The Candle of Love
The most inspirational story I’ve heard this Christmas season is this: seven years ago, an eleven-year-old boy in Oklahoma started giving away donated toys; since then, he has distributed more than 64,000 toys, with the help of many people including the local 4-H clubs.
One of the national news networks featured that story in their nightly news program.
This young man, now 18 years old is one of many people are practicing the virtue of love: caring about others and takin g practical steps to stir up joy, meet needs, create safe spaces, and make a place for refugees of all kinds.
As we do so, we find in the story of Jesus and his birth inspiration for us to light the candle of love for our neighbors. In so doing, we want to become a bright light of love: the love of God as we know God through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the love of our neighbors, those close by and those far away.
So today we light the candle of love and celebrate the birth of Jesus.
I.
The stories of the birth of Jesus contain many strange and wonderous elements. Angels and magi, moving stars and mad rulers, visions and remarkable predictions, and a whole cast of no-name characters. The biblical material has gotten mixed up with modern fantasy, involving elves and trees, a jolly old man, and a train ride to the north pole. Christmas is now a mashup of so many things. But taken together, they constitute the largest, most universal annual celebration in the world.
What started out on the edge of human culture is now the most important event in the history of the world: the birth and life, the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the event by which we count all other events.
We don’t know exactly when Jesus was born, what year or month or day; but leaders of the Western World have used the day of his birth to number our days. Today is the year 2023; it has been about 2023 years since Jesus was born. That event separates everything into what went before and what has come since.
You wouldn’t know this from reading the Bible. Only Luke and Matthew mention the birth, and only briefly. Mark not at all, and John only indirectly. Does Paul or James or any other writing disciple even mention the birth? No, so it is very possible to be a true and devout disciple of Jesus without knowing a thing about his birth, without knowing how important that day, this day, tomorrow has become in world culture.
What began so simply has become so complex, so expensive, so expansive. “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and Mary gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”
II.
While the simplicity of the birth calls our attention, the substance of the story commands our behavior. Think about these elements of the story. One, the authorities are mentioned, both Caesar Augustus and Quirinius the governor. Then and now, the authorities matter; what they decide or dictate shapes our lives in powerful waves. Then it was the Roman Empire, now the American Empire; then an emperor, now a president. We live and breath and have our being in the shadow of the Empire.
The story is of the most common and joyful of all human events, the birth of a baby. Everywhere, on every continent, in every culture, and interpreted by every creed, the 2birth of a baby is the same. Then and now, it is the same. The details are the same and the celebration is the same. Then and now, it was a great joy to all the people: the birth of a baby.
And remember this: it happened to people away from home, in a place strange to all the actors. “She placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” Joseph neglected to make the hotel reservation I suppose. It was an odd place to Mary and Joseph, perhaps, but it fits nicely with the long history of God at work in the lives of people.
While pastor of a transplanted congregation in Pittsburgh, I began reading the Bible from the perspective of the person away from home. I discovered that every major of encounter with God described in the Bible happened away from home. Think of Abraham and his three encounters with God wherein God promised him a family and a future: all, far away from his home in Ur of the Chaldees. Think of Moses on the back side of the mountain, stunned to see the flame and hear the voice. Think of David fleeing Saul, or Jeremiah in exile, or Paul on the road to Damascus, or John in exile on Patmos. Maybe Isaiah is an outlier here, but again and again, God finds people open to the revelation when we are away from familiar things. So, it was on that night of nativity, so far from home, so alone.
It is these three things that make this whole narrative believable, relatable, powerful. All around the world, people are being displaced, are on the road, are away from home because of the decisions of leaders of the various empires. Some are wicked and their decrees are dangerous, so wars happen. Some are selfish and seem thoroughly insane, so people flee.
Like Mary and Joseph long ago, they have to interrupt their lives, take what they can, and start out. Maybe a census, maybe an invasion, maybe a government project like a dam, or maybe an emergency to evacuate because of a national disaster, like a flood, a volcano, or a fire. People by the millions become refugees.
The sad part of our Bible story is the couple had few people to help them. At the most critical time of life, there was no place, no person, no provisions but the most basic, the crude, the barely do-able. A manger, where the animals were stabled.
This story calls us not only to sing sweet songs—”Away in a Manager” is one of my favorites and I requested it be given prime spot in tonight’s service. But the real power of this story is not sweet songs and beautiful candles, but the call for you and me to help those away from home, on the road, desperate for somebody and something place.
How desperate must be a mother to take two preschool children and walk all the way from Venezuela to the Rio Grande? How dangerous must it be to motivate a modern-day Joseph to take his pregnant wife and walk from Costa Rica to El Paso? How daring must it be for children, 12, 14 years old, to leave behind parents and grandparents and start out on a 500-mile hike, hoping for somebody along the way to help them, feed them, and offer them a safe place to stay.
We are that somebody. We take inspiration from our Lord and his mother and father and make ourselves available to the refugees of the world. Some are refugees from war; some from families that reject them; some are refugees from a religion that judges them and condemns them; some are refugees from starvation and want. We, on the other hand, are innkeepers and shopkeepers, we are homeowners and house parents. We are those who can prevent the words ever being written again, “because there was no room for them anywhere.”
This week, I read of the urgent need for foster homes to care for children—children—who fled the atrocious conditions: children without Joseph and Mary, without mother or father or even siblings, children who are fleeing for their safety.
What does it mean to celebrate Christmas? It means to receive these refugees, including all the Marys trying to give a safe place to give birth. To love God and love our neighbor means to love these people, make a safe space, provide a simple meal, give them shelter and clothes and food. It means to receive them as if each one of them was and is the christ child. It means to counter the authorities, welcome the woman, and make a guest room for the baby.
III.
But underneath the culture Christianity that counts our days from the birth of Jesus, and underneath the ethical Christianity that commands us to welcome the stranger and feed the hungry, there is another religion, another spirituality, another Christianity. It is the one described in that wonderful carol that we will sing today,
“O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,
above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light,
the hope and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
That hymn ends with this prayer:
“O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today!
We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.”
Our Christmas gospel is also about you and me, and how Christ is born in us.
Years later, Jesus would put it this way, “You also, must be born anew. You must be born of the spirit.”
Today, we will say it this way, Jesus needs to be born in you, by faith. You, trusting in God, just as Mary and Joseph did. You, believing God just as Mary and Joseph did. You, opening your life to the purposes of God, just like Mary and Joseph did. You, obeying God, even starting a journey taking you somewhere yet unknown, just like Joseph and Mary. You, bending the knee, praying to God, saying, “I am a sinner in need of a savior. I am a wonderer in need of a direction. I am a seeker in need of finding that which will guide me, and direct me, and call me to a higher life. I am a person, in need of the One who loves me, who sent Jesus to show me the way, who raised Jesus from the dead. I am that one. That is what Christmas means to you today.
Yesterday, there were two NFL games. I watched the first one because it was Cincinniti Bengals playing in Pittsburgh. It was a terrific game, mostly because Pittsburgh won 34 to 11. Both teams were playing with backup quarterbacks. For Pittsburgh, that was Mason Rudolph. So, it was fitting that when the game ended, those controlling the sound system in some booth, played the song, “Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer.”
When that was over, the network newsperson interviewed mason Rudolph. The first thing out of his mouth were these words, “First I want to thank my creator and my Lord Jesus Christ who has helped me through the hard times.”
He was not talking about a ball game. He was talking about life, the hard times of life. He was testifying that underneath his skill and success as an athlete was a person in whom has been born Jesus Christ. Here is a person who had welcomed into his life the One who was born to be our savior. Here it can never be written, “there was no room in the inn.” There was room in his life. Is there room in your life?
