UCC Church of Charlotte

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Living in Wonder
Isaiah 9:2-7
Luke 2:1-20

Grace and Peace to you this evening.  Grace and Peace.

        And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
    
There is much to wonder at in the story this evening.
    
Long before Jesus, Moses handed the people of faith a teaching about
the year of Sabbath and the year of Jubilee.  Every seven years, the
land was to lie fallow, the trees unpruned, the vines undressed, the
fruit unharvested.  Even creation would have a Sabbath, a time of rest
dedicated to the Lord.
    
After seven Sabbath years, the fiftieth year would be a year of
Jubilee.  If someone had entered service to someone else in order to
pay off their debts, or if they sold off their land, what they had
inherited when God gave Canaan to Israel, in order to pay debts, each
person would be returned to their family and each family returned to
their land.
    
This was not simply liberation of people from debt.  It served as a
remembrance by all people, whether king or peasant, rich or poor, that
it is the covenant of God by which we are all made free, lest we wind
up placing ourselves and each other back into Pharaoh’s brickyard.  It
is a remembrance for us that all of society, all economics, all
creation are subject to God, not the other way around.
    
But our scripture this evening is a mock Jubilee.  Mary and Joseph
must go to Bethlehem, because that is where his family is from.  But
there is no family there to greet them, no family there for these two
to stay with.  What we read is not Jubilee, but the orders of Caesar.
What we find is not the freeing covenant of God, but the powers of
this world.
    
With no family left in his ancestral home, Joseph goes to an inn.
    
There we might wonder again: is the offer of a stable as a place to
stay for a very pregnant Mary and Joseph an act of heartlessness or
compassion?  The inn is full, yet here two more travelers come
knocking.  Did the innkeeper know Mary was pregnant and act without
remorse to someone in her condition?  Or was the stable the only place
left unoccupied, but at least it was warm and dry and out of the
elements?  Might they have had better luck if they were people of
means, or was this the best an innkeeper could do?
    
By now, we might wonder if God couldn’t put out a better welcome mat
for the birth of Jesus.
    
This is the world into which Jesus was born.  Not ruled according to
the covenant of God, but by Caesar.  This world was not known for
great acts of compassion, merely filled with people just trying to
make it through tax season.  We might well wonder how much our world
has truly changed since then.
    
If we wonder long enough at this story, I believe we might start to
realize that wondering is part of what we are supposed to do.
Wondering, like Sabbath, takes time.  Wondering, like prophecy,
requires imagination.  Wondering, like prayer, requires hope and
faith, however small.
    
There are those who know how the world is, as it always has been, as
it always will be.  They have no room for what might yet be breaking
forth from the bounty of God’s grace.  To know the world “as it has
always been” is to live in fear.  Fear of not having enough.  Fear of
losing what we have.  Fear of judgment.  Fear of never having enough
or doing enough or being good enough.
    
Such fear makes little room for compassion.  Such fear keeps us at
orange alert all the time.  Such fear drives 24 hour news channels and
the politics of scarcity.
    
I believe that the opposite of living in a fear is to live in wonder.
Wondering means seeing things like a child, where the world is not yet
settled and set and stuck.
    
If we stop and wonder at this story, we start to see glimpses of
glory, brief moments of grace, small openings for compassion, crazy
messages to those at the edges of our fearful and controlled world:

    Be not afraid; for behold,
    I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people;
    for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior,
    who is Christ the Lord.
    
Of course, all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
It makes no sense.  And even if such news were to be proclaimed, it
wouldn’t be given to field hands first, would it?  The world doesn’t
work that way.
    
But God does.
    
God forgives those we would condemn, including ourselves.
    
God lifts up the fallen, the hurting, the sick, the grieving.
    
God commands a covenant that requires of us our hearts and minds and
souls and strengths, but in our obedience, we find our freedom.
    
God works beyond the power of Caesar and deeper than the control of fear.
    
God keeps surprising us by breaking into our fearful and controlled
world in surprising and astonishing ways, whether we have room in our
lives or not.
    
And God keeps calling the unqualified, the uncredentialed, the
fearful, the controlling and the controlled, people like you and me,
into Sabbath, into Jubilee, into new life, into partnership in the
compassion and hope of Christ, that all the world might yet know these
words: Be not afraid.
    
As we ponder this story in our own hearts this evening, I wonder how
we will live it out.  I wonder how we will express our gratitude for
what the zeal of the Lord has accomplished.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.