GOD CHOOSES A TIME AND A PLACE
Luke 2:1-20

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
December 24, 2005 / Christmas Eve

I wish I knew the mind of God! Wouldn't that be great? If you could imagine God's logic, understand where the mind of God is leading, be at precisely the right place and the right time to hear the angels. Imagine knowing ahead of time where God will perform miracles, and then being there ready and waiting!

But it doesn't seem to work that way. We can not predict.

The birth of Jesus seems to have been in God's plan for a long time. "Behold a woman shall conceive and bear a son…" "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, wonderful counselor…" "Say unto the cities of Judah, behold your God…" All this sense of a Messiah permeates the Old Testament. Even Herod's scribes seem to know it will be in Bethlehem.

But when? And is that truly where the desire of nations shall come? I mean, if maybe I could have figured out where and when for the first Messianic appearance, I could also do it for the second appearance, and maybe do it with a little more intelligence than the disheveled man carrying a placard about the end of the world. If I knew.

But why just then? Why did God choose that time and place? It was the time of the Roman Empire, the reign of Caesar Augustus. Palestine was occupied by a foreign army. Ordinary citizens could be ordered around by any soldier, walk a mile, give up their coat. Torture was the way people kept in power. Herod would not flinch to send out his army to kill someone, even children. The bodies of criminals, as well as political activists hung on crosses at the city gates.

The religion was in cahoots with the government. That's how the priests pulled in their big salaries. The gold changed hands often. Don't expect your local priest to say anything negative about the government.

It was an Empire, a time of armies and torture. The Pax Romana, the peace of Rome was a peace that was no peace. Roman justice was a justice that was no justice. Decrees from Caesar could move populations, send bulldozers to crumble the shacks of the poor, replace their neighborhoods with resplendent casinos. Speaking up or out would lead to prison or worse.

God says, this is the time, this is the place. Somehow in the mind of God this is a time for angels.

Listen to these words from Dorothee Soelle,

"I understood rather late what the tyranny of the imperium romanum really meant for the people in the subjugated provinces. Up to this moment I held unsuspectingly to my humanist illusions about the pax romana. I regarded it as a kind of constitutional state with a cosmopolitan trading system and grandiose architecture. I had learned to read history only with the eyes of the victor. That the pax Christi (the peace of Christ) was intended precisely for those who could expect nothing from the pax romana gave me a new key to the Christmas narrative and the whole New Testament. How and under what conditions had people lived then in Galilee? Why had I never noticed the number of sick who appear in the Gospels? Who or what made them sick? Political oppression, legal degradation, economic plunder and religious neutrality in the scope of the… permitted religion were realities that the writer of Luke kept in view in his story, which is… focused on the center of all conceivable power.

At last I saw the imperium from the perspective of those dominated by it. I recognized torturers and informers behind the coercive measure, 'All went… to be registered'. Finally I comprehended the peace of the angels 'on earth' and not only in the souls of individual people. I understood for the first time the propaganda terms of the Roman writers who spoke of pax [peace] and jus [justice] when they really meant grain prices and militarization of the earth known at that time. (All of this can be confirmed by research today.)"¹

Heavy.

I guess this does not feel like an American Christmas Eve as we go from party to party, prepare children for Santa, wish Merry Christmas. This is not what we want. It is all too serious.

But - after all - I think it is what we want.

See your child, your grand child, someone else's grand child as they are wrapped up securely in their sheets and blankets tonight. You will watch their heads on gentle pillows as they dream of sugar plums. What do you want most for them?

A peace which is peace.

A justice that is just.

A joy, a joy that will be real joy.

Beyond the stockings at the hearth, this is what you really want for your children this Christmas, for all the world's children: peace, justice, joy.

So God looks and sees: war, armies, torture, injustice, hunger, illness, sickness, poverty, I must go now, I can wait no longer; this is the place, this is the time. Move the stars, ready the angels, now is the time.

If I only knew the mind of God I would pray…

May God say of this place and this time, "Now I will send my angels, now I will send my Son…

"Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people! For unto you is born this day in the City of my Providence… a savior."

Amen.

1 - Soelle, Dorothee, "The Christmas Gospel," Watch for the Light, (Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2001), unnumbered pages.