“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given…”
Friends, grace to you and peace this Christmas Eve,
Grace is what we need right now, isn’t it?
And Peace...not peace that the world talks about, but when Christians say “grace and peace,” that’s God stuff. That’s God’s deep and abiding peace, that resides far beneath the surface...
Some years ago I got to go to Rome in January to study and visit Early Christian sites. It was thanks to Dad, who’s got a good friend Jim, who’s also a pastor and a passionate scholar on the 1st Century Early Church in Rome. Jim is always leading trips to Rome, and Dad was always inviting me to join them. And 5 years ago, I finally did! The trip was amazing; I’d love to go back someday, I hope you all can go there someday too…(btw, ok to mourn even at Christmas time)
Anyway, I bring my Rome adventure up again this good evening because Rome in January is absolutely filled with nativity scenes.
The great Francis of Assisi is credited with the Christmas nativity, assembling manger scenes — whether it’s in-home or in-church, indoor or outdoor, realistic or creative, live or little figurines — any and all...so that children, in particular, could better learn and understand the Christmas story.
And how true it is! It’s the classic object lesson! I wonder how many of you might have had/have a special nativity scene that you got to arrange or watch each year grow in the weeks of Advent. I know that was formative for me growing up, and something I always looked forward to. I remember on Christmas Eve the tradition at home of bringing out all the baby Jesus’ that had been hidden all through Advent. And in church, on Christmas Eve, it was a special honor to begin the service each year with a child in the congregation carrying the precious figurine of the baby Jesus up the aisle and placing it ever so reverently into the manger. I seem to remember this clink as the porcelain Jesus touched the porcelain manger. After 4 weeks of joyful Advent waiting, the first true bell of Christmas!
Anyway back to my trip to Rome in 2015: There were nativities everywhere, called “presepe”, harkening me back to my childhood joys...and also offering new insights...
One church that was actually physically connected to the “domus” where we were staying, had this wonderful, dimly lit room off of the sanctuary, and it was just filled with nativity sets, presepi, probably 2 dozen different displays spread around the room, with some choral Christmas music playing from a small speaker. Open to the public around the clock to enjoy—great for those of us with jet-lag.
They were all such intricate arrangements, way more characters than just the stars of the Christmas pageant! Figurines were camped out and hidden all through these complex landscapes and creative designs, like vast model train sets: Grottos and tunnels and tiny lights and flowing water...just tickling the imagination.
You had to walk around each display in order to see everything. And often, it was a bit of a challenge to find Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in the midst of it all. I think that was intentional.
And some displays were multi-leveled.
One I remember in particular, told a very clear story to me. Three levels. The top level had these armored Roman guards up above, on the top level, standing among white Roman columns; some Roman senator-types lounged on steps around a real fountain bubbling and trickling into a tiny opening…
Then your eye follows the trickle down to the middle level where regular folks are living, it’s a home scene, and a merchant with a cart, and a children playing in the street. You explore the happy moments and then wonder, wait, where are they?
The water keeps trickling down to the lowest level and finally you see a tiny baby, a humbly dressed Mary and Joseph, some young shepherds, both male and female, all huddled over the animal feed box. You had to squint a little bit to see them because there wan’t much lighting down there. I think had to turn on the flashlight on my phone, but there they were:
God’s deep and abiding grace and peace, that resides far beneath the surface, levels below the power and glory of the day, even below the beauty and happiness of the neighborhood scenes.
I was so struck by this — clearly: years later...and this year 2020...I’m remembering it — I think in part, because I tend to imagine that holy night, this holy text in Luke 2 on a horizontal plain. You know, the more characters there are, the wider the frame [nativity in the narthex that took up half the room]. But this was the opposite, it was vertical and narrow, multi-leveled. Jesus, who the angels above sing about, is born down below: God’s deep and abiding peace resides far beneath the levels of power and glory, even quaint happiness.
Friends: that’s way more in line with the Gospel of Luke...the vertical nativity.
Who are the Roman soldiers pressing down on you? Enforcing peace, more in a “shut up and take it” approach (Pax Romana) leagues away from that divine peace of God, found stories below. What are the Roman columns in your life, in our world? — the structures that prop up and maintain the status quo, but leave so many buried...buried in debt, or sorrow, or fear? Hidden at the bottom? Who are the lounging senators in your life? Comfortable and jovial, polite, eloquent and smart (in a way), but in their privileged comfort totally oblivious to what’s below, to where the water trickles?
Jesus loves all of them too, by the way. Maybe that’s you? This is land of senators and soldiers, after all. Jesus comes to be with all of them, with all of us...if we’re feeling pretty comfortable too. But friends, in Luke’s vertical nativity story, this Jesus comes from the lowest places. That’s where he sleeps, swaddled and silent.
And the everyday folks in the middle level? Not rich, not poor, the neighborhoods, the children playing, the marketplace cranking on, the schools and shops and churches, the very real fears and illnesses of the middle level. Addiction and abuse. Adultery and anxiety. Everywhere the water flows. Jesus gets in there too:
Jesus sits in the homes, eats at the tables, kneels at the bedsides. And always centers the children. But comes from beneath. Born below. Sleeping on straw.
And made known first to shepherds. The nightshift.
Friends, [silently] this is our God.
So deeply imbedded in the underbelly, the gutters below. Where there’s hardly a drop left. See, that lower level, is not just a romanticized Christmas poverty, beautiful in its simplicity: no, it’s dirty down there, it’s bars and brothels, it’s black lives that have endured bloody beatings and bully sticks. It’s the edges, the places people go when they have no hope, or are where they never had a choice, born by a dumpster, in the stench of an alley, and trying to climb out. Many of us might have to squint a bit to find this Jesus. But follow the trickle down.
And be assured that he’s there, that he has arrived, that today is born in the city of David, the nowhere shepherd outpost of Bethlehem…
That’s where the Shepherd of the World is born!
The one who guides us to green pastures, and cool waters, where everyone has enough, where healing and redemption abound, where the crooked road is made accessible to all, and the sword of empire and brutality is bent into a gardening tool to plant and feed hungry people. Where evil and death is conquered at the last, and where forgiveness of sin and new life grows like a tiny sprig from a stump. This one from below changes everything.
“Change shall he bring/chains shall he break...his law is love and his gospel is peace…”
This one from the scandalous under-belly spends his ministry in body on earth making level the scenes: turning the vertical into the horizontal! Flipping the display on its head, rearranging the whole thing, molding a new landscape, where the mighty and glorious are brought down, and the downtrodden are lifted up. (That was his mother’s song.) And all may see it together! (That was Isaiah’s song.) Jesus sets the characters, even the planets in their places. And everyone is gathered at the center, in the middle, and included — everyone fed, everyone housed, everyone clothed, and treated with dignity and inoculated with hope and new life. Including you.
This is our God, from below, with us now. Changing the entire scene, and offering anew that deep grace and peace...this holy night and always.
[sing] “And you, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow:
look now for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing;
oh rest beside the weary road
and hear the angels sing.”
Amen.
