Christmas 2023
I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sometimes we read the Christmas story, and it almost seems like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? We’ve got shepherds in a faraway place keeping their flocks safe in the fields. Supernatural angels announcing Jesus’ birth. That birth happening in the strangest of settings – a place where animals are housed. And the shepherds’ departure from the scene that often conjures up a sense of happily ever after. But I think that with all the retellings of the story, and the ways we often romanticize it, we sometimes lose sight of the Good News it brings. So I want us to be thinking this evening about the two kings in this story, the different kinds of Good News they bring, and how we might respond.
The first king named in this story is the Emperor Octavian. His subjects acclaim him not just as the emperor, but as a god – giving him divine titles like “Savior” and “Lord”. They take their cue from Octavian, who has labeled himself “Augustus” – Latin for “most revered”. He often sent his heralds out to proclaim the good news his actions created, and he was praised throughout the empire as a bringer of peace. But the good news the emperor’s heralds usually brought was that this so-called god had won another military victory. It was the good news of peace brought about through force, and death, and destruction. A peace maintained by oppression. This was good news that was only good if you happened to be on the winning side.
The second king in this story comes with a very different kind of Good News. We know right off the bat it’s different because these heralds aren’t soldiers or Roman messengers bringing good news to Bethlehem’s rich and powerful. The people who benefitted most from Octavian’s kind of good news. Instead, these heralds are angels who bring Good News to some shepherds outside Bethlehem. Now, this is important. In the first century, shepherds weren’t associated with virtuous or heroic figures like Moses or King David. They were scorned – especially by the elites – as shiftless, dishonest people who grazed their flocks on other peoples’ lands. Their work kept them from taking part in worship and other religious activities. In many ways, shepherds were outsiders.
After announcing the Good News that the Messiah – the Savior of the world – has been born, the angels disappear. Now, the shepherds could have done a lot of things after hearing this news. They could have ignored it. They could have run away and hidden in fright. But – even though the angels don’t tell them to do anything – these shepherds decide that their response to hearing this Good News is to go and see this king for themselves.
But they don’t find anything like Caesar Augustus. The creator of the universe could have entered into human history in so many majestic and awesome ways. But what the shepherds find is a helpless newborn infant. Imagine that – God as a baby.
God slipped into the world not in a Roman palace, but inconspicuously into a small province at the edge of empire. Born not into wealth and nobility, but to an unwed young couple – to a mother who made the laughable claim that she’d been made pregnant by God. A king born as an outsider in a borrowed place and laid in an animal’s feeding trough. A king who was vulnerable in every way. There couldn’t be a bigger contrast between King Jesus and Emperor Augustus.
The way God chose to enter into human history shows us the truth about who God is and what God is about. The truth that God identifies with the powerless, the oppressed, the poor, and the homeless. The truth God’s love isn’t a reward for the righteous, but a balm for all who are broken.
Our world is full these days of stories of human conflict and violence. Many of us know this deeply, as we experience it in our own lives. It’s Augustus’ kind of good news, the kind that makes the world feel like a heavy place. So we need the Good News that Christmas brings. Good News that isn’t a fairy tale, but is unquestionably, 100% real. And like the shepherds, we can’t just hear this Good News. We have to respond to it. To go and see it for ourselves. To experience it in our own lives.
So here’s the Good News of Christmas. The God who created the universe and everything in it loves and embraces and accepts you so entirely and so deeply – whether you’re the ultimate insider or always standing outside the circle looking in – that God entered into time to be with us as one of us. God’s presence isn’t in the brash and brazen displays of power that Caesar Augustus might claim as Good News. Instead – in coming to us as a poor, powerless newborn infant – God’s vulnerability and softness speaks more loudly than any Caesar ever can. And when that vulnerability and softness breaks into our own lives, our choice to respond soaks us in the springs of God’s abundant love. We can choose to be like the shepherds, who went forth rejoicing from the manger knowing they were loved by the God who works tirelessly for reconciliation and justice.
The joy and celebration we find when we experience that love, my friends, marks the true peace that comes only from the true king.
Merry Christmas. Amen.