Heavenly Army: Christmas

Christmas                                                                                 Luke 2: 1-20                              Christmas Eve is my least favorite time to preach…partly because there are no new takes on this story.  It’s a story we all know so well, in so many different forms.  Yet, I would guess, that there are some things we don’t know as well as we think we do.  I remember my first New Testament class in college. I thought it would be an easy class for me as I had been going to church and Sunday school (which was called CCD in the Catholic Church) every week for my whole life. The professor, probably understanding that some of us were a little overly confident, started with a series of questions that seemed obvious, but were not.  We got most of them wrong.  One he liked to ask was, how many magi were there?  Well?  Anyone?  We all said three but then he pointed out, it never says how many there were, just how many gifts there were.  And the magi don’t even appear in our reading from Luke. 

It is the Gospel of Matthew that has the Kings and the star.  In Luke, we have shepherds and the heavenly host, but no star, no kings.  Those poor shepherds had no star to follow.  The angels told them that the sign they were to look for was “a child wrapped in bands of cloth lying in a manger.”  Bethlehem was (and is) a fairly small town, but it wasn’t that small.  They had to do some searching. 

                Those shepherds were motivated.  An angel had spoken to them and informed them that the Messiah, the Lord, had been born.  It wasn’t just one angel, it was an angel with the multitude of the heavenly host.  Now, when we see this depicted in movies or art, it’s usually a very gentle and bucolic scene.  There is a soft light, maybe one to two angels who don’t look scary or intimidating.  But if that was the case why would it say that the shepherds were terrified?  And that was before the heavenly host showed up. 

Until I started preaching this text, I never considered what a heavenly host meant.  Perhaps a few angels with harps? The Greek word that is translated to host is army. This was heaven’s army, all there to deliver a message.  Ironically, it was a message of peace: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those who he favors.”

                It’s an interesting juxtaposition, an army delivering a message of peace.  God sent this army not to fight, but to tell a few powerless shepherds that the Messiah had come down in the form of a helpless baby.  Most of us have probably held a newborn baby at some point.  They are tiny.  They can’t even hold their head up.  That is how God decided to show up, not with the heavenly army that would have probably been a lot more impressive, but a baby dependent on two humans who also had little power.

                I understand the symbolism of God coming to earth as a human so God could have the experience of walking with us. But sometimes I wonder, why wasn’t God born to a great king or political leader? Then God would not have to sleep in an animal trough.  Jesus would have been protected and his message would have gone farther because important and influential people would have been listening.  Jesus would never had to die because he would have been related to the people in power.  It would have been so much easier.  Or…if you are not liking that idea, Jesus could have been born to the same parents in the same place, but that heavenly army could have stuck around…just in case.  That would have been a lot less risky.  No one would mess with the guy who had the heavenly army backing him up.

                God could have taken any of those options, but no.  God chose to be born like any other child, to parents who were good and holy, but not people with power or influence. I love that about God, but sometimes it also makes me crazy and frustrated.  There are days when I think, we could use a heavenly host right about now, to straighten things out around here.  God has yet to take this recommendation from me. 

                Most days, I feel powerless and a little overwhelmed.  Sometimes that makes me feel weak.  What if we could take our perceived weakness and understand it for what it actually is, vulnerability. The beauty of that vulnerability is that it is something that our creator and savior understands, because he experienced it—as a baby who couldn’t hold his head up, as a young child learning to speak, as a teenager struggling with all the crazy stuff that happens, as a young man who would be abandoned by his friends and then die a horrible death.  That death didn’t make Jesus weak (even though some chose to believe it and maybe still do).  That death allowed him to rise again.  Could he have called on the heavenly host to rescue him from that gruesome death? Yes. But once again, God chose the path that aligned Godself with the most powerless and dejected human beings.

                That is what we celebrate on Christmas, a God who displayed power not with might and armies, but with compassion and love.  Don’t get me wrong, Jesus did miraculous things in his time on earth, but it was never to control people or display his greatness…it was to heal people (their bodies and their souls).  Jesus didn’t defeat the tyranny of the Roman Empire.  If he wanted to do that, he would have brought the army.  Instead, he lived in a way that displayed humility and service.  He died in a way that showed courage and surrender.  He rose again not to bring vengeance on the people who abandoned him, but to forgive them and inspire them.   

                On Christmas, we can and should bask in the warmth of his glory, but also remember that God’s work is not yet done, not even close.   It is up to us, to do that work.