“A MEMBER OF THE EMPIRE”
Isaiah 9:2-7
Luke 2:1-14
Our knowledge and understanding of Christmas is informed more by our culture than by our study and exploration of the biblical material.  When it comes to thinking about Christmas, everything seems blurred and the camera seems out of focus.  We become nostalgic as we hear songs like “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”  It is as if the word Christmas is magical and suddenly everything becomes comforting and sweet. 
           
Although it was only two days ago, enough time has elapsed since Christmas that some of us have begun to ask in one way or another, “Is that all there is?”  That question is luring around in our minds in response to all that has occurred and all that we did leading up to Christmas.  We have at least a hint that we may have missed the point of Christmas or at least skewed the meaning somewhat with our indulgences and commercialization and our entitlement attitude.
           
Christmas in the Bible, as compared to Christmas at the mall, is not about comfort, sweetness, and niceness.  Christmas here drowns in nostalgia, carols, candles, and happy children in the warm firelight.  There’s nothing like an old-fashioned Christmas we say, but even then the Christmas we are thinking about isn’t old enough or fashioned enough. 
           
Christmas in the Bible might agree that there is nothing quite like an old-fashioned, really old-fashioned, first-century style Christmas.  This world is not a winter wonderland blanketed by pure, white snow.  This world is a shockingly troubled, tragic world where rulers rage, wickedness flourishes, people are starving, babies are murdered, and countries who think of themselves as the most civilized people in the world make and sell the weapons to the countries they regard as uncivilized, in order that the uncivilized can blow each other up.  Christmas, real Christmas, is light – light coming into the darkness, our darkness.
           
Strange isn’t it that in our hands Christmas becomes a dream, an escape?  In the Bible, Christmas is reality.  Today’s newspaper headlines are all there in some form in Matthew and Luke and their stories of Christmas, for they are the only two of the four Gospels that tell us much about the first Christmas.  There is a massacre of innocent children, political intrigue, lies, deceit, fear, and the holy family just barely escaping with their lives as political refugees in an unwelcoming world.
           
All this seems so far removed from us doesn’t it, until we stop long enough to reflect on what is happening in the world?  We read this passage from Luke’s Gospel on Christmas Eve.  It is a story about how a poor couple named Mary and Joseph were forced by empirical decrees to pack up, to journey across the countryside (even though Mary was expecting a baby), to hold up in the outer room of a relative’s home, but all of it caused by Caesar’s census requirement.  The Romans had the most power and biggest army of any Western country ever to conquer the Middle East.  How can you possibly keep these Jews in their place if you don’t enroll them?  So Caesar Augustus decreed, and cruel King Herod enforced the order that everybody had to go to the city of his or her ancestors and register.  It wasn’t possible to do it online and even if it had been possible, Caesar would never have permitted it.  He wanted to make it as difficult as possible to show the subjects who was in charge and who had the power.  That’s how and why Mary and Joseph ended up in Bethlehem.  Mary and Joseph were Jews under the heel of the vast Roman Empire, the greatest Empire the world had ever known, with the largest army.
           
We are a little too familiar with the story.  Because of our familiarity we too easily and too quickly identify with Mary and Joseph or see ourselves as close relatives of theirs.  Our familiarity leads us to misread the story and misunderstand who we are and where we fit in the story. 
           

Reading the Christmas story calls for reflection and awareness that suddenly reveals that today we are the empire.  We are the Romans.  We’re in the Middle East, doing all sorts of important things for which we offer all types of justification.  Regardless of the justification, it is a bit unnerving to have to admit that Imperial Rome has become Glenview, IL.  We are the empire and look at the refugees we have sent from their homes to distance places. 
           
When we read the Christmas story, it is unfair for us to read ourselves into the places of Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, or even the wise men.  This was their home.  They were under the heel of the empire.  Their lives were jerked around by empirical decrees. 
           
If we have a place in the story, our place is in Rome with Caesar Augustus, or maybe in Jerusalem up in the palace with Herod, lackey for the Roman overlords. The story becomes rather troubling because we find ourselves in the position of creating refugees rather than being refugees.  We discover that we are the empire ruling over and causing struggle and harm to come to others. 
           
We would much rather see ourselves as relatives of Mary and Joseph or at least counted among their friends gathering around the manger with them in Bethlehem.  If not there, it would not be so bad to be shepherds, out working the night shift, surprised when the sky breaks open with angels.  At least we’d like to be numbered among those poor shepherds who were the first to get the good news. We probably would not even mind being one of the Magi—those strange Persian visitors who came to the Christ child bearing gifts. 
           
But none of these are our place in the story.  Our place in the story is as a member of the empire.  We are, to use a colloquial expression, well healed.  We don’t live in palaces, but we do live in homes that – with modern conveniences and security – the majority of people in the world would call palaces.  We are not rulers over tribes or nations but we have much more control over our lives and more control over a number of people than many of the rulers who walked the earth in the past.  We are not civilized and cultivated Romans but we are members of the establishment, beneficiaries of the fortune of where we were born, something over which we had no control.  We are citizens of a country that has dominated other countries, sometimes without even trying to dominate and other times making every effort to dominate. 
           
Our place in the story is not a particularly comfortable or enjoyable place to be.  We wish the star would shine on us but then we really aren’t stargazers.  We don’t dabble much in gifts.  Often our interests are in getting, keeping, saving, hording rather than in giving and sharing.  Our lives are determined more by what we see on the Financial Channel or CNN or in USA Today.  Our jobs are more like 9-5.  We don’t work the night shift like those smelly shepherds did.  By nightfall we are safely tucked away in our suburban homes, climate controlled, secure, and well-protected. The angels may have sung but we haven’t heard the song. 
           
When you think about it, it seems rather strange that we would get such a warm, fuzzy feeling about Christmas.  It seems strange that we would think we are somehow closer to God now than at any other time of the year. 
           
We probably should be in the same frame of mind as our cousin, Herod.  When Herod heard the word about the first Christmas, the Gospels report that he was filled with fear, agitation, and contempt.  He immediately started lying, tried to get the wise men to show him where the baby was so he could come to worship him.  What he really meant was, so that he could exterminate him.  When he could not find the baby, he decided to kill all the boy babies that lived in and around Jerusalem. 
           
We’ve got to give Herod credit.  He knew bad news when he heard it.  He knew that when angels sing and shepherds respond that meant God was choosing sides, siding with those on the margins, the people in the night out in the fields, the oppressed, and the lowly. 
           
But for the people up at the palace, the well-healed folks, the people on top, the masters of the Roman Empire, Christmas was bad news.  And many of them were perceptive enough to know it.  That’s why they were afraid.
           
Maybe that is why we cover up Christmas with cheap sentimentality, turn it into a saccharine celebration, nostalgia, a lost world that was, or probably never was.  Maybe in our heart of hearts we know that Christmas means that God may not be with the empire but rather the empire may be on a shaky foundation, and that, if we told the story straight, as the Bible tells it, we might have reason, like Herod to be afraid. 
           
O great imperial power, O ones who feel so well-healed that we don’t need a God to help us, much less save us, did we not hear the words the angels sang?  Did we miss the full scope of their singing? 
           
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).
           
The angel did not say good news for some people.  The angel did not say good news only for the outlaws, those on the fringes of life.  The angel boldly said there is good news for all people.  Although the angel was singing to the shepherds, the angel meant the song for everyone.  Herod was safely fortified with his troops and had trouble hearing the good news.  Augustus with his façade of classical learning was a smooth dictator but he was in the wrong place to hear.  Herod, the sly old fox, missed it.
           
But we haven’t missed it.  We are in the right place to hear the good news.  There is good news today because born this day is a savior.  Born for us, born for all people is one who saves us.  Our flags, our armies, our government cannot save us.  Only the love of God born in us today can save us.
           
And the good news is that the one born long ago was born for us and is born in us.  God comes not only for the oppressed but also for the oppressor.  God comes for all.  O that we could hear that song.  O that we could and would turn back to God, change our ways and let God make us new beings, acknowledge our need and pledge to live our lives in peace and to bring peace to our corner of the world.  
           
You can tell a great deal about a person by whom that person visits.  When Gandhi went to England, he visited first the Manchester cotton mill workers, most of whom were unemployed.  Many of these workers suffered terribly because of the textile boycott that Gandhi led in India.  Gandhi had urged his followers not to wear clothes made in England and protest against English imperialism.
           
Therefore, among the first people that Gandhi visited in England, was not the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, or the Queen at Buckingham Palace; rather, Gandhi went to the unemployed textile workers.  Gandhi gave them his sympathy, he apologized for the harm that his movement had caused them, but he tried to explain to them the basis of his movement and his rationale.  All of this was most revealing for who Gandhi was and the work in which he was engaged.
           
When God became incarnate in humanity, God sought to come to those who were high and mighty, but they were not receptive. God came to the meek and lowly, and they were receptive.  God came to those who were in charge of things, but they were not receptive.  God came to those who were oppressed by those who were in charge of things and they were receptive. When the holy and the human meet, captives are set free. When the holy and the human meet, the hungry are fed.  When the holy and the human meet, justice flows like a never ending stream.  When the holy and the human meet, empires fall and communities of care and support are established.  God wants to be born in us today so that the world will be cared for and loved. It is in and through us that the holy and the human meet.  And the world will be a better place because we have allowed the holy to be born in us.
           
Now, what does that tell us about God?  And what does it tell us about who we are and how we are to live?