A Friend from the Streets
A Friend from the Streets, Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve, December 24, 2011
The Polaroid’s colors have faded to pale yellows and pinks. The photo was taken in the early 70’s. My infant brother is shown in Mom’s arms. We were crammed tightly on a long, tattered couch, on the floor, on its armrests and in each other’s laps. Grandmother smiled encircled by her children and grandchildren. The Christmas photo didn’t include everyone. Dear Aunt Hazel was likely in the kitchen, Uncle Corky out smoking, my father probably in the corner trying to fix the TV or maybe taking the photo. Eight children, 7 children-in-laws, and dozens of grandchildren celebrated Christmas in my Grandmother’s small, farm house. Every year, we squeezed together for a Christmas photo.
My mother has an album of Christmas Photos. As you turn the pages you see us grow up. Faces, heights and girths change. Grandchildren hold their own children. Stranger’s faces appear in some, maybe Grandmother’s church friends, possibly neighbors, maybe even people off the street. In all of them Grandmother Winnette smiles in the middle.
Her Christmas command brooked no dissent. “My family will gather on Christmas day, all of you, in our home.” The grandchildren, great grands and even great great grands moaned leaving behind freshly opened toys. Every year she made pecan-adorned fudge that sat in dishes throughout the house, and the aluminum tree was surrounded by mounds of gender-specific gifts – Hanes briefs for boys, and panties for girls.
There is a single parallel between Grandmother Winnette and the Roman Emperor Augustus, the command for the family to gather together. She called for family time; he called for an imperial census. The enslaved peoples travelled to their birth places to be counted. The Emperor didn’t gaze with love upon his empire. Rather his gaze was one of exploitation and greed. The prisoners were counted so that a maximum tax might be taken to fund the Empire’s foreign wars and the aristocracy’s affluence. The human parallel ends after the gathering command, and a divine paradox takes over. God takes bad circumstances and contexts and uses them for holy purposes.
In the fullness of that moment in Bethlehem God drew the human family together. In the mythic imagination of our faith, God calls together the world family and we pose for a Christmas photo. Centered in the photo is an infant child vulnerable and asleep in a manger. The child looks human, smells human, sounds human – the child is human, fully a child of the world. And the child is filled with divine wonder - the infant looks God, smells God, and sounds God for God accommodates God’s self to us becoming human.
Flanking the beautiful child in this photo are Mary and Joseph. They were friendly strangers from Bethlehem’s street. They needed a warm place to welcome a child into the world. A family – like yours, opened their home and hearts. Instead of gathering around a tattered couch for the family photo, Mary and Joseph and the baby gather around an animal’s food trough.
God’s entire family gathers with them to celebrate God’s love. The ancient faithful ones gather: Moses, Sarah, Becca and Esther and David and Samson. In later photos we see Peter, Paul, Mary, Timothy and Lydia. Today we see Archie, Laurie, Drew, Faye, Arthur, Mark, Carol, Zara, Jessica – we see each other and each of us has a Christmas star-like, Pentecost flame dancing above our heads.
Panning out see nativity beasts: sheep, cows, doves, and donkeys. Zooming in the animals of Noah’s ark cavort in the photo’s depths. Can you see Isaiah’s promised wolf and lamb sleeping together? Behind the stable roof Bethlehem’s homes light up. Within them notice the families include the good, the bad, the lovely and the lost. All are invited home. The camera’s lens even catches soldiers of Rome, and the corner of the governor’s robe. Both oppressor and oppressed freeze and smile for God’s photograph of promised Gospel, up-side-down, justice-making change.
The Christmas Angels sang Good News for all people, they sang a message of inclusion, of joy and of God’s amazing grace. Regardless of life’s circumstances, regardless of health, regardless of misdeeds, regardless of pain, regardless of death, regardless of whether we think we belong, or whether we are told we don’t belong - the very image of God within us, that beautiful divine spark is enflamed by God drawing us again and again into the worldwide family of Christmas. We are drawn to the manger, to the font, to the table to receive God’s gifts: refreshing, resurrecting, hope-filled, gifts of God’s wholeness.
But wait, wait– I left out the guests of honor. In God’s Christmas photo the shepherds shy and glorious glow with happiness. They made it first. Trusting the angel’s good news, they danced to the stable singing the angel’s song that they mattered to God too. They, society’s outcasts, the mistrusted, the lowly were ushered in close. Close to the manger are the homeless women of Rainbow place. They stand close to Mary for she understands – she was a friend from the street. The men of Chase House sit around Joseph. The ill children served at the Kaseman Clinic peer over the manger’s brim. The refugees of the worlds’ wars secure seats by the manger. And they all smile for the camera glowing with hope. The melody of the angel’s song of God’s value rings in their ears.
Praise God we are all invited into this photograph of Christmas. In the Gospel of Matthew the Magi - smart, wealthy, strong, and well-dressed enter with the gifts of their bounty. God may favor the poor, but God delights in the generous.
So, can you see it? Can you see the series of Christmas photographs where God calls family together despite Emperor or Corporate greed, despite wars, despite recession and hardship, despite the hierarchies of our world’s value, despite grief, and worry, and fear? Sitting at the center of every Christmas photograph is Immanuel, the child named – God with us.
We are invited to celebrate the bright, shining, glorious light of the Christ Child, he beams forth the first light of Creation, the flood’s Rainbow, the Pentecost Flames, and the high held candles of Silent Night; he beams with God’s love for the world. Do you see the world embracing Christmas photo? See it? Be it! We are in it this lovely night. Squeeze in tightly. Smile. Say cheese. Amen.