"We know love by this"
Sermon – Advent 4, 2002
Readings: Luke 2:1-7, I John 3:11-17

I don’t know about you but I always enjoy this time of the year. I hardly get any sleep! The early light and warm mornings wake me up and remind me that there is still plenty to do – a bit more Christmas baking, some cards to write, presents to wrap, the house to clean. And those tasks are still there at the end of the day after the social engagements, school concerts, picnics with friends before they go off for holidays, Christmas parties; so there are not too many early nights for me. But it is a special time, when I seem to have the extra energy needed. A couple of weeks ago in our house we went to the top of the hall cupboard and took down the box marked "Christmas." We got out decorations, brought in the tree, hung up some baubles, found the star shaped cookie cutter, put out the coloured lights in the courtyard. It’s as if we unpack a few days of beauty and enchantment that will help us escape for a while. A fairy tale world of lights and angels and elves and presents and secret excitement. But then we turn on the radio or the TV and hear the news. Another fire has broken out. Farms are going broke. War is brewing. Children are still starving. Bombs are exploding. Even our beautiful Christmas celebrations can’t remove us from the reality of our world.

When Luke introduces the story at the basis of this Christmas time, he doesn’t begin with "once upon a time" or any other sentimental emotional phrase. Luke is not just telling any old story – he is telling (capital H) His-story – the record of the birth of Jesus Christ, the one who would be saviour of the world. So Luke’s story is set in the real world - he begins by referring to the political, military and economic events of the day. "In those days a decree when out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered". The reason for registration was so that taxes might be collected. This is the real world Luke is talking about. He goes on "this was the first registration, taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria". Palestine was occupied territory then too. The Roman Empire considered Palestine a part of Syria. The Roman Emperor sat on a throne like a god in far away Rome and ordered taxes to be collected in the province of Judea. This was the world Jesus was born into. And Luke is not alone in approaching the story via the real world. Matthew begins his Christmas story "In the time of King Herod". Everyone knew what sort of time that was. The time of a power-corrupted paranoid despot – one who thought nothing of violently disposing of new-born infants in response to a wild rumour that another king had been born. This part of the story isn’t often told at Christmas time – we would find it hard to stomach. It’s a bit too much like that real world that charity groups try to remind us of. The world where children on bony legs stare out of our TV sets with huge gaunt eyes, reminding us that despots still cause children to die in their thousands. But this was the world Jesus was born into.

The decorations and carols and trappings of Christmas can actually cause us to forget the message of Advent – that God came to the despised of the world and was only recognised by the ones everyone else ignored.

The Argentinean born evangelist and author Luis Palau tells a story of a wealthy family in South America who wanted their newborn baby baptised in their home which happened to be an enormous mansion. Dozens of guests were invited and it was an elaborate affair – the guests were invited to deposit their glamorous wraps on a bed in an upstairs room before being entertained lavishly. After a while the time came for the main purpose of their gathering – the baptism of the infant. But no one seemed to know where the child was. The nursemaid ran upstairs but returned with a look of panic – causing everyone to search frantically for the baby. Then someone recalled having seen the child asleep on a bed upstairs. And that was indeed where the baby was found - on a bed buried underneath a pile of coats, jackets and furs. The very object of the gathering had been forgotten, neglected and very nearly smothered.

((When I was young I was told not to refer to Christmas as "Xmas" – because that was crossing Christ out of Christmas. When I learned Greek I realised that the letter X – the Greek "CHI" – that this letter was often used in the early church as an abbreviation for "Christos" – the name Christ that begins with chi. So I don’t have a problem with using Xmas as an abbreviation - it still reminds me each time to focus on Christ. ))

Where is the child that is the reason for this season? When the wise men came searching for the newborn King they went to the palace first – but Jesus wasn’t where they expected to find him. They were looking for a ruler but found him amongst the servant class.

Think of the gospel stories again. As Luke tells it, Jesus’ parents were nobodies. They had no-one standing up for them against the authorities saying it was a bad time to be travelling. And when they got to their town of origin they were clearly not people with connections that would enable them to find a place to stay. They were homeless, left to sleep in the animal shelter.

And Matthew has a slightly different record but again Jesus and his parents belong to the marginalised of society. In Matthew’s recording of Herod’s reaction we hear that the family were forced to flee to a place of asylum – fortunately neighbouring Egypt was willing to take in this refugee family as they sought protection from the despotic regime and give them a place to stay until it was safe to return. So when we peel back the trimmings and remember the original stories of Christmas we see that the experience of the baby Jesus in the real world was in fact the experience of many of the poor and marginalised in our world – the homeless, the poverty-stricken, asylum seekers, those in danger of harm from despotic regimes. If Jesus came to our world today where would we find him? Probably not in the places we expect. Certainly not under our Christmas trees amongst our presents and tinsel. Possibly in a refugee detention centre on Vanuatu, or on the train station in Calcutta with the other homeless children, or out on a plain in famine-swept Africa, or working in a sweat shop in south east Asia. I wonder if we would recognise him. No wonder that the adult Jesus asked his followers to find God in such as these.

A poem entitled "The Work of Christmas" puts it this way:

You see the message of Advent and Christmas should not just affect our feelings. It should have an impact on our action in the real world. We have been focusing on the word "Love" today. It is easy to become sentimental, to be overwhelmed by the gratitude we feel for loved ones and expressions of love from our partner, our family, our friends. But when John talks about love in his letter it is not in romantic terms. He even launches straight into a discussion about Cain and murderers and death to show us what love is not. Of course love is not murder! But we don’t show our love just by not murdering! We show it by living as Jesus did. Many Christians could quote John 3:16, and that tells us about God’s love. But this morning we’ve read 1 John 3:16, which is equally as important a verse to understand the nature of love: 

 What does this mean practically? John points it out in the next verse – it is by helping any brother or sister who is in need. Love is much more than a feeling. It is the way the faithful followers of Christ live.

Another poet – an Australian whose simple words and line drawings so effectively capture the yearning for spiritual expression – is Michael Leunig. His small books of prayer have two prayers particularly focussed on Christmas. In one he states Christmas is a time to "give thanks for the lives of all prophets, teachers, healers and revolutionaries, living and dead, acclaimed or obscure, who have rebelled, worked and suffered for the cause of love and joy." It goes on to say that there is a part within each of us that is able to follow that example. The other Christmas prayer, with the same little person in the bathtub-on-legs type cradle under a star, says "Love is born/With a dark and troubled face/When hope is dead/In the most unlikely place/Love is born/Love is always born." Love is not an easy thing. It involves suffering and work as well as joy and hope. And yet it is the way we are called to live. Leunig’s first book of prayer ends with the sentences: "love one another and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. There is no other way." The message of the incarnation is just that – there was no other way for God to show love to us than by becoming one of us, living with us, loving us, dying for us, and rising again to give us hope.

When God came to this world it was with the message that the gift of love was for everyone. All the world responded to the decree of Caesar, and God was in that response. In the form of a child born to Mary and Joseph – two people who were part of that world. Matthew begins his whole gospel with a genealogy – a list of ancestors of Jesus. No doubt Matthew was trying to show his readers that Jesus was a person who had important ancestry – a descendent of David no less, the greatest king of Israel. And that he descended from prophets and priests. But also in that list were names for whom there are no stories in the bible – obscure nobodies. And also there are names connected with great scandal or even sin. Yes, Jesus was a descendent of prophets, priests and kings, but also in the blood line of nobodies, sinners and the scandalous. The gift of love was for everyone – for the whole world. We join the wise men and the shepherds, the angels and the homeless, the couple who were obedient citizens and yet surrounded by scandal; and later the disciples and prostitutes and tax collectors and sinners and children and diseased and tradespeople and evangelists as we come to listen again to His-story, the story of Advent and Christmas. It is part of the story of our real world. In our world, like in Luke’s world, superpowers control the destinies of ordinary people and impact their lives with political, military and economic decisions. In our world, like in Matthew’s world, despotic rulers threaten the well-being of families and children and force millions to flee as refugees. In our world, like in John’s world, some have the world’s goods and see a brother or sister in need but have a choice whether or not to help.

Since the story of Jesus came into the real world our task as followers of Jesus is to respond to the victims of these situations. On Friday morning I was informed that a large group of Iraqi temporary protection visa holders had assembled at Parliament House to highlight the precariousness of their situation. Most are expecting to be returned to Iraq within a few months, and this coincides with our PM preparing us for likely war with Iraq in the near future! On Friday afternoon an email came through the JOH network alerting us to the plight of a single mother who was to be evicted for a second time this week and left homeless – so close to Christmas.

We have heard the Christmas story so often in recent days that we could probably quote it verbatim. But has it really impacted us? If this story is to live again and not just be packed up in a box at the end of the holidays and put back in the cupboard, then it must have relevance today also to the political, economic and military world. This is how we know what love is. Christ laid down his life for us. Let us love one another. May this ongoing living story of the coming of Jesus shape our lives and impact our real world today and in the year ahead. Amen.

Patrick Willson, "The Massacre of Innocence" – sermon in Pulpit Digest Jan/Feb 1999:65-72
Athol Gill, "The Genealogy of Jesus" quoted in Prophecy and Passion 2002:6-7

Rev. Jeanette Mathews 22/12/2002

Last updated: 22 December 2002