The Christmas Surprise

 Sermon preached at Church of the Redeemer, Addison on Christmas Eve: Luke 2:1-20

I have been stuck on the word “surprise” this Advent.  It first occurred to me preparing for the Advent classes we did this year. We pondered three questions from hymns in those sessions.

It was the first question that brought up the word “surprise.”  The question is 

Can it mean that in our endings, new beginnings you create?

    Pondering that question, I asked myself, “Are you willing to be surprised by God?”  Can the story of Jesus birth that we have heard so many times, offer any surprise?

I know it’s not a very theological word, surprise. It never appears in our Prayer Book, and only once in the entirety of the Bible.  But here it is, stuck in my brain, and so I’m going to try and to make some meaning out of it for us.

And to do so I am drawn to those shepherds.  To say that they were surprised in the middle of the night by a host of angels is a vast understatement.  They must have thought, if they could think beyond their fear, “Hold up! Wait a minute! We think you have the wrong address!’

But the angels didn’t have the wrong address.  They were right where God wanted them to be, with shepherds in the hills “watching their flock by night.”

Now some say that the shepherds’ appearance in the story is to remind us of King David, the shepherd king, into whose house Jesus is born.  Maybe, but shepherds were a long way from the great David.

And the long way had been a prolonged decline.  Shepherds were among the lowest in esteem by Jesus’ day.  The religious authorities considered them “outside the law,” which is to mean that there was no way for them to become “clean.”  One consequence was that they were considered totally unreliable witnesses.  They were thought to be inherently dishonest.

Now there’s a surprise.  God chooses as his first revelation of his newborn son, witnesses that most people—especially the civil and religious authorities—were hard-wired not to believe.

In my imagination I see them wandering into town, sheep in tow—they couldn’t leave them in the hills alone.  That they were “in haste” only makes the scene more comical.  I imagine regular citizens rushing to their homes, slamming the doors behind them. It must have seemed as if Bethlehem was being invaded by people whom no one wanted to be there.

Normally the shepherds would have been afraid to wander into town, especially accompanied by their sheep. But they had just been told the good news that they didn’t have to be afraid anymore, and they believed it.

There are many ways to be surprised by the Christmas story, but here is perhaps the biggest:

We don’t have to be afraid anymore.

Throughout history and religious traditions, God, however conceived, was characterize by one thing:  fear.  You should be afraid of God.  It is still true for so many religious types, even Christians.  In college I hung around evangelical students for a time, and the one thing they were clear about:  you cannot tell people the good news before you tell them the bad news.  You’re going to hell unless you get right with God.

That is not what is happening in this story.  The good news is proclaimed and the first word out of everyone’s month is, “Do not be afraid.”  Forget the bad news.

If God ever did want to be feared, that ended this night.  Why else come as a baby?  There is no fear in the manger scene, only love.

And that is where I end up with my word surprise.  It is not something new to my way of thinking, but I am surprised by it over and over again.

One last thing:  The angels cried out,

Glory to God in the highest heave, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Do not be fooled by the words “those whom he favors.”  Do not make of them some exclusivist club, people who know how to get themselves in good with God.  Think of the ones who were the first to get this message.

And be surprised that those whom God favors turns out to be you and me and everyone else.

This is the Christmas surprise:  We do not need to be afraid of God anymore.