Christmas Eve

2008

When is Christmas?

Where is Christmas?

And will we see it when it comes?

The Flemish artist Pieter Breughel painted a scene titled “The Census in Bethlehem.” It is a busy picture, filled with people. Men and women are arriving in the town, many weighed down with heavy packs over their shoulders. In the background a crowd of people pushes, trying to get into a building that appears much too full already. In the foreground an even larger group presses up to desk where men and women are writing down names in a book and collecting money—no doubt these are the census takers.

In the middle of all of this—the crowd, the pushing and shoving, the exchanging of money—in the middle of all of this tumult, we see a man on foot followed by a woman riding on a donkey: Joseph and Mary arriving unnoticed in Bethlehem.

They are nearly lost in the crowd, simply minor characters in the drama going on around them. If we didn’t look closely, we would miss them entirely.

This picture shows us much about Luke’s attitude toward the birth of Jesus. As he tells it, this birth was an event that could easily have been missed.

Many more important people were living. Luke mentions Augustus, the emperor whom many hailed as a god. Even Quirinius, the governor of Syria, was far greater than some carpenter from Nazareth coming into town with his pregnant wife-to-be.

Many more important events were occurring. The emperor wanted to know how many subjects he had under his rule. A decree was issued. The people responded.

Given this setting, the birth of Jesus could easily have gone unnoticed. And, indeed, Luke mentions the actual birth only briefly, noting matter-of-factly that “While they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

Two parents, unnoticed in an overcrowded village, alone with their infant son.

And that was that.

Or was it?

For Luke, this baby in a manger is more important than Augustus, more important than Quirinius, more important than the census. This baby in a manger is so crucial to the life of the world, that Luke mentions the manger two more times in his story.

Angels announce: “To you is born this day . . . a Savior. This will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

Savior.

Frederick Buechner says “The word means just what it says. If you’re pulled out of water over your head, if someone drags you from a burning building, if you discover that life—your life—has a deeper meaning and greater value than you could ever create yourself, chances are you’ve found a savior.”

The angels said this baby in a manger was a “sign,” that is, this child, this manger pointed to something greater. The baby Jesus points to God’s saving love—a love that pulls us out of the deep waters and burning buildings and pointless lives we all too often find ourselves caught in.

Luke then tells us that the shepherds arrive and find this infant “lying in a manger.” There in the place you’d least expect it, the people that you’d least expect to find it, discovered the sign they’d been told about. It was enough to send them out rejoicing and praising God.

And that was that.

Or was it?

There’s something curious about Brueghel’s painting of the “Census in Bethlehem.” The scene doesn’t look at all like Bethlehem. The painting shows oak trees, bare in the winter cold, snow on the ground, children playing games on an ice covered pond. And everyone is dressed, not in caftans or tunics, but in the garb of 16^th century European peasants.

It looks as if Jesus is soon to be born in Brussels instead of Bethlehem.

So it is with many paintings of the nativity. In most, the shepherds, the magi, Mary and Joseph all seem to be contemporary. They are dressed in the styles of the times and place in which the works were painted. Look and you will find Jesus, Mary, and Joseph portrayed as Africans, as Asians, as Eskimos, even as white Europeans—not as first century Palestinian Jews.

The birth of Jesus has been set in a truck stop, at a coal mine, and in a refugee camp. The poem “Midnight Shift” tells it this way:

There were these people, see,

working in a factory

on the night shift

along in December.

During their coffee break

one of them strolled outside

to see the stars

and then came running back

and interrupted

the indifferent conversation.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” she said,

“but someone in a camper

just had a child.

There’s a lot of excitement

and the ambulance is coming.

If you want to see the baby

you’ll have to hurry.

They’ll be taking him

and his mother

to the hospital.”

Several of them rushed out with her.

The others went on talking

and one of them said,

“Nothing interesting

ever happens

around here.”

Now, I have to admit that I used to not like that kind of poetry or the kind of paintings I’ve described. They bothered the “realist” in me, the person who wants to see things as they are—or as they were. The birth of Jesus occurred nearly two thousand years ago.

Let’s show it like that. Let’s talk of it like that.

But Luke doesn’t allow for this kind of narrow “realism” any more than poets and painters do. The whole point of Luke’s gospel, after all, is that across the centuries, beyond the cross, beyond the grave, Christ still comes to us. Christ still comes to us, where we are, interrupting our indifferent conversations, our indifferent lives. Christ still comes to us and is born anew in each of us as we receive the same good news that the shepherds first heard.

On Christmas Eve we are often urged to put aside our cares and concerns and “come away to Bethlehem.” Luke, however, brings us the astonishing message that Bethlehem comes to us, in the middle of our cares and concerns.

In the midst of our worries over the failing health of a loved one or the failing economy, Bethlehem comes to us.

In the midst of our frustration over work or anxieties over school, Bethlehem comes to us.

In the midst of our severe self-criticism, in the midst of our anger toward others—or their anger toward us, Bethlehem comes to us.

In other words, what we celebrate at Christmas is more than an event that happened centuries ago. Yes, there was a birth. Yes, the shepherds came and went. But that was not that.

We hear the angels proclaim, “Christ is born in Bethlehem.”

We echo in reply, “Christ is born in Iowa City.”

With the words of the carol, we pray: “O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend on us we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in. Be born in us today.” Throughout time and in this place on this night God consents to do just that.

Each year, each day, we make new pictures of this birth as God comes to us—creative, imaginative ways of showing the small and silent ways that God’s love works in our lives. The setting might be a family dinner table, an office, a classroom. It might be the Crisis Center or Rockwood Hall being used to shelter men and women and children without homes. Almost unnoticed at first, the light of Christ begins to shine along the city streets and down the roads in our neighborhoods.

May the birth that we celebrate be one that is repeated again and again within our hearts, our lives, and our world. May God give us the eyes to see what the world ignores—the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, Christ is born this day.