Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Luke 2:1-20

It all happened because I wasn’t fully paying attention. Pastor Lois, who was leading the time with children at the afternoon services asked me if I would help. “Sure, I’ll be the star. Just let me know what you need.” Later they saw a picture of the Nativity pageant from Ebenezer Ridges, a community for seniors in Burnsville,

show slide of nativity play

They said, “Could you borrow that costume?” When Ebenezer Chaplain Darin agreed, I tried it on.

Show picture of my face in star costume.

“You look like Sponge Bob SquarePants’s friend, Patrick the starfish.” That’s what I looked like at 2:30 and 4:00 today.

Nativity costumes, or even a part in that play, works a lot better if you’re five. There’s less substance to pour into it, a much smaller head, and shoulders that haven’t developed from years of holding life together. Limiting the play to the kids retains the sweetness and innocence of the story; no jaded, bandaged, anxious, awkward adults poured into this story.

Remove picture from screen.

I did make me wonder: at what point do we feel like we don’t fit in the play anymore. Is it adolescence, when hormones take our bodies into overdrive? Or when we realize that what people see of us is not the full story? Or when we realize that the script of the play is only for those who fit the culture’s definition of holiness? You can be part of it, but you can’t wear what you want. Or when the suffering and ambiguity of life overwhelm the simplistic belief system we learned as children but never took the time so that it could grow and develop?

One commentator suggested that the deep struggle for those of us living in the 21^st century is not necessarily “sinfulness” as it might have been in previous generations, but is now “belonging.” Inside, we’re lost and yearn to be known and connected to something deeper and more sustaining and to one another.

Of course, there’s no shortage of groups that are ready to tell us what we need to do or be so that we can belong, including many religious voices, maybe even some of the ones that we grew up with. When does it happen that this becomes our Jesus.

Show slide of Jesus saying, “I saw that.”

He’s got a list, and he’s checking it way more than twice. I’m struck by how often even the most faithful will wonder at the time of death if they have been good enough. “I might see you there,” they say to the pastor, who is assumed to be on the nice list, or, at least, the closer-to-God list. Of course, the pastor, is wondering the same thing, but not whether they will get there.

Recently, we watched an interpretation of the Christmas story on TV. The shepherds were not the sweet characters like Linus in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” (Can you hear that voice telling the Christmas story in King James English?”) In this production, they were crude as they sat around the fire, downright mean to the shepherd with a disability and one little sheep. I didn’t like any of them. They seemed like they would know more curse words than most of us.

There’s a lot of truth in that depiction. Shepherding back then was not for the meek and mild. It was rough and required someone willing to be rough. Maybe it’s good that Luke didn’t record what the shepherds actually said when the angel suddenly tore open the night sky in one of those glorious angel costumes. In the TV you experience the scene through the eyes of the one good shepherd, who interestingly does not have access to heavenly host. We only hear an overwhelming wall of dissonant sound, light like the Northern Lights bouncing around them.

The shepherds are overcome. Some were simply forced to the ground by it all; some hold up their arms to block it; one bows low. What’s clear is that it undid them. There was nothing sweet. It was both terrifying and amazing at the same time. Probably like what an encounter with God would be: why every messenger begins by saying, “Don’t be afraid.” If God shows up, our first through is probably, “We’re in trouble now.”

BUT, they aren’t destroyed by God. They are rebooted, restored from the ground up. Full on love is as terrifying as it is amazing. It was an experience of a love that is bigger than any words we have, or carol that we can sing, a love that both puts an end to the things that limit and raises us into a new life. Their encounter was death and resurrection, all at once.

Watching that scene makes you wonder if Luke’s words were written to try to describe an experience of God that was so real, so unnerving, so transforming, so glorious that it’s beyond our words. We only try to act it out, or sing it, or paint it, or find a story that can hold enough of it for us to safely approach.

What the shepherds deep within their being is this, and I want you to hear it now as if the same thing is said to you, not matter what’s going on for you right now:

To you this day is born in the city of David, a savior, who is the anointed one, the one who will hold divinity so that you can know that it’s “for you and not against you.” This birth is not to shame or judge us, or to provide some narrow path to be a bit less naughty and more nice. Sure, this birth will undo us if we let it have its way, but it will also give us second birth.

We need the song now, with so many forced to live in the same marginal space in the dark like the shepherds, forced invisibility, huge groups of people all over the world facing violence, hunger, and no hope for the future, rising temperatures and changing climate, global economic patterns so complex, increasing negativity and cruelty in elections, political parties that enforce their own narratives, even making Jesus into an enforcer of white supremacy, so many deeply afraid about what’s coming next year.

Maybe tonight just asks us which of our birth stories are going to be the ones we choose: the ones written by emperors and presidents, or the preachers of bad religious, or this one taking place in Bethlehem for people who, by all the world’s standards, would not be chosen.

In the show, When the shepherd show up in Bethlehem, there’s a lightness, a quickness to laugh, a generosity that is more authentic, a connection with each other that seems beautifully human, open, and able to see glory where no one else does.

There’s no illusion that they are now free of everything, or are fixed, or absolved of their need to reevaluate some of the ways that they are living.. But they are different (saved, healed, opened up) by this odd glory that came and searched them out.

It still doesn’t all fit just right. But something changed that night that changes everything; a door in the night sky opens that has not closed. Another way, a future for us, for the planet, for everyone who is afraid or left out or labeled as “too far gone.”

For everyone who has wondered, “Do I belong?” The angels realize that, “We’re asking the wrong question”. So they sing.

Glory to God in the highest. God is good. Glory is everywhere. In fact, it will find you. And you, whether you believe it or not, you’re one of the stars.