Sermon - December 24, 2023 - The Rev. Jack Alvey

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight

and reward our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Well I bet Santa Claus wasn't the only one who spent the month of December making a list

and checking it twice. I'm sure your children have checked their Christmas lists more than

once or twice this year. If yours are anything like mine then they probably revised about

five times by now. I really hope Santa Claus got the right list. Make for an interesting

warning. The adults in the room have been busy making lists to all the people they need

to remember to buy gifts for. Mom, dad, brother, sister, grandma, grandpa, dog, cat, hamster,

in-law, neighbor, co-worker, teachers, their angel tree kid. Who am I forgetting?

In the days leading up to the first Christmas and the Nativity of our Lord, Emperor Augustus

wants to make a list of his own. Jesus' parents along with the whole world, the scripture

says, are instructed by the emperor to make sure their name is on a census list. The emperor

wants to count the whole world so that he knows how many people he can tax to fund a

growing military budget. This registration was taking place when Mary is very pregnant,

probably her third trimester. And unfortunately the Roman Empire doesn't take a doctor's

note for pregnant or nursing women. So despite the inconvenience, Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem,

to the city of David, where the prophesied Messiah is to be born. So think about that.

So even as this census is inconvenient for Mary and Joseph, even as it is evidence of

an oppressive Roman government, God still manages to use it for his own purposes to

accomplish salvation on earth. The census gets Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the birthplace

of the much anticipated Messiah. This move emphasizes the Judeo-Christian belief that

there is nothing, there is nothing outside of God's reach. God is sovereign. God can

turn our biggest messes into something beyond our wildest dreams, a truth that is fully

revealed and completed in Jesus. As the story of Jesus' birth moves forward, we learn that

there are things outside the reach of even the Roman Empire. There are things in this

world that even the mightiest can't control. Jesus is born outside the reach of the census

workers. He isn't born in a hospital. He doesn't receive a birth certificate. Jesus, the Son

of Man, the Son of God, doesn't appear on any official list. Now for us, that should

tell us that even the worst kind of evil in this world is finite and temporary and can

only extend so far. It will come to an end no matter how horrific. Whereas there isn't

any part of this world where God's love cannot reach and redeem. The announcement of Jesus'

birth is made by a heavenly host. The Greek actually says a heavenly army. And this army

isn't armed with a sword or a spear, but with the good news of a Savior. The news of

a Savior that promises to bring peace to a war-torn planet. Not by the threat of military

force, but by the promise of love. The news of the Savior is presented to a group of shepherds

whose job it is to count sheep and hopefully not fall asleep. Like the Savior of the world,

they too are undocumented, unregistered. They too are outside the reach of the empire. God

enters this world on the outskirts of town when nobody's looking. Likewise, that's how

God often enters our own lives, isn't it? In the shadows, in the places we least expect

to find God. God in Christ, however, does not intend to remain in the shadows. Eventually,

Christ the King will take his place on his heavenly throne, where he will reign over

all the earth forever and ever. And now the church celebrates this Christ the King on

the last Sunday of the church year, which is Thanksgiving, so don't worry. We have almost

a year. We have almost a year to learn and accept this newborn King as the ruler and

the Savior of our lives. We have almost a year to experience this Christ through the

Word and sacrament as administered through the church. Now keeping this in mind, it makes

sense to celebrate Christmas on the heels of the winter solstice. Christmas in the northern

hemisphere, after all, coincides with the gradual return of light to the world. Believe

it or not, the days are actually starting to get longer again, all the way until mid-June.

Now imagine how disorienting it would be if you woke up tomorrow, and it wasn't Christmas

Day, but June 21st. One, you might think about it this way. You're at a movie theater, it's

the middle of the day, and you come out and the sun is shining brightly. It'll blind you,

right? When you've been sitting in the darkness for so long and you come out to light, it

will blind you. As attested to in the Old Testament, no one can see the face of God

and live. God's truth is too powerful to absorb all at once. Before His death, Jesus says

to His disciples, there are certain things you still can't bear to hear, but I'm going

to send you the Holy Spirit and He's going to guide you into all truth. You are going

to grow into the truth. So unless you're like St. Paul, most of us don't meet God when we

are blinded by the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. For most of us, our relationship

with God and the truth that God is revealing starts in a manger in the little town of Bethlehem.

It starts with a baby. So in a very real way, this encounter with God in a manger is an

invitation to grow up with God. Our relationship with God doesn't start off with a full-fledged

commitment to follow Him as our Lord and Savior, but it starts with a kind of a genuine curiosity,

that curiosity that led the shepherds to leave their flocks to go to that stable that first

Christmas night. Now as we grow up with God, we develop a relationship with God. And as

we develop a relationship with God, we grow to learn about what God hopes for and what

God dreams. And the more we learn about God's hopes and dreams, the more we want to help

God achieve these hopes and dreams. Now the clearest picture that I can think of about

God's hopes and dreams are captured best in Jesus' be attitudes. In the be attitudes,

Jesus makes a list. Jesus makes a list of those who are blessed in God's eyes. And on

this list, He counts those most of us would likely not call blessed, those who most of

our earthly censuses will call estimates, right? Through the listing of the be attitudes,

we learn that God wants to create space in this world for the weak and the vulnerable

forgotten to be loved and valued and celebrated. And when this happens, God says the kingdom

of heaven will be there. And this heavenly kingdom will threaten the existence of our

earthly kingdoms, not by the announcement of a military force, but by the announcement

of another more powerful force, the force of love. A love that is born in the face of

a child who has no home except a manger, a child who will make a home for us through

his own body that is broken for the sins of the world. Like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve,

Jesus is tiptoeing into the world and into our homes unnoticed and undetected by pretty

much everyone except those whom this world too easily forgets, the ones who will be first

in the kingdom of heaven. Now it's not that Jesus is hiding from the rest of us. It's

just that the rest of us have so much going on that we hardly notice His presence. We

have so much on our plates, so much on our to-do lists that when Jesus does show up,

we might not see Him. Now it would be tempting to start to make room for Jesus in your life

by starting to take things off your plate that don't fit. From a practical and theological

point of view, I'm not sure this is going to work. God is the one who initiates our

salvation, not us. Think about it like this instead. Imagine God hands you a baby tonight

and says, take care of this child, feed this child, clean this child, make sure this child

is breathing, make sure this child is alive. I guarantee you the other things that you

thought were important on your list will fall off, right? Your life will be radically reoriented

in a way that you could never have predicted or planned when God hands you a baby. Many

are told that they will never get around to having children if they keep waiting to get

their life in order, their finances in order. Likewise, we will never get around to making

make Jesus fit into our lives if we keep on waiting for the stars to align. You're never

going to get done with the housework. You're never going to get done with all the projects.

You're never going to have to stop going to the grocery store or the doctor or doing the

laundry or spending time with family and friends. These things are always going to be on your

list. So it's simply not about making room for Jesus right beside the grocery store visit

in the gym. It's about prioritizing Jesus so that everything on your list is ordered

by your relationship with him so that all of your life, all of your words, all of your

actions, all of your decisions are the result of knowing him. On Christmas, God is making

room for us to have a relationship with him by giving us the gift of himself as a baby.

Christ, the newborn King. There's no place low enough, off the beaten path far enough

where God can't find us and draw us to himself. The shepherds were the first to know. So

as you hear again or maybe for the first time the good news of salvation, I pray that you

may be moved with the same kind of curiosity that moved the shepherds to leave their flocks,

to leave their lists to the manger on that first Christmas night. I pray that this curiosity

gives you the grace to let go of some of the things that are preventing you from knowing

God, from preventing you from knowing the God who wants to know, who so much wants to

know you, a God who prioritizes you. Unlike the emperors of this world, you are not just

another number or constituent to God. Isaiah says, God has called you by name, you are

mine. A truth extended to the whole world in Jesus. God wants to know you so that you

may become a part of God's force of love that is saving the world. A love born in Bethlehem,

a love born in Christ, the newborn King. Amen.