Expecting to Treasure the Despised

A sermon on Luke 2:1-20

For an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo: The Nativity by Gari Melchers

Throughout the season of Advent, our community here at Abiding Peace has been exploring of theme of how God’s revelation in the stories of Jesus and those who prepared the way for him can shape our holy expectations.

Jesus’s teaching about the unknowable-ness of what will happen on the final Day of the Lord, reminds us to expect to not be in control.

Whether it is anxiety whispering in our ear, or the desire to hurry along God’s restoring work in the world, it’s not our job to orchestrate events, but rather to stay alert to see what GOD is doing.

From John the Baptist we learned to expect repentance to be part of our healing.

Just like an injury requires the right diagnosis in order to know the right treatment, so too the brokenness in our lives and in the world needs to be recognized for what it is before healing can begin.

Joseph’s response to Mary’s pregnancy, and then to the angel’s instructions about what he should do about it, calls us to expect vulnerability in our life of faith.

We all have emotional instincts that hook us when we are faced with challenges, but the life of faith calls us to lean in when we feel most exposed, because that is what prepares us to welcome the Savior.

And, finally, last Sunday, the angel’s expectations for what God’s Messiah might look like, challenged us to always expect God to surprise us, because God can do so much more than we can imagine.

Together, these holy expectations call us out of our comfort zones;

they force us to examine our anxieties and self-protective instincts and to put our trust NOT in the defense mechanisms or patterns of thought and behavior that make us feel safe… and to instead put our trust in God’s way of doing things.

Tonight, we hear the story of God’s way of doing the most important of things.

A way that – for anyone not already in the know – is surprising, and also vulnerable, and refuses the path of control, and that, if we listen to its lesson, might just call us into repentance.

Because tonight’s story offers us one final lesson on holy expectations: it teaches us to expect to treasure what the world teaches us to despise.

To explain what I mean, I want to try to read this story as though through Mary’s eyes.

If she could have read Luke’s account, she probably would have recognized the formula of the opening verses:

The references to the Emperor and Governor were a way of marking time, placing the events in the context of those agents of authority who defined the progress of history.

It would not be shocking to have her family’s story introduced in this way.

But then there’s the decree…

Exercising control over all the world…

And the reference to Joseph’s heritage as a descendant of David….

This is about more than timestamping a story. It’s about a deliberate contrast.

David was Israel’s most highly esteemed king.

But now his descendants, including Mary’s little family, are subjects of an oppressive empire, that can issue commands spanning the whole known world and sweep up the young couple in a massive migration for the purpose of conducting a population count.

The juxtaposition of royal references feels intentional.

It rubs Mary’s nose in the reality that her family were just numbers in a census in the eyes of those with all the power.

It shows that those earthly kings would have sneered at the royal heritage in Jospeh’s family tree, if they had even known about it.

It emphasizes that the story that radically changed Mary’s life was supremely unimportant by all recognized measures of power and consequence.

But, then there’s the twist: those with power and consequence disappear almost as soon as they are mentioned in the story. It is Mary and her family whom the narrative follows.

Of course, following that narrative increases the tension for Mary.

Luke is less pointed in his storytelling here, but Mary could have filled in the blanks.

In fact, she might have questioned why Luke uses the passive voice to announce that “the time came” for her to give birth while they were in Bethlehem.

I’m sure that development did not feel passive to her.

 I’m sure she had calculated the weeks as soon as word came of the decree, and that her heart sank like a stone when she realized what it meant.

Because, naturally, she would have wanted to give birth to her first child surrounded by her female relatives, as every other birthing woman she knew would do.

She would have wanted the support of those who knew her and knew the process of birth.

But instead, she is in a strange town, without friends or familiar comforts.

The only private place she has available for this vulnerable and painful childbirth is a space meant for animals.

The child about whom she sang her exultant song of praise for God’s mighty acts of reversal was laid in a feeding trough… and the reversal must have felt upside down.

She gave birth to God’s son, but the King of heaven had less honor than most average peasant babies.  

I can’t help but wonder what doubts might have nudged at the edges of her exhausted awareness that night. If she wondered whether she had misunderstood, or done something wrong.

Because how could the birth of God’s son unfold under such circumstances?

Then, the shepherds arrive.

And I cannot believe Mary was excited to see them.

Set aside the physical depletion of a first-time mother in the late night hours after birth, and all of the loneliness and disappointment of the circumstances of that birth.

Set aside even the distastefulness of strangers crowding into a private space in a vulnerable and intimate moment.

If unknown visitors HAD to come, she almost certainly would have preferred that they not be shepherds… subsistence workers who lived outside the community, lacking access to sanitation, treated with suspicion and precluded for witnessing in legal disputes because their lack of social ties made them untrustworthy.

These were the people who noticed that something important had just happened?!

But the unexpected visitors bring exactly the news that Mary would have needed on that draining and confusing night.

Her son’s birth might have been treated as irrelevant by earthly powers, and have occurred in a context lacking honor and longed-for support, but it was celebrated by the heavens.

His humble bed was the sign of confirmation that his birth was the fulfillment of God’s promised Messiah – the Savior of all the world. Bringing Glory to heaven, and on earth PEACE.

All who heard the shepherds’ story were amazed, but Mary treasured all their words.

To treasure something is to recognize its value….

And in the context of this story, a story that confronts us over and over with status checks and allusions to the dishonor associated with Jesus’s birth… I think that word choice matters.

I think it’s a challenge to all who read this story to pay attention to what we treasure.

Do we accept as valid the decrees of those who wield power like divine right…

Or do we value the lives of the faceless, nameless ones whom they treat like numbers and pawns?

Do we attach honor to the circumstances of people’s lives as though it had any relevance to their human dignity…

Or do loneliness or suffering encourage us to draw near as equals to those in pain?

Do we give our trust to the voices at the center of power…

Or do we listen to those on the margins, who have so often been the ones to whom God reveals unexpected truth?

Do we respect and value only what we have been taught to esteem, or do we treasure what the world despises?

The story of Jesus’ birth shows us what God treasures.

God treasures all of humanity, but especially those who lack power and honor.

God treasures the experience of drawing near to us, even when that nearness means vulnerability, and pain, and dishonor.

God treasures the kind of peace that disarms suspicion and unites unexpected people in the chance to be part of God’s work.

If you are here tonight, I hope that means that you want to be part of God’s work as well. And I think part of that work is treasuring what God treasures.

Thanks be to God.