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Manger Child

MANGER CHILD

TEXT: LUKE 2:1-10

 

AN AMAZING EVENT IN THE WASHINGTON, D.C. METRO
The young violinist emerged from the Metro at the L'Enfant Plaza Station in Washington, DC and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. .... He was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

In the middle of the morning rush hour ... the violinist performed 6 great classical pieces, 1097 people passed by. Almost all of them ... mid-level bureaucrats on their way to work. Each passerby had a quick choice to make ..., a choice familiar to commuters in any urban area. .. Stop and listen? Hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation? Throw in a buck, just to be polite? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty?

None of the commuters knew that the fiddler was one of the world's leading classical musicians, Joshua Bell. Bell is an acclaimed virtuoso, who filled the house at Boston Symphony Hall just 3 days before where some seats go for $100. One composer said of him: "He plays like a god". And on this Friday morning, he was playing the instrument of the gods, a three and a half million dollar Stradivarius. [But he was playing it like an ordinary street musician in the D..C. Metro.] The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. It caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. In this musician's hands, it sobbed and laughed and sang-ecstatic, sorrowful, ... adoring, ... triumphal, sumptuous.

So, what do you think happened?

AN EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR
This was an experiment arranged by the Washington Post. A reporter recorded the event. In the first 3 minutes, 63 people walked past without seeming to notice. ... Joshua Bell played for 45 minutes, 7 people stopped to listen for at least a minute. 27 people gave money. For the most part, he was ignored in the rush of daily business.

A woman named Stacy recognized him. She had attended a free concert of Bell's three weeks earlier. "And here he was, she said, the international virtuoso, sawing away, begging for money."
She had no idea what was going on, but she stayed until the end. Stacy told the reporter: "It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington. Joshua Bell was standing there playing in rush hour, and people were not stopping, not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters! I was thinking, Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"

ANOTHER AMAZING EVENT THAT WENT UNNOTICED
Well, Stacy, maybe it could have happened in Bethlehem. In a similar event a couple millennia ago, God played a trick on the commuters just like the Washington Post did. God staged a symphony in Bethlehem; the music was heavenly-almost like angels singing. But except for the attention of a few smelly shepherds, it kind of slipped by unnoticed. Because really, who would have expected anything special to happen in a rural, blue-collar neighborhood in a backwater town far from the center of civilization in Rome. Who could imagine that a child of any importance would have such an ignoble beginning-a feeding trough for cattle, a cave where animals sheltered.

The Washington Post draws this conclusion about its experiment with Joshua Bell. "Life is out of balance. We have the wrong priorities. If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that-then what else are we missing?"*

I think we may draw that same conclusion about our Christmas story. In the midst of the dogged busyness of our lives, God is playing us a tune full of love and passion and glory. And pleading, "Please notice!" As the wonderful line in "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" has it:

And ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way, with painful steps and slow,
Look now! For glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.

But I don't want to make this a sermon just about the commuters who rush by, too absorbed by the cares of the world to pay attention. I want it to be about the God who would engineer this scenario, the God who sneaks into this world as a child.
WHAT DOES LUKE'S CHRISTMAS STORY SAY ABOUT GOD?
What is that all about? There's deep theological and political meaning behind a story that charms adults and children.

It begins with the powerful-the policy-makers, the empire. The ones who can command the little people to take time off from work, make a long journey by foot, undertake expenses on the way, all for the privilege of more paying taxes.

Now, Luke is writing after the death of Jesus and probably after the fall of Jerusalem. He knows what Rome is capable of. His context is the despair of a people oppressed by a brutal empire. Luke's holy family are just a couple of the nameless, dispensable peasants shoved around by the powers that be. And with them, in this telling, Luke is creating a shadow-story-a challenge to the empire that is both clever and daring.

The child born of a virgin, the heavenly announcement-"Glory to God in the highest," these are images from the cult of the emperor. These were qualities attributed to Caesar, in fact, "Glory to God in the highest," were the exact words used to hail Caesar as a god. When Luke makes these claims about Jesus and sets his birth among the people on the lowest rung of the social ladder, he is saying that this is where God can be found. You do not have to be in the court of Caesar to touch God. You can be kneeling in the straw and muck of a cattle shed.

It is said that St. Francis of Assisi tried to get that message to his church when he constructed the first manger scene. He took all the finely carved altar furnishings out of his church and replaced it with straw bales. He brought in real oxen and sheep. On Christmas Day, when the worshipers came, the church not only looked like the cattle shed, it smelled like one too. His parishioners were scandalized.

THE SCANDALOUS MEANING OF JESUS
Ah, and that becomes the word the Apostle Paul loves to use about Jesus. Scandal! Everything about him goes against popular wisdom and common sense which says God is high and mighty. God abides with the rich and is interpreted by the educated elite. But Jesus was none of those. From the moment of his birth, he is the anti-emperor, the ruler of the realm of spirit that takes on the powers of death and oppression.

That means two things to me. First, the birth of Jesus is a sign of an alternative world. A realm where the vulnerable child is cherished, where shepherds and the short-order cooks at Burger King get a special divine message delivered to them, and where peace comes to people, all of whom are favored by God.

JESUS IS BORN IN ORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCES, IN LESS THAN IDEAL CONDITIONS
And because this story is set in such ordinary circumstances, it invites us to enter it. To take a part. We belong in it, we are part of making it happen.

And finally, it means that the Jesus who is born in less than ideal conditions can be born over and over again in our less than ideal conditions.
In diminishing health, in sadness, in the frustration of a job coming to an end and nothing on the horizon, in loneliness, and in fractured relationships. God is there in our less than ideal conditions.

I find it wonderful that the God became flesh and was first presented to us human beings in a manger-in a bin to hold feed. The word has the same root as the French word manger-to eat. God is born among us offering sustenance.

Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you.

Stop, listen for the glorious music in the clatter of the subway.

Rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.


* Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out. By Gene Weingarten. Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page W10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html