Luke 2:8-20

"Christmas is for children." "Christmas is a family time." How often we hear words like that, expressing, at least for many, what is held to be the very heart of Christmas: a holiday filled with joy and laughter, when a fresh covering of snow hides all that is ugly in the world, when a fat, jolly old elf brings presents to good boys and girls, when all the rancor and discord of the past are, at least for a while, overcome, and peace reigns.

All of this finds its origin in the Babe of Bethlehem - the tiny Prince of Peace, born in the stable. A stable - yes - but certainly more than just a stable, in our mind's eye - because there, amidst well-groomed animals and the soft hay, kneel a young man and his wife, in adoration of the new-born babe, while outside shepherds wait attentively, a star shines overhead, and angels sing soft lullabies to the child, asleep in the manger.

We like that romantic little vision of Christmas. Each year we strive to, somehow, fulfill it in our own life - by bringing in family and friends, by decorating the tree and house, by singing Christmas carols and setting up crèches - all of the nice things we do to remind ourselves of this romantic notion of Christmas. Yet somehow, Christmas rarely lives up to those notions. And for many, Christmas is a time of loneliness and despair, a time when loss is felt more deeply. Rather than a time of beauty and light, it is a time of sadness and darkness.

The prophet, Isaiah wrote, "the people who lived in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in the shadow of darkness, on them has light shined." He was speaking to a people who had lost their national hope, whose lives were destroyed - a vanquished people, a people without hope. It is to those who are lost and without hope that he shares this Gospel, this good news of peace.

The Christmas story, itself, is woven of the same fabric as Isaiah's prophecy. The stable wasn't the lovely setting found on Christmas cards, but more likely a damp, dark cave, located down the hillside from Bethlehem. It was a place where sheep were often penned when the weather was cold, and with all the visitors to Bethlehem, it was full of sweaty, smelly animals, with animal dung on the floor and flies buzzing around - a fine place for the Son of God to be born! Mary was a young teen, with no experience in such things as these and, no doubt, had to rely on her older husband-to-be, Joseph, according to tradition, a widower, someone who knew something of loss and hardship. The shepherds who came to see them knew of the place where the family was staying, because they often used the place themselves. Shepherding was considered the lowest of all jobs - usually one given to children and those who couldn't do anything else. According to law, they were considered so low and untrustworthy that they were not allowed to testify in a trial. It was to these that the angels revealed this amazing story of his love.

It is a story, as one pastor put it, where all of the elements of the story fit together, from the lowly birth to the crucifixion - the manger and the cross are of the same wood. It's a sad, but not uncommon story, so it fits in with our stories as well. Like Joseph and Mary, we too are sometimes on the outskirts of life, wondering how we will make it; like Mary and Joseph, those times, like Christmas, when we had hoped to have peace, and joy - those times when we had hoped to catch a glimpse of heaven - we instead find full of sadness and care. A baby is born - supposedly the occasion for the greatest celebration. But now their joy is gone - they have to take a hard journey with her ready to deliver. They can find no accommodations. They are forced to stay with beasts; Mary is forced to give birth in an unsanitary stable. And soon they will have to flee for their lives - they will become undocumented aliens in a foreign land, to escape the wrath of Herod. That is the Christmas story.

Yet in it there is the Gospel, the good news of God's grace and love. It is like a two-part score. While, on the bottom cleft, the on-going misery of the human race is played out, with all of the political shenanigans, the economic struggles, the hardness of human hearts, the brokenness of supposedly joyful moments, the hopes of the human heart that never seem to come to full fruition - above all of this, in the upper register, the angels sing, a bright star shows the nations the way to the cradle-side, and God completes His perfect will.

That is the promise of Christmas. Not that God will throw a white blanket of snow over all the world to hide its ugliness for a moment from our eyes. The snow will come and go in a few moments, like the holiday season itself. And if we depend on these passing things to give us the "feeling of Christmas," then that feeling will leave along with the season. But God has done a new thing here. He has sent his Son, precisely into the ugliest, loneliest, most terrifying places of life to save us. God didn't send him into a nice, cozy picture-book stable, but into the stable where we live. It's there, amidst the confusion, the muck and mire of daily life,

Christmas isn't for children. Not the real Christmas. Christmas is about God being there for us, when we need him the most. Christmas is about hope in the midst of the most difficult times of life. It's about Christ coming, not when things look good - when everything is nice, and pretty, and convenient - but rather when we are at our lowest, and when our need is greatest.

We can put up a few decorations and tinsel, and sing a few carols and call it "Christmas." That's what the rest of the world does. It gets to be a little nerve-fraying at times, but it's not too hard, and it's convenient - in a week we can take it all down again and we're done with it for another year. Or we can take up the call of Christmas, to incarnate Christ among us - to give Christ lavishly and expensively to one another. We can be the holy family, embracing one another, caring for one another, supporting one another; we can be the shepherds, waiting in joyous anticipation, holding one another's dreams with anxious expectation; we can be the angels, messengers of God's love and salvation - we can be the whole nativity in a nutshell, retelling the Christmas story within ours, expressing God's love and peace even within a dark and seemingly hopeless world. We can bring the two clefts - the lower one with its miserable circumstances, and the upper one, with the angels' song, into a perfect harmonization, a heavenly melody, expressing God's love for his world through human hearts - our hearts, and through human hands - our hands.

As we go away tonight, may we take Christmas in our heart. May we go with the realization that those whom we love are also in God's hands, that his love does not let them go. May we go with the realization also that we are in his hands, and in his heart. May we go, not with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads, but with the Babe of Bethlehem in our heart. And as God gave himself so extravagantly and costly to us, so let us also give ourselves to one another and to those around us. Then we shall have, indeed, a merry Christmas.