Sermon Dec. 21 (Ref. to Ethiopia)

I’d like you to take a moment and hear the words of introduction to our Gospel reading for today “Luke makes clear that God comes with good news for ordinary people (Mary) from little-known places (Nazareth). This king will not be born to royalty in a palace, but to common folk in a stall.” In the midst of a gospel including angels, a virgin birth, and prophecy, I think we tend to lose sight of the ordinary that is intermingled with the extraordinary. The entire story of Christ’s birth has miraculous elements—a savior coming to earth in the form of an infant, multiple encounters with angels…in our western, modern eyes, shepherds, riding on a donkey and a baby surrounded by animals has a bit of a mysterious, glowing, Disney like quality to, doesn’t it? But this Gospel, this extraordinary good news, is for ordinary people from ordinary places. For Christ coming as Emmanuel, God with us, places God among God’s people. Not above, in some far off kingdom, but not mystically below people either. If you will indulge me, the reason I emphasize the “ordinary” in this extraordinary story comes from a radical shift in the way I have come to view Jesus’ birth since our last trip to Ethiopia to bring home our son. Before the trip, I focused on the extraordinary. But in a small hut about 2 hours outside Addis Ababa, in the midst of shepherds and subsistent farmers, I encountered Emmanuel, God with us.

In order for newly adoptive parents to gain a better understanding of their child’s birth country, we take a day trip south, to see the countryside, the people, and the type of homes our birth children lived in before they came to care. Along the 3 hour bus trip, we passed literally thousands of round wooden, thatch roof huts covered with clay. Every week, the group of newly adoptive parents stop at one of these huts and are invited in by the family. We are able to take pictures, look at the crops, and experience, for a brief moment, what life is like for those living in rural Ethiopia where most of our children were born. I imagined how strange it was for this family. A bus full of mostly white, westerners pulls up to their home every week, gets out and starts taking pictures of their ordinary life. Though I’ve seen cows and goats before, I have half a dozen pictures of these animals. I know what a pot and pan look like, but I even photographed these items. The group of 20 who have descended upon this ordinary home are welcomed to touch the walls, take pictures and basically walk around the farm for about 20 minutes. The whole experience was wonderful, but a bit bizarre. What are the Ethiopians thinking? If someone came to my home and started touching my walls, I would think them a bit strange.

The homes are about the size of my HTLC office and house an entire family or extended family, perhaps 12-15 people? live in this hut. One section of the round hut has a kitchen area, another corner is a sleeping area, though there are no beds. A fire pit is in the center of the hut. But, on the other side of the home, the cattle and sheep lay in their stable--grazing, living, providing for the family just as animals did in Jesus’ day. This was a family of shepherds. The little boy held his lamb, and other sheep grazed on grass outside the hut. These were not decrepit conditions. The people took great pride in their homes, painting designs on the outside, and creating beautiful pots which doubled as art work for the walls. I didn’t feel pity, or despair for this family, and I’m not telling you this story to evoke pity or despair from you. I felt Emmanuel, and knew what it meant for GOD to be truly WITH US, among the shepherds in a small Ethiopian hut.

For the first time, I wondered, “what is it like to hear the story of Christ’s birth if you are born in a situation similar to his, when a manger isn’t a last resort, but commonplace?” How different this story is for me as I humbly consider that my son was born in conditions not to different from those we read about in the Gospel. Emmanuel…Today, at the end of 2008, almost half the world’s population lives on a dollar a day. TODAY, half the world’s population will hear (not READ, but HEAR) the story of a baby born in a manger, visited by shepherds, to a young, scared, newly married girl, and hear the ordinary. TODAY, the shepherds living in a small hut in Ethiopia have a deeper understanding of what it was like to live in Bethlehem in Jesus’ time than we ever could.

Consider then, the story of Jesus’ birth in Jesus’ time and place. Ordinary. Do we really believe Mary was the only pregnant woman riding in on a donkey to Bethlehem that night? How then, do we hear this story and marvel in the ordinary? How do we reside with Emmanuel? How do we reconcile that justice come out of such places, born among cattle, sheep and shepherds? A dark, seemingly hopeless place springs forth hope for the world? How do we respond to an Emmanuel who dwells among a proud people who love and value their children, yet can not raise them? God’s SON, sent to a world that can not hold Him? A world that will reject Him? Yet from the simple place where cattle graze, hope is born? Christ coming as a simple boy in a manger isn’t a sign of Him lowering Himself below us, to an awful, sad place, but rather being born as so many are and were born. How different the story is to those also born among grazing cattle.

That night, I went back to our guesthouse to sleep in my bed, but I couldn’t sleep, thinking of the huts, the hard ground and cattle as I lay in my bed. I touched, cried, and prayed with members of the family of God, knowing they would go to sleep on a dirt floor that night. Our tears were the same, our sadness the same, our GOD the same. But I slept in a bed, fully aware that Emmanuel slept on a similar dirt floor next to shepherds. Knowing that Emmanuel STILL lays down next to those who sleep on dirt floors. That Emmanuel hasn’t left the scared, pregnant teenager. That Emmanuel is WITH US. In the midst of the extraordinary, let us not overlook the ordinary, the Emmanuel who unites His people, the people who were scattered in the darkness, in the wilderness, but are now joined together as the body of Christ. His light will not burn out, but shines equally bright for all the deserving, the undeserving, of every tongue and creed, every tribe and land. Emmanuel IS justice, the only justice in a barren, beautiful, broken, holy, splintered, whole, unjust, just world. Emmanuel IS the ordinary, extraordinary light that shines among us in the darkness, in the wilderness, in the barren, hopeless and hope filled places of our lives. Out of the wilderness, we hear, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Emmanuel is here. AMEN