the shepherds who were sent by angels, so is it important information for us. For we will use it to find Jesus. But we are not going to a palace, or a family changing room, or even a hospital.
We are going to barge into Sts. Joseph and Mary’s life.
Also, its not just finding “calm and peace” in the midst of chaos, either. That’s not what God means. He intends to create calm and peace in the midst of it. Though there are moments outside of our insanity we can find, peaceful-like, God chooses to work in the muck of our vocations and in the mire of our daily drudgery. In other words, the chaos is the calm we must strive towards.
This holy life that God creates on His earth is made up of our vocation. Not just our dream job or what we love doing, vocation consists of everything that we do or are a part of. It includes our jobs, but it more importantly includes being a father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, neighbor, employee, etc. Those “jobs” are a part of our vocations, in other words, they are the good works our heavenly Father prepared for us (Eph 2:10).
That is because it is in exactly those places where most, if not all, of our struggle and strife come from and most times, no matter how hard we struggle, it never goes away. On top of our own sin, it is the place where the devil does his worst. That is our cross to bear. But, since there is a cross there, there is also Christ.
When sin entered the world, it attempted to push God out and make no room for Jesus. Jesus said there was no place for Him in St. Matthew 8:20, for it was to the serpent that Eve and Adam turned to for comfort and authority. The Lord comments on this to King David, before there was a Temple, saying, “For I have not lived in a house since the day that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have moved around in a guest room and in a tabernacle” (2 Sam 7:6).
So to have no room on the night of His birth was not a surprise. To have no peace and silence, was par for the course. To have no bedsheets of silk, servants waiting, or trumpet sound was exactly as He wanted it, because the peace He wanted was the peace He was going to create and none other.
This is why the Jews cannot believe that God can be man,
asking Him on Good Friday if He is the Son of God in unbelief. This is why none
of the Apostles want Him to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. Everyone wants
the manger, no one wants the cross.
Jesus says follow me. He says “If anyone would come after
me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24). He
promised to lead way back in Exodus 15:13 saying, “You, in your loving
kindness, have led the people that you have redeemed. You have guided them in
your strength to your holy guest room.”!!
God leads because our sin has caused the world to become a
desert, a waste place of sin and death. Yet the promise remains. In Jeremiah
33:12 He says, “Thus says Yahweh of Armies: Yet again shall there be in this
place, which is waste, without man and without animal, and in all its cities, a
guest room of shepherds causing their flocks to lie down.”
And He leads us to His manger, He moves on to His cross,
going forward to Easter, and preparing an eternal guest room where He will eat
the Passover meal with us forever, because He has invaded this life and brought
us peace with God.
By God focusing on one small St. Joseph in one small Bethlehem, He makes it bigger than the entire world. By focusing on us in our sin and in our lives, He makes us bigger and more important. Important enough to be seated next to His only Begotten Son, not just at His manger, but at His Wedding Feast forever.
Having babies, feasting, and gathering is a part of “regular life” and God gives us blessings there. But in them He hides His Kingdom which contains blessings forever more, not just one night a year. We do not have a regular life and a church life. They are one and the same, uniquely linked, because Christ has come in the flesh to our lives and not a different dimension or something.
So we should embrace these vocations we have been given,
have confidence that though they involve hardship they are where the Lord wants
us, and seek to deepen our understanding of Jesus from the point of, what we
will now call Liturgical Life. A combining of regular life and church life in
one Jesus.
This liturgical life brings heaven down to us, indeed it is
already among us as Jesus completed that job for us. He brought the entire
Kingdom down to His Christmas celebration. Bethlehem was awkward because it
wasn’t able to handle infinity in its streets. The angels were out of their
element, having to sing their heavenly songs in front of God who was now not in
heaven.
The Guest Room, where Christ was born, now had to be bigger
than it had ability to be in order to house the Lord of all in swaddling
cloths. But none of this was their responsibility. It was the Lord Who made it
so the vulgar could carry the holy, the mean could carry the divine, the finite
could contain the infinite.
This is the Liturgical Life of Faith. The finite and
temporal things you are a part of are given infinitude because Jesus has united
Himself to you. Not just in the good, but in the bad especially. So as we
celebrate the new life in St. Mary’s son, we also celebrate the new life He
wins for us on the cross in Word and Sacrament, in our regular lives, in our
regular towns, on regular ole earth.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph 1)
Who speaks to us on this eve of His nativity, saying,
“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your
wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit”
Do not fear to take Mary as your wife? Is marriage really that scary? Don’t answer that. But really, people get married all the time and it is a party. In fact, Jesus’s first miracle and sign is done at a wedding where He turns water into wine. From this we are to take away more than “Jesus is a fun guy”. We are to see that God chooses to work out His great Salvation in the middle of insanity, in the very midst of regular life.
Yes. Though we like to sing Silent Night, this night was anything but. This is why I believe its important that we make a distinction. According to the Bible, Jesus Was Not Born in a Barn or Stable But a House. A house in the middle of hosting every one of their family members in town for the taxation, which is theft, and in town for the Feast which required a pilgrimage to the Temple.
Thus, the First Christmas was very much like your Christmas: chaos in the home. Only now someone is about to give birth, but there’s no room. We’ll make room in the storage next to where everyone feeds their animals they used to get here. The verse from St. Luke 2 goes, “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn” (v. 7).
The word translated as Inn is our culprit. We know it has to be more than an Inn, because its the same word Jesus uses in St. Luke 22:11 saying, “Tell the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’” Guest Room there is our word and now we know that we are dealing with a house.
Why is this important? Just as it is important for the shepherds who were sent by angels, so is it important information for us. For we will use it to find Jesus. But we are not going to a palace, or a family changing room, or even a hospital.
We are going to barge into Sts. Joseph and Mary’s life.
Also, its not just finding “calm and peace” in the midst of chaos, either. That’s not what God means. He intends to create calm and peace in the midst of it. Though there are moments outside of our insanity we can find, peaceful-like, God chooses to work in the muck of our vocations and in the mire of our daily drudgery. In other words, the chaos is the calm we must strive towards.
This holy life that God creates on His earth is made up of our vocation. Not just our dream job or what we love doing, vocation consists of everything that we do or are a part of. It includes our jobs, but it more importantly includes being a father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, neighbor, employee, etc. Those “jobs” are a part of our vocations, in other words, they are the good works our heavenly Father prepared for us (Eph 2:10).
That is because it is in exactly those places where most, if not all, of our struggle and strife come from and most times, no matter how hard we struggle, it never goes away. On top of our own sin, it is the place where the devil does his worst. That is our cross to bear. But, since there is a cross there, there is also Christ.
When sin entered the world, it attempted to push God out and make no room for Jesus. Jesus said there was no place for Him in St. Matthew 8:20, for it was to the serpent that Eve and Adam turned to for comfort and authority. The Lord comments on this to King David, before there was a Temple, saying, “For I have not lived in a house since the day that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have moved around in a guest room and in a tabernacle” (2 Sam 7:6).
So to have no room on the night of His birth was not a surprise. To have no peace and silence, was par for the course. To have no bedsheets of silk, servants waiting, or trumpet sound was exactly as He wanted it, because the peace He wanted was the peace He was going to create and none other.
By God focusing on one small St. Joseph in one small Bethlehem, He makes it bigger than the entire world. By focusing on us in our sin and in our lives, He makes us bigger and more important. Important enough to be seated next to His only Begotten Son, not just at His manger, but at His Wedding Feast forever.
Having babies, feasting, and gathering is a part of “regular life” and God gives us blessings there. But in them He hides His Kingdom which contains blessings forever more, not just one night a year. We do not have a regular life and a church life. They are one and the same, uniquely linked, because Christ has come in the flesh to our lives and not a different dimension or something.
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