We are there.  Christmas has finally arrived--the tree is up, the presents are (hopefully) wrapped (any last minute wrapping will be happening as soon as you get home).  Meals are planned, and children, at least in some homes, are nestled snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums.  

 

And why?  Because the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  That’s what Isaiah said, and he knew what he was talking about--he lived during a time of military and political oppression.  Talk about darkness.  A time when the people of Israel didn’t know what was coming next, but they knew that their oppressors were in charge.  And in the midst of that, Isaiah announced the birth of a child, named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Whoever the baby was that Isaiah was talking about, for us, the baby is Jesus, the child who was God, born in Bethlehem.

 

Now, babies are always wonderful.  They embody hope for us--a baby is like pure potential, wrapped up in a cute little package.  I’m not being idealistic here--as a mother of two and another on the way, I know all about the sleepless nights and the diaper changes and the crying--but all this is true even so.   We never know what the potential of any infant is, and they fill us with wonder and excitement.  

 

So it is natural that one of the favorite images of Christianity is the baby Jesus:  just born, not yet challenging anything that we might feel attached to, not yet giving us anything to disagree with or to make us uncomfortable, instead existing as pure potential, pure hope, pure sweetness.  It is this baby, this Jesus, that is more widely accepted in our broader secular culture.  This baby Jesus seems to be entirely non-threatening.

 

Except, of course, that this baby was God--that God, in some way that our tiny human minds can never hope to fathom, was born in THAT stable, to THAT mother, at THAT time, in THAT town.  

 

And there were shepherds around the town at that time.  They were doing their jobs, out in the fields, watching the sheep, when the angel interrupted them to give them the news:  “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”  

 

The shepherds had a choice then.  They could roll over and go back to sleep.  They could stay with the sheep, doing their jobs, cursing the cold and the noise that had woken them up.  But instead they were inspired.  “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”  So they went, and they found the baby, and told Mary and Joseph about the angel.

 

We, here tonight, are like the shepherds--we could have stayed home, but we came out to celebrate the baby that was born.  He would have been born anyway, whether we or the shepherds came out.  But we, and the shepherds, heard the good news.  We, and the shepherds, came in the dark and the cold, to find the baby who was God, the baby Jesus.  May we find him tonight, and always, whenever we seek him.