2023 12 24 Christmas Eve sermon
Heaven Is Beside You
Christmas Eve 2023
Luke 2:1-20; Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96
Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
We were visiting our son Henry a month or so ago during his first semester at UW-Madison. The plan was to take him out for supper, then go to the football game. We arrived about an hour before Henry would be available to join us, and since we found parking in a ramp near the Chazen Museum of Art on campus, we decided to take a look. It’s a great museum, with a wide variety of artwork, and since it was our first time there, we just wandered around, taking in whatever caught our attention. After a while we climbed the staircase to the second level and looked around there, and after another while up to the third level where discovered a gallery of sacred art. And in that gallery there were three Italian paintings from the 1500s and 1600s all of the same subject, the Adoration of the Shepherds.
All three of them, of course, featured Mary caring for the Christ-child, while the shepherds and a few other assorted people and animals gathered ‘round the manger with looks of wonder and amazement—and the angels kept watch from heaven. In two of the paintings (the ones by Francisco Camilo and Giorgio Vasari), the angels appeared high above, looking down from a heaven that’s in the picture, yet far removed from the scene. But in the third painting, the one I liked the best (by Francesco Solimena), the angels are right in the thick of it, right at head-level with the shepherds standing nearby. Heaven blends in to the scene; heaven is not far removed from earth and people and animals. Heaven is right beside us and all around us, the artist shows. [ https://chazen.wisc.edu/collection/12550/adoration-of-the-shepherds/?regions%5b%5d=44&subtypes%5b%5d=19&subtypes%5b%5d=7&sort=title&onview=true ]
Heaven is wherever the presence of Christ is, and the presence of Christ is found hidden in things that are ordinary and humble; like, in some shepherds getting a break from their long work-night and then having something to talk about when they go back to those lonely field to watch their flocks. If the Christ-child reveals the glory of God to these ordinary, humble, and hardened shepherds—Christ, coming into the world as an all-too-human, flesh-and-blood, chubby little baby, with his parents beside him in a stable, as he rests in an animal feeding trough, and appears to have wriggled his way out of his swaddling clothes—if that’s where Christ is, then that is where heaven is, too, in the joy and wonder of it all.
And yet heaven is also not limited to this scene of joy and wonder. Because laying below the manger, at feet of the Christ-child, is a beam of wood and some animals. Perhaps the shepherds brought the animals in from the fields—or perhaps the animals lived in that stable full-time. Below the feet of the Christ-child, a lamb rests on the floor, and a rooster sits quietly (it is the middle of the night, after all). Here we see an artistic foreshadowing of why Christ was born—for what purpose: Christ was born to save. A rooster would crow early one Friday morning about 30 years later, right after the disciple Peter had denied that he even knew who Jesus was; and Jesus would become the Lamb of God who gave himself on the wood of the cross to take away the sin of the world. The presence of heaven is there, too: Christ came to enter the suffering of the world, in order that suffering will not have the last word; Christ came to redeem it for God’s reign of endless peace, justice, and righteousness.
What else might those shepherds have noticed when they came to adore the Christ-child? Well, they might have noticed (while chatting with Joseph and Mary) that there were so many examples of how God provides grace in ordinary and humble ways! There may have been no room in the inn—after all, lots of people were on the move, because they all had to register for the census—but God still provided a place for the weary travelers to rest while they were far from home. Joseph and Mary found lodging and support from their relatives who sheltered them.
And in that cramped home full of extended family, God provided a stable where the Holy Family could have some privacy as Mary went through the messiness of childbirth. God provided Mary safe delivery of her firstborn son, and God provided a manger for the baby to sleep in. With all those animals and people crammed together, there would have been no other suitable place for a newborn baby to sleep besides the manger. And even though the painting (as Francesco Solimena imagined the scene) shows Jesus lying on top of his swaddling clothes, God had provided even these simple clothes so his parents could wrap him up, to comfort and protect the baby from the cold night air.
And about that census decreed by the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus. Yes, it was a hardship for the Holy Family to travel 90 miles by foot and/or pack animal all the way from Nazareth. Yet by registering in Bethlehem that they belonged to the “house and family of David”, God was providing confirmation that the Holy Family, despite their humble circumstances, were nevertheless descended from the family line of ancient Israel’s greatest and most faithful King. Mary and Jesus were not biologically descended from King David, like Joseph was; but because they registered with Joseph, they were adopted into the “house of David”. And in Biblical understanding, adoption counts 100% as much as biological relation.
The Adoration of the Shepherds shows us that, most of all, on Christmas we get to join the shepherds in entering the joy and wonder of this holy mystery, that Christ was born into the world “for you” and “for all”. The message of the angels to the shepherds on that night 2,000 years ago is also a message for today: To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. And the Lord will provide what you need. Not luxury, not extravagance, not all your wants and desires—for the Holy Family did not receive any of that—but they did receive what they needed. The Lord provides what you need for your well-being.
And God does this by Christ appearing among us in things that are ordinary and humble; so ordinary and humble—like, a manger or swaddling clothes—that it can be easy to miss them, or even reject them if it’s not exactly what we had in mind. But Christ keeps coming among us nonetheless, and providing what we need, day after day, year after year, opening the way to a heaven that is right beside and all around us. Amen.