Christmas

[cappie]

They came to be registered in a census decreed by a ruler with a different name and a foreign throne—one who knew few of their number, and who had likely never stood where they stood or stopped to consider the centuries of blood and prayer and supplication that cried out from the many stones of their particular wilderness.

But nonetheless they obeyed, this man and this woman, and they came to be counted.   Counted as fixed commodities of an empire that did not suspect and could not comprehend the infinite possibility carried in their flesh—a child, yes, but also a long history of survival, and an ancient promise of dignity yet to be delivered in its fullness.  A fullness that is a story, not a sum.

 As we travel the well-worn roads of our own ancestors, something else must be revealed to us, something else must arrive. Something—or someone—else must come, not just to be counted, but to amount to something more than the sum of our parts. Something that does not simply inform us, but that transforms us.

And today, it does. He does. The surprise addition to the census; the child whom no one was counting on.

If we wish to begin to understand the significance of Jesus’ birth and how this Christmas gospel begins to counter our empires of counting, we should take note of how his arrival is heralded. Not by an agent of the Roman government, but by an angel of light, by one who emanates from the expanse of a heavenly host more numerous than the stars. “A multitude,” Luke’s narrative tells us, and the Greek word is plethos, which connotes a number so large it is difficult to quantify.

And then we are told that this divine plethora delivers its message, not to  the bureaucrats of Caesar, but to the shepherds in the fields. They are figures who are themselves barely considered countable, roaming elusively among fields and pastures at the edge of respectability or safety. These nameless, numberless shepherds are given a message that would likely have been ignored by larger, more august bodies: that the long-sought answer, the long-awaited promise kept, is to be found in the most unlikely of places—in a manger, in a child, in the smallest fraction of possibility, nearly obscured by the margin of our errors.

The angels no one can count and the shepherds nobody bothers to count—these are God’s chosen messengers.  

And yet this baby, this Jesus—he is perhaps the greatest surprise of all. For he is not just one of many, he is the One who made many. He is the One who, as the Psalmist says, determines the number of the stars and gives to all of them their names. He is the One who has, for the sake of love, come to be counted, to submit himself to the census of our fears, to stare all our empires in the eye and forgive them, for they know not what they do. And on this day of his birth the ways in which he will do all of this are not yet revealed to us, but the story is set into motion, and the countdown to our transformation has begun anew in his newborn flesh.

 Just when we become overburdened by the weight of expectations or regrets or the other ways, we fear we don’t quite measure up, suddenly there is a burning star, and the old story retold, and although we may feel like just one of many,  we remember that there is a fullness meant for us, too, and it is still seeking us, even now. It has a name and a face that we can call upon even when nothing else makes sense.

It is Jesus, and he, too, has come to be counted. And even more importantly, he has come to be counted upon by you and by me and by all who seek a life that is more than the sum of its parts.

And like the shepherds who first received this good news, Christmas is also an invitation for us to stand up, to go forth, and to be counted upon as well. To be counted upon as those who keep telling the story, who keep seeking the signs of a new Kingdom being born, and who will keep working to make this new Kingdom something more than a fleeting dream in the night.

 Christmas is the enduring moment when that search was—and continues to be—answered.  All we must do is seek him, and hold him, and stand with him.

And when we do, the story will reach its fullness all over again in our lives, just as it did on that night in Bethlehem: the ancient promise fulfilled, and the innumerable host of heaven singing its song, and something measureless welling up within us to be revealed.

And what is it? It is Love, having come to be counted.

 

[little2add]

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new born King,
peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
join the triumph of the skies;
with th’ angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new born King!”