Reading
Luke 2.1–20
In this fairly normal Christmas Eve service we have also had a few reminders that for some this is a difficult and a dangerous time, in the form of pictures that have appeared in the background. Let’s bring them into the foreground and look at them a little more closely for a few minutes.
Some of our best-loved carols have an idealised picture of that first Christmas night. ‘Silent night’, we sing. And we shall sing it, soon. But was it so silent? ‘Silent Night’ is mythic rather than historic; it indicates a point of holy silence as God becomes human.
The bare fact is, Jesus was not born into an ideal world of rustic bliss. His land was occupied by the troops of the Empire. The powerful collaborated with Rome. The poor were trodden into the ground.
Yet people kept hope alive, hope that the time would come when they would see the Day of the Lord, the day when God would act to set the people free. Many assumed this would be by a violent uprising, and messiah after self-appointed messiah rebelled and paid the price.
In the midst of all this, God snuck in through the back door. God came to us in the form of a helpless infant. This was a new creation. Who could have guessed it?
Jesus would proclaim the Day of the Lord as the coming of the kingdom of God, when the first would be last, and the last first. Not a violent overthrow, but a revolution of the heart which saw the suffering of the poor all around and sought to bring God’s loving justice into being.
It was faith with its eyes open.
We need an eyes-open faith too. Let’s look at those background images, and bring them into the foreground.
‘Peace on Earth’ was the call of the angels. We hear about peace at Christmas time, but we need to seek peace all year round. In our services, we greet one another with peace. We are called to be people of peace, which flows from deep within our hearts.
On the left we have an icon of Mother and Child. On the right, a contemporary photo of a mother and child in Gaza. The choir just beautifully sang ‘O, Holy Night’. Yet is only one of these children holy? When God takes human flesh as the infant Jesus, God hallows all human flesh. In fact, God hallows all material reality.
We don’t know the fate of this child in Gaza. But this child is holy. More than 10000 children have been killed in Gaza in recent weeks. This child, this holy child, may be among them. We just don’t know.
This is the Nativity scene in Bethlehem Lutheran Church this year. Jesus is born in a bombed-out building and makes his bed in a pile of rubble. Normal Christmas services will be held this year in Bethlehem, though there will be no public decorations or festivities, in solidarity with the people of Gaza, people who are facing famine, and quite possibly genocide — while the world looks on.
This is the world into which Christ is born this Christmas, 2023. We celebrate his coming and we welcome him into our lives — while our eyes and hearts remain fully open to the suffering and horror that is occurring in his place of birth.
A friend wrote the other day asking, ‘Is anyone else conflicted about not wanting to celebrate Christmas for obvious reasons and yet wanting to provide some kind of hope for our grandchildren?’
I had to confess to being conflicted. So what can we do? We can both celebrate and resist. We do what we can in this season of Christ’s birth, a birth that changed the world forever. We can wholeheartedly celebrate the coming of Immanuel, God-with-us, into the midst of the world’s strife. We can pray for peace, and for the peacemakers; we can give as we are able to agencies helping the people of Gaza; we can advocate for peace in Gaza. We can resist the world’s violence. We can persist in hope.
We can tell the story of our Saviour Jesus, and let him be born anew in our lives. We can be witnesses to and sharers of the peace that he brings into being within our hearts and our communities. May the deep and abiding peace of Christ be always with you. Amen.
West End Uniting Church, Christmas Eve 2023
Sit with this image, look at it, gaze into it for a while… listen for the Spirit of Christ to speak to you. You will find it at
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