Luke 2:1-20
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own town to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid for see -I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
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In those days a decree went out to count all the people, to take a census, to make sure taxes were being properly collected, to keep track of who lived where, how concentrated was the Jewish population in which places, how many soldiers might be needed to keep the peace if the oppressed got it into their heads to protest how Rome was mistreating them. I know it's the way our Christmas story begins every year, but consider how often this year already we have heard history repeating itself, how many reminders of days some people still alive can remember: other times Jews were gathered together to be counted, even tattooed with numbers to keep track of them, or when Japanese Americans were taken from their homes to be collected all in one place so the rest of us could keep an eye on them, or the talk these days of creating a Muslim registry. Now the administration wants also to know who worked with Hilary Clinton on gender equality initiatives, and which scientists have studied and reported on climate change. Everybody gets counted, categorized, put into smaller and smaller boxes to be set against each other and controlled, so those in power can keep their power while the rest of us go hungry and blame each other.
And yes, it's political. We’re starting a story about Christmas with a story about taxes and government control. This, my friends, is the world into which Jesus was born. And this isn't a conspiracy theory, it’s how power corrupts and fights to hold onto privilege. The people aren’t the problem, the inequality, the fear, the anxiety, the constant fight for worthiness, that’s the problem. Our story of creation begins with God saying that we are very good, and the rest of the downhill fall is that we don’t believe it. God tells us again and again that we are good enough, that we belong, that we are connected and seen and remembered and heard, and on the large and small scale we continue to discount that word, to disregard that promise of faithfulness, to expect the worst of ourselves and each other, until we come to utterly despair of humanity’s goodness. Even if it’s not we ourselves who we can’t imagine being good enough, we do it to one another every time we let insults fly and injuries go untended. It’s like we’ve gotten it into our heads that there isn’t enough love to go around and so we have to fight one another and prove ourselves better in order to get a corner on the acceptance market.
What complete and utter cow crap that is! And it’s precisely literal cow crap that Jesus was born surrounded by when Mary gave birth in that stable. Whether it was a barn or a cave doesn’t really matter for the point that Jesus wasn’t born someplace high and lofty and comfortable, but right in the middle of the census, when his people were being closely watched for conspiracy and threats of terrorism. Jesus was an undocumented migrant, living in a place that was overcrowded and unwelcoming. Today he would probably be deported, harassed, his mother targeted for sexual harassment and his father shamed as an aging contract worker. This is the world we have made.
But, this is also the world he chose freely to enter and to live in. For ever time we decide this world isn’t good enough, God chooses to live in it. For every time we decide that somebody else, for reason of color, nationality, language, gender, religion, class, or whatever, isn’t good enough, God chooses freely to be made manifest in those very people we have put on the margins. For every time we look in the mirror or look back on our lives and decide that, for whatever reason, we ourselves are not good enough, God comes to us in the flesh to say that, yes, being human is in fact good enough. Not only good enough, but that first word about us at creation was that we are very good.
So this Christmas, we may have any number of emotions around the holiday itself, around the current political climate, around our own so-called successes and failures, but the point of this Christmas is God showing us in the very flesh and blood, sweat and tears, of Jesus, that being human is in fact just as good as being God. God put down all divine power to be human, after all, and that is what we celebrate today. We are good enough. God said so at the beginning, and still continues to say so today, and if we can’t take God’s word for it, God will come to earth in our own very flesh, and live and die just like the rest of us, to prove to us that, yes, indeed, being human is holy, being human is a miracle, being human is immeasurably enough.
Which is hard enough to hear for ourselves, let alone to remember when strangers and neighbors and family members are complete jerks to us, or when people we have been taught to hate and fear turn out to bleed just like we do - because God’s Word came to be flesh in the most human and vulnerable way possible, in the skin of someone who has been ridiculed and hunted from day one. Shepherds knew what that was like, so shepherds were among the first to recognize him. Will we recognize God in our own flesh? In that of our Muslim neighbors? Our black neighbors? Our female neighbors? What will that do to the world when we can recognize divinity in the very dirt from which we were made and to which we will return? When our eyes are opened to the holiness all around us and within us?
Come and worship the One who has chosen to live in and among you. He is coming, always coming, and he is already here.
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