by the Very Rev. Jered Weber-Johnson
Watch the sermon recording on YouTube here.
It was in the spring of our 8th grade year when a group of my friends petitioned our parents to let us camp on our own at the edge of a popular swimming hole on a lake some 6 or 7 miles outside of our town. The spot we chose was a few hundred yards from the main road, surrounded by trees, with no civilization of any type for miles. We would be on our own and in the wild. Reluctantly our parents caved to our persistent asking, and at the appointed time we arrived at the trailhead to carry our poorly packed and profuse camping gear down the hill to the shore. Those whose parents were abundantly chill about the arrangement let their sons bike out to the spot. Those of us whose parents had more than a few misgivings drove us, themselves, checking the campsite, insisting on helping set up camp, and offering final admonitions. Then they were gone.
I don’t recall much of what we did to pass the evening, some shenanigans (a can of soda thrown in the fire to see if it would explode – it did), but mostly wholesome things like skipping rocks and carving sticks for s’mores. When nightfall came we made a pact that none of us would sleep in a tent. Instead we circled our sleeping bags around the fire and decided to camp out under the stars. As the skies darkened, the lights of our town were so far away that no matter how our eyes strained, the glow of civilization could not even be seen against the velvet blackness of the night. It was pitch dark and as the moon rose and the stars came out, a pack of wolves began to howl down the shore from us, their songs ringing out an eerie chorus across the placid waters, unseen in the night, but too close for comfort. To say that we were afraid that night would be a serious understatement. We were terrified. Mind you, this was before the era of cell phones, and so we were wholly and utterly alone, armed only with pocket knives and exploding soda cans. So, we stoked the fire and pulled our sleeping bags closer together. Slowly, much to my dismay, one by one my comrades drifted off to sleep, and I spent the night huddled deep in my sleeping bag, eyes trained on the fire willing it to ward off the prowling predators, deftly afraid to look out into the unyielding darkness, fearing that at any moment the firelight would glint off of the eyes of an unwelcome visitor.
Such is my context for the fear and terror of the shepherds in Luke’s very familiar Christmas story, keeping watch over their flocks by night, in the hills around Bethlehem. I think too of my wife’s late Grandpa Bob, as a young boy all of 8 or 9 years old, whose family dispatched him to the fields beyond their rural North Dakota home to shepherd their small flock of sheep. So traumatic were those experiences, he shared them only a few times with his children who in turn told his grandchildren, the deep fear that would accompany him as he sat out late into the night watching over these defenseless animals, eyes ever straining into the darkness keeping lookout for coyotes and cougars, wondering what, if anything, he could do as a small boy to protect his flock. Then I think of those shepherds, so often depicted as rough and tough, the unwashed, worldworn cowboys of their day, and imagine them rather as children, more akin to the young Biblical David, forced by their status as youngest and least, to the most menial and unsavory of tasks to ward off predators and keep the night watches.
Isn’t that the way of the world so often, that to preserve the comfort and ease of the most powerful or the most privileged, we force the vulnerable among us into places of deep fear and anxiety, out into spaces of danger and trauma and even violence. It is these, the poorest and those who live at the margins whose eyes are ever straining for the unseen danger, the unexpected medical bill, the unanticipated and cruel cuts to supportive services, the calculated shift in policy that places their lives in the crosshairs of an empire.
That is what empire teaches. It trains our eyes to watch the shining glory it has built at the center of its own world. It commands us to look for where the power sits, to glue our eyes to the glamorous, brightly lit middle of it all. Empire pulls our attention with the glint of the sword, the sparkling chandeliers of ballrooms, and the flash of pristine marble from the facades of towering buildings. Look over here, it beckons us. Look and be amazed at the glitter of gold. Look with awe at the glowing center where those with access gather. Look on the bright armor and blazing torches of battalions and be afraid. After all, fear is the currency of empires, and so it must hold our gaze in its brightness and train our attention, and teach us what we must fear.
But the Christmas story is different. It pulls our focus. “In those days,” says Luke, “a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.” It begins in the center, with the emperor. But it moves immediately out to a province, Syria, where Quirinius is governor, still basking in the glow of empire, but moving away from the center toward the margins. Then almost to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, further and further from the glowing center of it all. And, here we are told of two peasants, unwed and pregnant, the vulnerable citizens of an empire they did not choose, forced to move their lives and their bodies to accommodate the demands of the powerful, searching for a place to stay. Here, yet again there isn’t even space in a home or an inn. So the story shifts one step further away, out to the shadows of the stable, and a child is born, and laid in a feeding trough. Out here, says the gospel, out here at the farthest reaches of the known world, out on the very uttermost margins, in the shadows, in the dark, this is where the world is changed. Look here, and do not be afraid. Instead, rejoice.
The angelic hosts, as if to underscore this story, proclaim this good news, that Jesus, the Messiah, the Lord, is born, to a ragtag group of shivering young shepherds! Do not be afraid, for this is good news of great joy for all people. Look away from the fearful, brightly lit, center of empire. Look instead, says Luke, at Jesus, poor, vulnerable, a newborn, lying among the animals, with his migrant parents. This, at the edge of everything, as far from the powerful center as you can get, here in the quiet, away from the machines of empire, unknown and unseen, this is where your eyes and your heart and your whole attention should look.
There is something powerful in retraining our gaze, to look here at this scene of Jesus and the holy family, to the simplicity and stillness of their world at rest, in the shadow. Looking here holds the possibility of reshaping our imaginations to comprehend hope as embodied in the most humble and human of forms.
In her powerful book, This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley does not shy away from naming the fearful realities facing the world and especially those whose bodies and identities would make them marginalized in a world dominated by empires. But, she also acknowledges that sometimes it isn’t fear itself that is the enemy. She writes,
“Whenever my friend’s ma was fed up, she used to mumble, I might be limpin through the valley of the shadow of death . . . What I skipped over in the psalm she was referencing time and time again is the sacred praxis it begins with. The psalmist says, “He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters” [Psalm 23:2].
I find it beautiful that in the face of terror, God doesn’t bid us toward courage as we might perceive it. Instead, he draws us toward fear’s essential sister, rest—a sister who is not meant to replace fear but to exist together in tension and harmony with it. For fear’s origin is not evil, though evil certainly wields it against our souls daily.”
Drawing our gaze out of the bright and busy machinations of empire, the source of so much fear in our world, and focusing anew our attention of the restful, quiet, and peaceful vision of that first Christmas is an essential rebalancing of the world, to make us capable of living with hope, care for one another. Luke says, the shepherds, upon seeing this sight, returned to their fields rejoicing, glorifying God for all they had seen and heard.
On that lake shore lo those many years ago as a fearful young tween in the wild, I remember noticing that one of my friends had stayed awake through the night with me, that he had kept the fire burning and was quietly keeping company with me through the night. And, suddenly, aware of his presence and care, the quiet constant company he had given through the dark watches, I found myself able to look away from the bright center of the fire. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the early morning, slowly the forms of the farther shore took shape in shadow. The darkened sky, spangled with the last stars of night seemed to pulse with the luminous glow of the whole cosmos, and on the horizon was the promise of dawn and it was as if the world was transformed, from a haven of fear into the glorious source of all goodness, a transcendent place of deep mystery and profound wonder. This night, as we celebrate the gift of God with us, the birth of Jesus, humble and in a manger, out at the darkened edge of the world on the margins and in the shadow, we are bid again to look away from the center of empire, to claim hope, to rejoice and be not afraid, for unto us a child is born, this blessed and holy night!
