First Sunday of Christmas 31 Dec 2023
First Sunday of Christmas
0800 and 1100
Luke 2.15-21
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Christmas continues for us today with our gospel reading from Luke 2 verses 15 -21. The Church of England here makes different provision from the rest of the world following the revised common lectionary, who get the succeeding verses: 22-40 – the passage in which Jesus is brought to the temple and encounters Simeon and Anna. We don’t get that until the Feast of the presentation or Candlemas on Feb 2nd but get there, we will.
For now, we seem to be still in the middle of that first Christmas night after Jesus was born. The angels have delivered their message of glory and peace and told the shepherds that this child would be a ‘sign’. Signs were not just things mentioned in John’s gospel, but this was the supreme sign of all signs, the birth of Jesus himself, the incarnation of the Son of God. Our passage this morning starts with the shepherds’ response to the angels’ news.
Remember these were people regarded as mangy, smelly, dirty and unclean in religious terms because they handled animals, but the good news was announced to them first. We tend to consider shepherding as a solitary occupation – all of our imagery is of a lone shepherd, and yet here we seem to have a group, a community of shepherds, perhaps working together, supporting one another. And they responded eagerly, without question, and without hesitation and they set out together, as instructed, to go to Bethlehem to seek out the holy family for themselves.
Luke, however, then refers to Jesus not as a baby but a child. It may be that this was not quite so soon after his birth as we tend to imagine. It is there in Luke’s timeline, but we know that Luke wasn’t always quite accurate in his timings.
So, the shepherds went to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph and for the third time, in this chapter, we were told Jesus was lying in a manger – an animal feeding trough. At once, this image both emphasises the humble circumstances into which Jesus was born, but at the same time the idea that he would in some sense feed the world, and feed it with himself. At the end of his ministry, Jesus invited his disciples to eat and drink in remembrance of him, in another inn. He had gone from being born and laid in a feeding trough to being the food with which people would participate in his values, in his spiritual life, and in his mission. He was and is the food the world badly needed and still needs.
The shepherds made known to Mary and Joseph what had been told them by the angels – that he was the Saviour, the Messiah, that God was glorified by him, and that he was to bring peace and goodwill among people. He was and is the peace and goodwill the world badly needed and still needs.
And then we were told that all who heard it were amazed but no mention here of Joseph, only Mary, and we were told that she treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. As before, she listened, she reflected, and she responded and in that she is the model believer, the model for us, to listen, ponder, reflect, and then to respond and believe. This is her actually in the process of coming to faith – faith in her own Son. For us, the reading then ends there but the narrative moves to the temple.
So, today we have the examples of Mary, and the shepherds to ponder and consider as we think not so much about the romantic idealised, usually Victorian, understanding of the events around the incarnation as much as the meaning of this holy birth in our own time and for us – its relevance not just for believers but for all. It is a challenge, though, for the world to understand.
In theological terms, we have the birth of the Son of God, which should seem impossible, ridiculous. The notion that God would intervene in human history at a particular moment, and more in a human person and that this person would be born as a baby and grow up in the world is at least bizarre. It is sometimes referred to as ‘the scandal of particularity’. But love is like that. It is always particular; so, it is this person, in this place, this mother, this stable, these shepherds, this baby, and this moment which are what it is all about.
At the centre of it all is a baby – Jesus himself – the bringer of peace, the one on whom we should ponder and reflect, and the one who brings us himself as all the food needed by us and by the world but at the same time he calls us not to be passive recipients but active responders – responding as eagerly as did Mary and the shepherds and he invites us to be deliverers of the good news of hope for all to others. And we are compelled to consider what that might mean for us but also for those in places like Palestine, Ukraine, and Yemen, and in all places where people are suffering and struggling today.
So may the joy of the angels,
The gladness of the shepherds,
And the peace of the Christ child be ours,
this Christmastide and always. Amen.