As Yet Unseen, But Not Unknown

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“As Yet Unseen, But Not Unknown.” Luke 2:1-20 Christmas Eve

Pastor Peter Hanson Christ the King Lutheran Church December 24, 2017

He comes to us as one unknown, a breath unseen, unheard; as though within a heart of stone, or shriveled seed in darkness sown, a pulse of being stirred, a pulse of being stirred. Maybe some of you recognize this hymn—it was the theme for our Christmas Festival Concert just two weeks ago. It’s a lesser known Christmas song—a newer one, although it has been in Lutheran Hymnals now for over twenty years. In our concert, we used it as a way to explore and celebrate the mystery of how God comes to us as stranger through the birth of Jesus Christ, and tied it to our call to welcome the stranger in our midst, to prepare a place for friends we’ve yet to meet, to set the table of hospitality for others. Personally, I love this song, and find that it speaks so eloquently, so poetically of many different aspects of what exactly we celebrate at Christmas. Rather than retelling the Christmas story itself, as so many of our beloved Christmas Carols do so well—think of O Little Town of Bethlehem, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Away in a Manger, or Silent Night—this newer Christmas song begins from a different place, not so much the story itself, but from somewhere deeper within us, from a place of profound longing within the human heart, the human soul, within human experience, human community, human frailty, human hope. Christ comes to us, the song imagines, as someone, something both unknown and unknowable, but still somewhat familiar. As close to us as the breaths we inhale into our body, as silent to us as the secret, inner life of plants, of matter circulating on a molecular level even. Jesus is born, the song proposes, somewhere deep inside of us. In our hearts—hearts which have been hardened by life, petrified by thousands of years of loss and longing, hearts that have been prepared and softened just enough that the birth of a child among us might contain the promise, the hope, the fullness of what we’ve been longing for far beyond the simple addition of another to come and join us on our journey. We sense it is our very being. It stirs us. Maybe we could think of this as the miraculous wonder of Christmas. How this night, this event in time, this miracle that happened two thousand years ago and continues to happen again and again makes known to us the one who has been, or who has at least seemed to be unknown and unknowable. And so we gather at night, on one of the shortest, darkest days of the year. We interrupt other activities, light candles, read familiar stories, sing songs, pray and break bread. And into this mystery, Christ comes.

He comes in love as once he came by flesh and blood and birth; to bear within our mortal frame a life, a death, a saving name for every child of earth, for every child of earth. In this later verse, we remember the centrality of Jesus coming to us through that birth in Bethlehem that we celebrate tonight, and hopefully remember as a central part of our faith story throughout the year. Luke’s gospel fixes this miraculous story of God’s love being literally born among us into a particular time in history, in a particular place, among a particular group of people. It happened when Augustus was the Roman Emperor, when Quirinius was Governor of Syria, when the Romans held their first census of the subjects in their occupied territories. Luke writes all this as if to say this is real, this is history, this really did happen. This is not fake news! But even his specificity, his particularity cannot contain the inclusivity, the all-encompassing wideness of this story. While the story the birth of Jesus is nailed down in history, it is the very definition of a timeless story. That is another paradox of Christmas—that this very specific, timebound, historical moment is simultaneously big enough, wide enough, deep enough, vast enough to include us all, to encompass. It is into our different but overlapping stories that Jesus comes—and through his coming Jesus invites us into his story, and makes his story ours. Can you see it? Can you see US in the story of Jesus’ coming in flesh and blood and birth? We are the somewhat anxious teenager just trying to muddle through the twists and turns that life hands us. This is our story. We are the honest, forthright, caring and compassionate person who simply wants to do right by other people—who will consistently and quietly do the right thing even if it means risking shame, disconnection, or exclusion from others around him. This is our story. We are strangers in a strange land—either in the sense of not quite always fitting in, not quite having found your place in the world or maybe in the more technical sense of actually being an nomad, and alien, or a refugee? This is our story. We are the kind of hard-working folks, perhaps laboring on the third shift, doing overnight hours, performing the kind of thankless, monotonous work others would rather not do? This is our story.

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We are the community that, after initially assuming or even declaring that there’s no room for a stranger among us, eventually reconsiders and rearranges things to find a comfortable, suitable, if not entirely perfect place for the newcomer. This is our story. We are the wise ones, the deep-thinking sages, the restless wanderers, constantly seeking meaning from the world around us, overcoming obstacles to do so, persistently following where others may not dare, because you truly believe you are being led, being called. This is our story. We are quiet but persistent champions of other people, resisting, persisting, insisting that goodness is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate, light is stronger than darkness, life is stronger than death This is our story. We are the ones who have been watching and waiting for the world to turn, for a reversal—even one that might just end up reversing us in the process. We are the ones who have been awaiting, anticipating, preparing for a story of tyrants trembling while heaven comes to poor, ordinary people like us. This is our story. This story—the well-told, familiar, yes, at times sentimentalized story—is our story. God made it our story when God sent Jesus to become one of us. To share our human life, to be a part of our human community, to experience all things human—good and bad, joy and sadness, life and death—and to transform our humanity in the process. This is our story. Each and every one of us, every child of earth. He comes in truth when faith is grown; believed, obeyed, adored: the Christ in all the Scriptures shown, as yet unseen, but not unknown, our Savior and our Lord, our Savior and our Lord. See, this story of the little baby is miraculous, a story of God crashing into our earthly existence, coming on our terms, coming in our form, coming to change the world, to put things right, to make all things new. It may seem unknown, unexpected, even impossible, that such a thing could be accomplished at all, let alone by a vulnerable little baby. But let me ask you what my friend asked her congregation last week: do you think that God is DONE doing impossible things? Do you think that God is done doing unexpected things? Do you, do we think that God is done doing things we’ve never seen, never imagined before? I’ll let you answer for yourself, but I believe that God is still doing unexpected, unimagined, even impossible things. In fact, God does them all the time. Thanks to this baby who came to be among us on a silent night more than 2000 years ago, we can see this. And as our faith in things unseen, unknown, and

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impossible continues to grow, to be believed, obeyed and adored, we begin to see that God’s story has always been a story of unexpectedly coming closer to us, unimaginably being for us, and impossibly striving to make us new, make us whole. This story is also inclusive, a word of salvation and hope, of promise and possibility, of reversal and restoration for every child of earth, no matter their circumstances, no matter their situation. Still, this story is timeless, a mystery and a truth that we proclaim in word and deed over and over in our lives. But we do this all the time. As our Bishop Eaton likes to say, we’re open on Sundays—every Sunday, even the one that fall on Christmas Eve. we do this all the time. We proclaim this timeless truth of Christmas: God is with us. In all things God is with us. Perhaps unseen, but not unknown. God is with us. Merry Christmas. Amen.

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