And the time came “for [Mary] to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes [literally in “bands of cloth” that’s the original language]…wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger…”

The story of the birth of Jesus. So long ago and half a world away.

The birth of a figure whose life and death would bring hope to billions of people, inspire saints and prophets…on his life and death huge institutions would be built, great art and music would be created, much violence would be done and…sometimes… sometimes…justice would even roll down like waters.

The story of a birth that even we, skeptical and resisting the claims that others have made about him, still come here to remember once a year and search to discover what meaning his birth might have for our lives, in our very different time.

“and the time came for her to be delivered.”

The pregnancy was not miraculous. It occurred in the normal way. The stories of the young Mary remaining a virgin…just the result of a mistranslation…oops.

But that pregnancy did change Mary’s life…as every pregnancy I think does.

Mary had carried the child to term…9 months, give or take…she was ready to be delivered…

His was a birth like every other birth…no less miraculous but no more…

“Every night a child is born is a holy night,” that is our liberal religious take on the story.

Each child born another redeemer. Each of us born with the capacity to inspire and to forgive and to serve. Each of us with the ability to bring more love into the world.

Mary and Joseph were not welcomed when they reached Bethlehem. That is part of the story, too. “No room in the Inn.”  But there were no Hilton Inn’s back then.  So Mary and Joseph would have been given space with the animals…who were also brought in during the chill winter nights…in some home, perhaps of a relative. Think Air B&B, rather than Hilton Inn.

The hospitality industry did not exist…but hospitality certainly did. It was the way people lived.

And there would have been other women around to help Mary with the birth…midwives we call them today…but that was just what women did…and had been doing from time out of mind.

And the women would have wrapped the baby for Mary, probably tightly, to keep him warm but also to let him feel held and secure as he had been held and secure for the last 9 months as he grew.

And Mary laid him in a manger…a trough where the animals were fed, that’s what a manger is…with warm straw as bedding no doubt.

A normal birth of a child…miraculous only in so much as every birth is a miracle of hope.

So…what should we learn? What should we take from this story…for our lives? And our world?

I am so mindful that it has been just about 9 months since our world changed.

Are we ready to be delivered? Are we ready to have our lives changed again?

The virus has forced us back onto ourselves. And perhaps forced us to look at ourselves with new eyes.

Don’t you find yourself asking different questions?

What is truly important to us? To you?

What that we thought was important…that we thought just had to be…have we discovered was just a product of particular times and circumstances…and particular choices we made…

And if what we knew as normal no longer seems inevitable…we begin to ask…how do we want to live? And what was keeping us from living that way…back in the world we accepted as normal?

What was blocking us…what was holding us back? What was holding us down?

Jesus, that child born long ago, grew into a prophet…a zealot for liberation…a voice for empowerment and the promise of possibility.

He preached that love was real…that love could be real…that salvation could happen then…could happen now…if we would only open our eyes…and our hearts.

He preached that we can unblock the power of love. He tried to tell us…in parable and in story…that it was the human family that has placed obstacles that keep love tightly bound…”you who are without sin” he said, “cast the first stone” ”it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven” he preached.

And he gave a new commandment…“Love one another as I have loved you.” Love one another.

We have heard those phrases so often, perhaps they have lost their power for us. It happens you know. Language can grow stale.

So remember what the stories say he did… He modelled forgiveness and compassion. For the woman at the well, who had made bad choices. For tax collectors and Roman soldiers… Forgiveness and compassion even for them.

And he made Peter, who betrayed him three times in one night… Peter, that flawed, disappointing disciple…he made Peter the rock on which the church would be built. He modelled compassion so that we might show compassion to ourselves and to one another.

He taught that all we have to do is remove the obstacles we have put in its’ path and the love would flow…the love was there then and the love is here now.

And the practice we need, he preached, was to nurture that love and to build it into the way we live and the way our world works…

He preached that love…charity the King James calls it…that love could flow within us and among us…if we would simply clear channels for them in our spirit…in our hearts.

We simply have to unlock and unblock what is holding us down, what is imprisoning too many of us…what is constricting the hearts of all of us…

Our work…Jesus taught…was to get ourselves ready for love to blossom in us. For love to be born again in us.

That is why he spoke so often about children. Because he knew that we know what love feels like.

We know what it feels like to be wrapped with bands of cloth, held in warmth and security and care…almost all of us do.

And when the world tears children from their parents’ arms…whether that is on the auction block or in the detention camps at the border…that is a sin…because it violates the fundamental…the bedrock trust that all of us deserve to know.

We know what it feels like to be held. That is living in our memory…as the quartet sang.

We’ve been there…felt that…many of us have been that for others…

This is no mystery…but it is a miracle.

When we are the bearers of love and the sharers of love…

When we make of our lives a manger in which life can be allowed to thrive.

When we make of our world a manger…the focus not greed…or power…not control…not punishment…capital punishment or otherwise…

When we make of our world a manger or…or would that be an Eden?

I know…I know…I’m being idealistic.

We argue over safety nets…over unemployment benefits…and stimulus packages and all of those are important…don’t misunderstand me.

But we also need a much more basic renewal. We need a change of heart.

And the world? The world may take another 9 months…until enough of us have received the vaccine…until some reasonable level of safety seems certain…

And so we have more months…to live through and to prepare…to get ready…to start living the way we want to live.

I believe we are being called…I believe there are prophets among us and the voice of prophecy within us…calling us to be ready and to prepare…not for a return but for the unblocking and unlocking of all the things that have held us captive…all those things that have held us down…

That is what we need to inaugurate in this season.

There is some dismantling that has to be on our to do list.

We need to dream not of simply returning to what we knew…because what we knew was very flawed…

We need to dream of a liberation that we can only glimpse. Justice, equity and compassion that we can barely describe. But if we do not dream it…we will never get ready to live it.

We need to be ready… to be delivered, as the gospel says, of the love we hope to share with the world…

Just as Mary was delivered of that child that became the hope of so many.

Because our time, too, has come. We are due. We are overdue.

And it is up to us to allow love to be born again.

Amen

Topics: Mystery