Let us pray.

At your birth, Lord Jesus, bless us as we come to Bethlehem,
where animals and angels, shepherds and seekers,
together behold your face.
Here snow becomes straw and frost becomes flowers,
as winter melts into everlasting spring.
In our holy Christmas, in this festival of Christ,
give us the riches of your poverty.
Show us the power of your weakness,
as we join with the angels in proclaiming your praise:
Glory in heaven and peace on earth, now and forever.  Amen.

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God the Word, from Jesus Christ the Word made flesh, and from the holy & life-giving Spirit who sets the Word to music in us.  Amen.

An admission on this holy night: I’ve become quite fascinated by the internet phenomenon known as Facebook this year. (& my husband Christopher would say that’s just a bit of an understatement.) Go figure: that this grown-up kid who, in elementary school in the late 1960s and 70s would consistently get checks on his report card for being unable to avoid unnecessary talking in the classroom, would now — 40 years later — be so thoroughly mesmerized, completely intrigued, and totally distracted, by this self-described “social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them.”

After all, I’ve been giving status updates on my life to whomever would listen ever since first grade, starting with my next-desk-over neighbor, not to mention being so very curious and inquisitive about the goings-on in the lives of those around me.  Facebook can be — if you let it — sort of be like keeping a public diary of what you’re up to, what your interests are, what you’re thinking about politics and current events, and who you are becoming. Facebook is heaven both for those of us who enjoy disclosing a bit of ourselves to the wider world as well as for those of us who enjoy looking into and being connected with the lives of others.

Tonight, against the backdrop of a political scenario including major players on the stage of the then-known world — Caesar Augustus of the Roman Empire and Quirinius, the Syrian governor — against this backdrop of the world powers at the time, comes the story of the way the creator of the universe chose to disclose the divine self with the world.   In contrast with political power and prestige, God enters the scene with a status update from Bethlehem: ”Just born in a barn. This is no picnic down here. Hope I can get some sleep.”

Vulnerability. God enters into our humanity and makes it God’s own in the most messiest of ways: livestock and their unique aromatic presence, stressed out young parents still reeling from an unplanned pregnancy, crowds of people on the road and no place to stay, a feeding stall in some backwater Palestinian bump in the road called Bethelehem, and a gang of questionable characters who made their living by letting their sheep graze on someone else’s property. Put them all together, and it spells disclosure — it’s the way God chooses to make God’s self known: in the lowly, in the impossible, in powerlessness, in humility, in the imperfect, in the uncertain and questionable, in the mess of it all.

And somehow, as if to put a caption beneath the whole picture or, in keeping with Facebook, a status update at the top of screen, the message of the angels is tonight’s status update: ”Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom God favors.” In other words, God is in God’s heaven and in this messy birth pulls us up out of our human weakness and redeems us. And while we remain on this old, imperfect earth which seems hell-bent on hating and excluding, dividing and fighting, neglecting and killing, while we call this planet home, God comes down and in Jesus the babe of Bethlehem and the Christ of the cross becomes Emmanuel, God-With-Us, in the mess of it all, bringing peace and making peace, bringing love and making love out of the likes of poor ornery and ordinary creatures like you and like me.

This morning as I was listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols coming from King’s College in Cambridge, England, I was moved by the text of a carol which was commissioned by the college for this year’s annual service, written by Berthold Brecht and set to music by British composer Dominic Muldowney, entitled, “Mary.”

The night when she first gave birth
Had been cold.  But in later years
She quite forgot
The frost in the dingy beams and the smoking stove
And the spasms of the afterbirth at dawn.
But above all else she forgot the bitter shame
Common among the poor
Of having no privacy.
That was why in later years it became a holiday for all.

The shepherd’s coarse chatter fell silent.
Later they became the Kings of the story.
The wind, which was icy cold,
Turned into the song of the angels.
Of the hole in the roof that let in the frost nothing was left
But the star that peeped through it.
All this was due to the vision of her son, who was very
Fond of singing.
He lived with the poor
And was in the habit of mixing with kings
And of seeing a star above his head at night-time.

Sisters and brothers, may the God who stepped into human history this night and invaded our cosmic privacy with grace and truth in the face of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, may that God and that face be your comfort and joy, and the guiding star above your head, now and always. Amen.