Baby Jesus

Text: Luke 2:1-7
Other texts: Christmas Eve readings

There is usually no sermon preached on Christmas Eve at Faith. This is a short homily that opened the worship service.

It is tempting to embellish the story of the birth of Jesus. It is tempting to make more of it than it appears in the Bible. Which is not much. Luke’s Gospel contains an extensive story of Jesus’ birth, and in Luke the birth itself is given only two verses:

While they were [in Bethlehem], the time came for her to deliver her child. And 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.

But today is Christmas Eve, and what better time is there to give in to temptation? And the birth of any child—what better event to fire the imaginations of all people? The birth of a child seems a genuine miracle. How can any creature, let alone a human child, come into existence at all? How can those two cells that start it all up—even if one is from the Holy Spirit—how can they become the trillions of interacting, energetic, chaotic, coordinated sea of cells and chemicals that make a person? The mystery of God become human is matched by the mystery of humans becoming human.

And yet the birth—miraculous and full of extreme pain and joy as it must have been—is just a few verses, in the story of Jesus. And in the story of the lives of all of us.

We are about to hear eight readings that together tell the story of Christmas. The birth of Jesus is in the middle. The readings tell the particular cosmological story of the birth of God in the world. And they tell the wider story of what it is like to hope for a child, to know a child is coming, to have a child, to raise a child, to ponder the child’s future. The story is not so different from the story of your parents and you, or the story of you and your child.

Lutherans are adamant about the humanity of Jesus. One hundred percent God and one hundred percent human, we say. And so it is important that as we hear this story of the birth of Jesus, son of God, that we remember that it is exactly also the birth of Jesus, child of Joseph and Mary.

The Christmas Eve story starts with the prophets Isaiah and Micah. We live, as they say, in the world of darkness and light, of suffering and delight. There is a longing in us to renew the world. The yearning for a child is a incarnation of the hope we have that there is a future, one that is new and good. The longing in Isaiah is for a child, a wonderful counselor, a prince of peace, a restorer of the world. That longing is a grander version of what we hope for every child.

But then it becomes a particular child. The child you were, or are, or the child you have or hope to have. Mary, in the Gospel of Luke, hears that she will soon conceive. She is much perplexed, Luke reports. That is not a surprise. It is strange, in a way that is both urgent and nice, to think about giving birth. Our desire for the general future becomes more immediate, scary, and exciting.

Mary conceives. But before she gives birth, the family is dislocated because of events beyond their control. They leave their families of origin, and have to travel. Everything is a mess. They are poor, young, and in a strange place. There is no perfect time to have a baby. There is no perfect spot. Children are born every minute in this world into comfort and also into hardship. Jesus is born. There are no details. It is not any easy thing to come into the world. There is a lot of commotion. And then, if we are fortunate, relief and amazement and a quiet place—as for Jesus—for mother and child and father, too.

People are thrilled, Luke continues in his story. The shepherds come, like relatives from out of town to admire the baby. And, like relatives, off they go again. Already the tranquility of a new birth is replaced by expectations and requirements. Within eight days Jesus must be circumcised.

In the temple, though, a stranger named Simeon makes grand predictions. Why is it that a baby seems to be everybody’s business? He looks at Jesus, he picks him up—why do people feel they can do that—and praises him. But his predictions are ominous, too. In the Gospel of Matthew, the next to last reading, kings come to see the child. Is that weird? What are his parents to make of that?

The joy of being a parent is always mixed with wondering, with pondering as it says Mary does. What will happen now, what will happen next, what will happen in the years ahead? How will the world be and how will it be for my child? Mary and Joseph, for all the premonitions and announcements and auguries, cannot know what will happen to their son. They cannot predict what will happen to him, both the grand and the gruesome. And who would want to know for sure what will happen with our children? God will be with them, but the future is unwritten. And blessedly not ours to know.

It is time to celebrate the birth of Jesus who is the Messiah. Jesus Christ. We will have many occasions later to hear about his life, his ministry. About his miracles and teachings. And about his trial, and execution, and resurrection. And then can ponder the meaning of the Messiah, the divine son of God.

But now, tonight, we can remember that Jesus had human parents, lived in a family, had to learn to eat and walk and be potty trained and had conversations and get praised and scolded. Just like every other human child. All God, all human.