Laid Bare

Luke 2:1-20

 

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
⁸In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
¹⁵When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; ¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Laid Bare

Let us Pray:

God and Father of Jesus,

On this holy night

You give us your Son,

The Lord of the universe

And the savior of all peoples,

As an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes

And lying a manger

In the first moments of his life

You showed us the paradox of your love.

Open us up to the mystery of his powerlessness

And enable us to recognize him

In this plain-spoken word

And simple meal.

This we ask in his name,

Amen.

This night lays bare before us. No snow on the ground, yet all is frozen.  But that’s ok…Christmas Eve isn’t about snow.

Christmas Eve, when spent in song, listening to old readings and old words, always seems to lay out, bare, and sparse, and beautiful, snow or not, in front of the intentional listener…

If you’re not overcome with sleep at this late hour.

And what, exactly, is laid bare?

Well, perhaps we should first consider what it is that Mary bears this evening.

That Christ-child; that new life birthed for a world that, 2000 years hence, is still talking about it…and hoping for a new miracle any day now.

Any day.

And perhaps that is one of the things laid bare on this night every year: how much our world is still in need of fixing, and how we take this moment to express our sure and certain hope that as God began that work, God will keep the promise heard in the new-born screams of this infant.

As he was laid bare in a manger stall.

What was Mary’s to bear was not simply a child; it was the font of eternal hope.

Even as the shoulders of that eternal hope would also bear so much: sin, body-weight, a cross.  As Isaiah said of long before, “The government will be upon his shoulders…”

But that is to be expected, I guess, for those of us who know the whole story of salvation still being played out, but began on this night.

Take the bare hills of Bethlehem that night, where an angel announces that the newborn one, born into the world to save it, would be lying bare in a manger…only strips of cloth to cover himself.

Much like those strips of cloth lying in a bare tomb some thirty years later, no longer needed to cover the vulnerable body made triumphant.

And then consider how the shepherds left to go find this bare child…leaving their own flocks bare in the process.  Such wild abandonment is as astonishing as the angel’s news.

Like the abandonment of some bold women, baring their love for their savior as they walked toward the tomb, leaving their safety and intentions bare in the process.  And how God had worked a plan over those three days that changed the rules of life and death with wild abandonment.

And take that God, the God who makes such a leap into the skin of humanity on that bare Bethlehem night.  In such an audacious move plans are laid bare for the world to see, all people as the angel announces: God is coming with a new plan for humanity.

Are we ready for such good news, for such a plan?  Or is it all just a story?

A friend of mine told of a drive that she and her husband were making shortly after they were married.

Having rented a car they began the trek from Chicago to St. Louis in the middle of a terrible snow storm.  They went from car rental place to car rental place to find one…to no avail, until they finally landed at facility with a car to rent.

Unfortunately, the car had some mechanical issues.

Condensation was building up on the circuits, causing the car to shut down completely every 20 minutes or so.

Having made it almost to Bloomington in twice the time it usually would take, they were forced to stop at a gas station deep into the night.  My friend used a pay phone to dial her father and report on their progress.

“We’re having trouble,” she said.  “It’s hard to make it and we’re not sure how we’re going to do it.”

“Ok.  I’ll come get you…” was her father’s simple reply.

That was crazy talk.

Deep into the night, as a storm raged and hours lengthened between them, the father’s reply was astonishingly, audaciously, crazily, “I’ll come get you.”

They weren’t ready for such a bold statement of love, where love was laid so bare.  “I’ll come get you.”  Can you imagine?  Driving that distance in a snow storm, in the middle of the night, five hours.

A parent’s love.

In telling the story, my friend began to tear up.  Love laid so bare is sometimes tough to believe…it must be just a story.

But it isn’t.  Nothing so powerful is merely story.

God’s plan for the world, for you and me, laid bare in the Christ, is simply: I’ll come get you.  Can you imagine?

That plan, that message of God proclaiming to the world, “I’ll come get you” is what Mary bore, what the shepherds ran to see, and what we celebrate still on this Christmas Eve.

Do imagine it.

Imagine it and then consider what we bear on this night.

Peace and hope and dreams.  Yes, of course.  We bear those most nights.

But tonight, it’s not so much what we bear, but how we are laid bare on this night.

Dennis Kennedy has a poem on how humanity is laid bare this night that goes, in part,

“Darkness drives down the sun,

Loosing night cold as blue metal;

Together we beg the return of fire

And you hear, O Lord.

Sun’s slow revolve enthrones a

Little one on wood warmed with straw.

Childbirth is risky-he comes

As he goes

In a rush of blood and water.

In the night, with loaves and wine,

We become the little one;

Blood brothers and water sisters,

Bits and pieces of the kingdom.”

What is laid bare, tonight, are our hands as we approach this table of grace.  Our hearts as we open them once again to God’s plan for the world.

What is laid bare, tonight, are the ways where we’ve been bits and pieces of the kingdom of God, and the ways that we have not.  In our love and our fighting.  In our war and our peace.

And tonight of all nights, we are reminded that those things in our lives, our relationships, our world that are laid bare, as naked as a newborn; those things that are most vulnerable in us, our hopes and fears as the carol goes, our crankiness, craziness, our desire for control and our desire for constancy are also imbued with the promise that God’s plan is in action turning all of that, the salvation story laid bare in us covering and soothing those scars and successes that we call life.

So open your hands tonight in a moment of vulnerability, receive the bread and cup, God’s plan to come get you, me, us, wrapped up in his love.

So open your hands tonight to hold a vulnerable candle, flame laid bare against the dark, dispelling it just enough to promise a new dawn.

So open your heart tonight to hold the promise of God’s love again, and become the bare little ones we realize that we are when juxtaposed against 2000 years of past and eons of future.

See God’s love laid bare in the form of a newborn one, bare and vulnerable, but full of hope, possibility, and the bold plan of salvation that God has in store for the world.

Can you imagine such bare, bold love?

Nothing so powerful could be mere story.

Merry Christmas.

Amen.