Luke 2:8-20
Christmas Eve, 2007
Rev. Marc Sherrod, ThD
Often, books I read will have an epigram near the front – a little quotation, alone on the page, which foreshadows or anticipates what the entire book will be about. I confess these little epigrams are my favorite part of the book, for I enjoy using this handful of words to guess what the author is up to, what surprising thesis or interpretation or new revelation I might discover as I make my way through the pages.
Just several days ago I began reading a book in preparation for Epiphany entitled, Journey of the Magi: Travels in Search of the Birth of Jesus, by Paul William Roberts, which is his attempt to trace the exotic Magi’s legendary overland pilgrimage to Bethlehem, as they made their way through Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. Though I’ve only read the first chapter or so, his book has the feel of a PBS documentary, as the author pens his reconstruction of the Magi journey and their fantasy-like quest for the baby King. Here’s the little epigram I found provocative and from which I adapted my meditation title for this service:
There is a crack, a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in . . . . (repeat)
We usually, don’t we, think of a crack as representing not such a good thing? – a cracked drinking glass gets tossed, a crack in the foundation of a house spells trouble, a big enough crack in the earth becomes an earthquake. And then there are the people we meet, whom we know, who seem to have their own little cracked, crazy perspective, on reality or who inhabit a world chipped and dinged by all sorts of problems and pain -- perhaps they march to the beat of their own drum or maybe they even play or dance to a rhythm no one else hears.
I guess it comes down to a matter of perspective, but deep down, I often have wondered, whether it is they -- or we -- who really are the cracked ones?
There’s no biblical evidence for what their friends back in Persia or wherever they came from thought about these Magi, who set out with extravagant gifts in search of the holy child, but chances are, these men with their magical persona, upon their return and arrival back home, elicited more than a few snickers or suspicious mumblings. I personally like to read stories about seekers, mysterious quests, and kings who don’t always get their way, so I am quite intrigued by and drawn to the Magi. But truth is, for me to say I’d have joined them on their spiritual adventure, would be stretching me well beyond my usual limits.
Spiritually-speaking, I like to stay close to the comfort and security of home.
And so, among those who came to worship the Christ-child, who gathered with the holy family in Bethlehem, it’s the shepherds, not the Magi, who seem most like me. Not in an economic or vocational sense, for I’ve not been called to tend that kind of sheep nor am I hardly among society’s poorest of the poor. These shepherds in Luke’s Gospel neither had to travel far to get to their destination, nor did they have to bypass or circumvent the authority of the King along the way. They were simply going about business as usual when the “holy intrusion” of an angelic host awakened them to a new reality.
Shepherds in first century Palestine occupied what amounted to the lowest rung on the social ladder, often young men with a wild or unruly streak, who didn’t quite fit the social norms and expectations of that day. It’s stretching the analogy a bit, but I think of these shepherds as somewhat akin to America’s undocumented immigrants: they receive a lot of criticism and blame for larger social ills, but, ironically, we fervently desire to keep them around in order to do the dirty work that the rest of us refuse to do.
If a “crack” is something unwanted or something that mars or devalues the object, then in the world of the Bible, for all of the sentimentality attached to shepherds and sheep, the social status of those who watched over a bunch of ornery, hungry animals just didn’t, quite frankly, amount to much. It was hard, degrading, smelly, and taken-for-granted work that no one else wanted to do.
It seems to me that we have here but one more hint of divine, glorious, tongue-in-cheek humor. God tapped shepherds to be among the first to receive the glad tidings of the birth of Jesus. God, being who God is, undoubtedly had at hand a host of preferred or better options.
I was listening to a report on NPR this past week as I traveled to visit family, and the story was about the birth and growth of a young three-year old boy in Columbia, South America. His mother was taken captive several years ago by leftist guerrillas, and is still being held in what amounts to an intractable political situation in which governments, including our own, have sought ways to compromise and bring release to hostages, but in which there seems to be no immediate resolution to the crisis as people have become pawns in a perverted, chaotic political climate controlled a black market for drugs.
As I casually listened, I was startled into awareness by the familiarity of the little boy’s name, Emmanuel, which we know, especially in this time of the year, means God-with-us. How strangely powerful and provocative that Emmanuel comes to us from the jungles of Columbia, that somehow, the message of his release and hope for the entire creation lies on the news of his predicament and the ability of all who love freedom and justice to pray and to intervene. Who would have thought that I would hear about the word of redemption from a place so far removed from where I live?
If shepherds were the misfits or cracked ones of their day, the ones most folk would just as soon toss aside, then it makes perfect sense that the Gospel would first be delivered to them, of all people. Darkness notices and needs light more than light does light. And since the gospel is about reversal, the last being first and the first last, the good news is finally about the vulnerability of a manger and the humility of shepherds who bow their heads into the straw are really the perfect fit for the enduring truth about Christmas.
This Christmas, in a small, symbolic attempt to express deeper care for the earth and its bounty, I bought a live tree and will attempt to transplant it tomorrow. The root ball, as one of my daughters can attest, is quite heavy, and it’s hard to predict how it will grow in the red clay of our front yard, especially when the summer heat returns. I remember, as a child, when my family would go on vacation into the mountains, I would marvel at a solitary tree somehow managing to grow on the rugged, rocky face of a cliff, its roots digging into crack rocks, somehow eeking out the sustenance it needed to survive. Often, the tree wasn’t much to behold – misshapen, scraggly, underachieving, hardly worth much attention for its natural beauty, but yet, it still existed against all odds.
The tree that most shapes us, the tree with cracks but also with roots and branches that dig deep into the cracks of our lives is the tree that sprouts from the stump of Jesse; it is that tree that will eventually give form to the wood of the cross.
And so, amid whatever cracks there are in that wood, no less so than in the cracks and brokenness of our lives, we know and trust that, indeed, the light has come.
This night, thanks be to God that we have a crack of light to guide us through the darkness. Amen!
