This Advent several of us gathered Sunday evenings to eat together, to talk, to explore the birth stories of Jesus, and to pray.

We marked this season by focusing on the story of our savior rather than the clutter and noise of the world.

It’s a fitting reminder that Jesus is born into a noisy world.

Christmas Eve |  Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

 

One of our favorite jokes is that the great hymn “Silent Night” must have been written by someone who never had kids. Anyone who has participated in childbirth in any way knows that was not a silent night.

The picture we have of that night, that moment is rosey and loving. Like the euphoria a new mother feels at the birth of her baby. Hormones flood and nothing else matters: that baby is so beautiful!

We receive Christmas with such hope and joy that this all is magical.

We don’t just fill in the gaps, we sand down the edges so it all makes sense. And all that beauty is maintained. Like babies are born dry and clean and pre-wrapped in blankets with hats. No biology to tend to or humanness to deal with. The fog of joy unending.

And when we looked at the birth stories, particularly in the books we call Matthew and Luke which have gripping stories covering 5 chapters between them, we saw how small the actual birth was to the story.

It happens so fast, almost like it happens off stage–the little girl playing Mary in the pageant exits with the pillow up her shirt and comes back in with a doll in her arms.

Even in Luke’s story, it’s over so fast. So fast.

she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger

That’s it.

These stories are more than the birth.

They’re about the noise into which Jesus is born. It isn’t only about the noise he makes. {The song is totally wrong, by the way. He made noise. He cried. It’s biology.} It’s not only that. It is the noise we make. Our world makes. Our culture makes.

And the song is sort of right in that Jesus brings calm to that storm. But he isn’t silent. He makes sound.

I’m not a musician so I’m going leave it to the more gifted people here to fill in my gaps. But it is like all of these sounds in our world all together are received as noise. They aren’t on pitch. Different rhythms and tempos. It all sounds like a mess: a cacophony.

But it isn’t raw noise.

Years ago there was this cool car commercial {VW I think} with the windshield wipers establishing a beat and all the world’s events outside the car come in on cue. A world like an orchestra, making music.

Jesus comes into the noise, not with silence or aggression to overpower and drown out the noise with more noise. But with clarity of what the noise is. And to help us hear the music embedded in it.

So what is that clarity? What’s the music?

In the birth stories we get too very different stories with really similar messages about how GOD comes to us in Jesus.

Born as a baby to a young woman with no political power. And the people who hear the angels speak of Jesus are shepherds working in the fields.

A story of homelessness, poverty, weakness and into this world Jesus comes.

Not to the elites and Bible-believers, the ordained. A girl. Some laborers. These are GOD’s actors in the story.

And they bear a message of salvation. Not after living life and going to heaven. But liberation. A story of GOD turning the world upside down.

It’s a story of a GOD up there, at the top of the hierarchy and pyramid, the king and ruler of a nation, coming down to us, to be with us, live like us, know us better than any king could know his subjects. To be one too. A subject.

But a subject to what?

To live a life in Palestine under Roman rule. To be mocked and ridiculed and ultimately treated like a threat to national security. And gather disciples as a Jewish rabbi and itinerant preacher. A little bit prophet, a little bit Messiah, a little bit savior of the people. As one of the people oppressed.

The music of the story is that body, that incarnation which not only reveals that GOD lived and dwelt among us, but that our world was/is so cacophonous. It drowns the beautiful cadence of love and support with our thirst for blood and pessimistic warmongering.

The Story’s about showing up.

Showing up to Mary in her lowliness. Shepherds at work. Elizabeth, pregnant with John, the prophets in the Temple, the rabbis, teaching among them, going to John at the Jordan to be baptized.

A story of Jesus showing up. But it leads us to the more profound truth that through Jesus, GOD is about showing up.

Showing up in our lives, not to manipulate them. In our relationships, not to guide them. In our homes, not to order them.

GOD shows up.

And keeps showing up. In us and through us. At the good times and the bad. Whether we’re feeling the Christmas Spirit or the Christmas Blues. With us in it.

GOD keeps showing up in Christ; in Jesus. Flesh and blood.

And it tips our minds to what is behind all that noise, amid the cyclone of our lives, not just at its heart, but in the rushing winds and terrible thunders, there is a sequence in there, notes found in nature, a song of redemption and salvation.

And if we listen tonight, we can hear a call to new birth. In love. In the flesh. Something that will let us wash away the rest of the noise, not in some other plane of reality, but here. All the sounds quiet till they all sound like a whisper. All that pain and fear and sounds of war go quiet and the symphony of creation becomes all we hear.

The music of GOD incarnated in the flesh of our city. Free and full of joy.