Christmas Eve – Luke 2:1-20
Luke 2:1-20
Heaven Joined to Earth
Christmas Eve – December 24, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The American astronaut Frank Borman had this to say about first viewing the Earth from Space:
The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me – a small disc 240,000 miles away. It was hard to think that that little thing held so many problems, so many frustrations. Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don’t show from that distance.
What they perceived from that distance was a tremendous, tremendous beauty.
As the astronauts got closer to Earth, though,
they could begin to see the signs of stress alongside the tremendous beauty:
melting ice caps, devastated rain forests, polluted lakes.
And then, closer down, you begin to see the details in cities:
pollution from factories, urban slums, industrial wastelands.
And then, of course, if you come right down, and land on the ground,
you see the things that truly don’t show from space:
Domestic difficulty, financial struggle, hunger, poverty, illness, injustice, and
a thousand kinds of heartache.
You see life in Newton, Connecticut, its families, its funerals.
You get down and see life on Victor Street, with all its joys and all its sorrows.
And you wonder: how long, Lord?
How long till heaven comes to earth?
But then, right on Victor Street, on a cold winter’s night, you hear this:
To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
This is good news. A saviour has come!
How clear it is that our world needs saving.
And how clearly it needs a saviour.
The events in Newton Connecticut have impressed that upon us very clearly in the last 10 days,
but we all know that that single event stands for many in our world.
But still we wonder: How long till heaven comes to earth?
When I was a child, Christmas was filled with a special wonder.
The wonder seems to diminish over the years, although it never entirely goes.
It helps to have children of one’s own, I suppose.
But I was speaking with a couple of our older members last week whose children are now grown,
and they said to me:
We didn’t put much of our Christmas stuff out this year. Christmas, really, is for children.
And many of us know what they mean.
This year, though, I have really come to literally believe that that must be so.
Christmas – heaven coming to earth, the loving triune God coming to earth in Jesus – is
for the children of Newton, Connecticut and indeed for all the vulnerable on this planet:
for the vulnerable of this world, for this vulnerable and fragile planet,
for all of us in our vulnerabilities and fragility: Christmas is for us.
To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
On this night there is a power in celebrating that this saving One has come for the vulnerable
in the very form of one of the vulnerable.
It’s easy to get sentimental about the baby Jesus, but I think there’s more,
much more, to the power of this night than simply nostalgia and sentiment.
When the saving of this world first appears in the guise of a vulnerable child,
a peasant baby of a not very important couple in a tiny town in an
out of the way part of the Roman Empire:
When the saving from all that would harm us comes so gently and so tenderly,
it makes you stop, and takes your breath away.
The gracious loving kindness that will save this world and every person in it begins and
continues gently and graciously to bring justice and peace.
And make no mistake:
there is tremendous strength in this grace, a tenaciousness that will not let go,
a resoluteness that will refuse to not love,
a steadfastness that will heal and feed and forgive until all are well.
There are teeth to this grace: what use is a saviour who can’t mend what’s been torn in Newton?
what use is a saviour who can’t right injustices?
what use is a saviour who can’t bring blessing to this troubled planet?
There’s a reason that Luke names this one from Nazareth Saviour, Messiah, and Lord:
these are things you would call Caesar, not a peasant from Nazareth.
But Luke is proclaiming to us that the love of this resolutely gracious one will change the world,
and not the caesars of power, wealth, and might.
How long, lord, must we wait?
To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
The thing is, this saving grace, this mending mercy, this healing hope is so tender it can
be borne by a child.
It can be borne by a 14 year old girl named Mary who realizes in her song the Magnificat that even she can bear world-changing within her frame.
It can be borne by you: To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour.
Heaven has come to earth.
James Irwin, an American astronaut, said of his first view of earth from space:
The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a person, has to make a person appreciate the creation of God and the love of God.
Be born in us, we pray, this night.
Wake us to the wonder of one another.
Astonish us to the loving care and the strength that comes to us this night.
Open our eyes to see that you have already come, and that you are working,
bearing light to us and through us into dark places.
We hosted a Christmas meal for the people in our neighbourhood a few days ago.
We fed 60 or so people with turkey and all the fixings till they couldn’t eat any more.
There was laughter, there was service, there was prayer, there was warmth and there was light.
Our youth served it with the graciousness of God’s children and
bore the same loving one the 14 year old Mary bore all those years ago.
We served the people as they came through the Christmas buffet.
I was at the end of the line serving the gravy.
My friend James, who’s about my age and who I’ve known for years from Food Bank,
and who has had more than his share of trials and struggles:
James came to the end of the line with the biggest smile I have ever seen and said:
I have never had a Christmas meal like this before in my life.
In Jesus, heaven has come to earth. God has come home. God has come to home with us.
This is the good, the wondrous, that magnificent news on this night: To you is born a saviour.
Come to the table. Hold it in your hands. Take it deep within yourself.
And bear it to a world that so needs a saviour.
Let us close with prayer, a prayer written by astronaut Frank Borman,
as he contemplated earth from space:
Give us, O God, the vision which can see your love in the world, in spite of human failure.
Give us the faith to trust the goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness.
And show us what each one of us can do to set forth the coming of the day of universal peace.
So together, on this Christmas Eve, let us join our voices and together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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