Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20
The theologian Frederick Buechner wrote that the Gospel is bad news before it is good news1, and I wonder if the Holy Family would say amen to that.
The good news of Jesus probably felt like bad news at first. The young woman is unmarried, and I doubt many people believed her story of an angel and a Holy Spirit and a promise of salvation. The man is not the father, and is choosing to endure the social consequences because of a dream he had. The land they inhabit is an occupied nation under violent rulers, rulers who do everything they can to extract every possible resource from the land and its people. The labor starts far from home, in a place with few options for privacy. The midwives available do not know the mother, or the circumstances of her pregnancy. There is pain, and danger, for mother and baby. There is separation where there was unity; an ending and a beginning.
Immanuel, God with us, comes into the world under these less-than-ideal conditions. Never again can creation call the creator distant, or silent, or unmoved. Never again can we claim that our God does not understand what it is to be made of earth, of flesh and bone and need. God loves us so much that God could not stand to be anything but with us, to the point of birth, and all the pain and joy that follows. Not one of us chooses to be born- but God does. God could have arrived in the world he created in whatever form or in whatever way God chose to- and yet God chooses to come into the world like we all do, crying and fragile and so miraculous and so very small. The world begins again in that moment, a new creation to cradle the tiny infinity.
The baby is born, and the bad news is there is nowhere to lay him except the manger, the feeding trough meant for the animals that bore witness to the turning point of history. This soft, round, wrapped up infant spends his first night resting in a place meant for food, for sustenance. I wonder if Mary saw the Gospel in that, the good news underlying the bad. This child will feed thousands, will offer living water to those who thirst ceaselessly for justice, will call himself the bread of life, will become bread and wine poured out for the world.2 But first he will lie in a manger, cushioned by the food of fellow creatures, warmed by their heat and the fog of their breath. The bad news of the moment foretells the best news of all time- This baby will feed the hungry, weary world.
For the shepherds also, the Gospel feels like bad news, at first. The angels burst into being in the sky above their tired and drooping heads, and they are terrified. I can only imagine that the sheep are a bit startled too. The angel of the Lord must instruct the shepherds not to be afraid, because there is good news to be heard and the listeners won’t be able to remember it if they’re too busy shaking in their boots. The good news is there’s a baby, and that baby is asleep in a feeding trough. Surely the shepherds are at least a little curious about that part, about what kind of savior sleeps among the animals like they do, what kind of Lord nestles in a bed of hay. There is only one way to find out, and so they go searching. Can you picture it? A roving band of shepherds wandering through town, peaking into every window and asking every passerby about a newborn. How many babies do you think they met before they found Jesus? How many other mothers labored in the night, only to be greeted in their exhaustion by strangers looking for a sign from God?
They find the right mother, and the right baby, and the right manger. The shepherds tell the new parents about the angels and the heavenly chorus and the important titles this baby will grow into. They’re preaching to the choir, of course. Mary and Joseph have heard the same Gospel, have seen angels up close. But still the new mother treasures these words and ponders them in her heart. The good news she carried in her body is now coming to her in the voices of strangers and the cries of her child, a terrifying and tender joy. There is so much danger in those titles, those big names for such a little baby. And yet there is hope, the bad news for empire becoming good news for the poor, the upside down world soon to be righted.
But for now, the little Prince of Peace lies swaddled in a manger, recovering from the ordeal of being born. The world holds its breath as the Word breathes softly in and out, tiny lungs still learning to expand with air. The night is quiet and still, like the calm before a much-needed rain. A baby has been born, and nothing will ever be the same. And what Good News that is.
- This quotation is originally found in Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Comedy, Tragedy, and Fairy Tale by the Rev. Frederick Buechner. However, I first came across it in the book Sober Spirituality by the Rev. Erin Jean Warde ↩︎
- I am indebted to Dr Amy-Jill Levine’s work Light of the World: A Beginner’s Guide to Advent for making this beautiful connection between the feeding trough and the Eucharistic feast ↩︎
Mother A Writes 