Sunday: The Feast of the Nativity
Reading: Luke 2:1-20
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

Be not afraid. We can find our Savior, our Messiah, our Lord. There is plenty in our world to be afraid of, no doubt, but being drawn up into glorifying God can give us new sight so that we see the good news of great joy for all people. That is the story Luke tells about the shepherds. The shepherds whose first response to the announcement of the coming of the unknown child is fear, but who after being taken up into the singing of the heavenly Gloria have new sight to find the child who is the hope of the world. The story we share with so many millions around the globe this evening invites us to mimic the shepherds, to allow our eyes to be opened to a world defined by an unnamed child, a child who brings joy to the world.

In Luke's account it really is the witness of the angels and the shepherds that is important. The newborn is excruciatingly ordinary. While a manger is a strange place for the savior to be born, Luke seems to purposely emphasize just how ordinary the birth really is. The birth pales in comparison to the pomp that begins our reading. The powerful Caesar has people all over the empire scurrying back to their ancestral homes because Caesar must know everyone. Then, in obvious contrast and without even giving him a name, Luke brings the savior into the story. "...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." As a veteran of one birth (observer obviously) and as someone whose wife is currently about as pregnant as Mary was this night many years ago, I can tell you that Luke undersells the birth. I want some details. How many hours was she in labor? Did Mary end up with an epidural? Luke gives us lots of information about the census: who the Caesar was, who the governor of Syria was, he mentions David's name twice in one sentence, gives us Joseph and Mary's itinerary... But all we learn about the birth is that it is a firstborn, a boy, and it happened in a stable. I am sure that it was not accidental that Luke gives us eleven proper names in the first paragraph but does not name the child. The child is really ordinary.

What is not ordinary is the interaction between the shepherds and the angels. Especially the angels' first words: "Do not be afraid." The ordinary child is against fear. Sure the appearance of heavenly beings must be scary, but the "Do not be afraid" that our author puts on the lips of the angels is so much broader than that initial surprise. Like us, Luke knows the whole story before writing the beginning and knows that the unnamed child will bring freedom from fear. I've been held up at gunpoint and have tried to follow my brother down mountain cliffs too steep to be skied (in my eyes, not his). But that is not the fear that is being wiped aside. I think it is the fear of God. It is so tempting to think of God as a cosmic Santa Claus, granting or denying our wishes. That kind of capricious God really is scary. I just saw Gershwin's Porgy and Bess for the first time and in it that kind of distant scary God is portrayed so beautifully. During a horrible hurricane, the town folk gather, crying to Jesus for their relatives out fishing. The fear is palpable and why not? One tough guy, Crown, takes the fear by the neck and bellows out "There's nothing God likes more than a scrap with a man," before charging out into the weather. Fear. But our God is not that distant dispassionate deity. Our God is excruciatingly ordinary. Our God is the small child who doesn't even come with a name. Our God is the one whose presence is announced with "do not be afraid." If Luke's angels could have dropped in on the fearful folk in Porgy and Bess, they might have told them that really it was the orphaned baby among them that most resembled God. Not just because it was a baby, but also because it was right there in the room with them. No need to fear God, God is in this mess with us.

If that is why we don't fear, because God is with us, what is the how? How can we not fear? What would give us the new sight to see joy amidst trouble? The angels from on high give the answer: the multitude of them join in praise of God-not entertaining the shepherds but drawing them into community and giving them new sight. "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!" The singing changed the shepherds. They became disposed towards joy. And their disposition when they went to find the savior was as important if not more important than the presence of the baby. The angels said, "This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." The heavenly singing of the Gloria did not frighten them-it emboldened them. "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see..." And seeing the child they made it known. With their new sight the power of Caesar and the power structures to define fades. With their new sight the unnamed one defines. The shepherds returned praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. What had been told to them defined their experience of seeing and hearing. Luke doesn't make much of the birth of the child. It is the reporting of the converted shepherds that Luke hails. This is how not to fear. Don't go searching for a baby, but in praise be converted. Be caught up in glorifying God so that you too will see and hear. With new sight, you will find the child.

God is not beyond the heavens so much as with us-not extraordinary as to elicit fear but ordinary to provoke joy. We can see that savior. We can sing "Angels we have heard on high" and "Joy to the world" and have our vision transformed. We can put fear aside. When the hurricanes come, we will not have to stand defiantly against God like Crown did but can respond like Mary with a quiet, calm presence. As she would tell us, "God hath filled the hungry with good things." She had been given new sight; her disposition was towards believing. She too had heard the angels sing, and therefore even thought caught up in the machinations of an imperial regime, she was not afraid.

So then perhaps the most appropriate response to the incarnation is to sing. Go caroling like our St. Nicholas Choir did and be a choir of angels. We don't know when adversity will come and so we should sing, for singing opens our eyes to see the savior. And when the savior is in view we can hear the angel's words, "Do not be afraid." "Do not be afraid." It is not the Roman emperor who defines reality. It is not Wall Street or the Federal Reserve; it is not the country with the deadliest arsenal, nor is it the most beautiful woman. It is not the guilt over long past transgressions, not the sadness over a dream not realized, not the devil of depression dogging your days. If we do not have to be afraid of God (and we don't), then we don't have to be afraid. The defining event of our world is the unremarkable birth of the firstborn son. In that manger so far outside of the realm of Caesar that it wasn't even in an inn came the event that can define our lives. That child can be the hope of the world. So we praise God: Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors! And in praising God we receive sight. With that sight we see the child and walk taller, laugh louder and longer, hug harder, cry less reservedly, risk boldly-all without fear.