Luke 2:8-20; December 24, 2024; Christmas Eve
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Remember the old days?
Before smart phones, Waze, and GPS?
When to get where you were going, you had to scribble down long directions on pads or sticky notes and commit them to memory. Remember that?
Remember the literal maps you would keep in your trunk, of each county in the state, that you would pull out and splay across your hood out when you got lost or needed a reminder of what comes next. Remember that?
And, remember writing down landmarks to look out for? Such that if the directions were confusing you could at least know where to turn when you saw the neon arrow for the diner; or the oddly placed yellow pole in the middle of a park?
Remember telling people, “When see you ______, make a right. You can’t miss it.”
“You can’t miss it” is what we all said.
Until of course 15 minutes would eclipse their arrival time, such that your landline would begin to ring, with a panicked voice on the other end, saying, “Hey, it me. I only put in a dime. Was it a left at the water tower or a right?”
Remember that?
I had a friend like that who only got to where he was going by noticing huge landmarks.
Directions never sufficed. Neither did maps. But give him a sign to look out for, and he was good to go.
Of course, the trick was giving him the right sign and landmark. Something he couldn’t miss.
And I imagine that was true for a lot of our friends. And indeed, probably most of us too.
For we all needed, and likely still need, loud directions, detailed notes, bright signs and landmarks to get from A to B and then to C. To get where we are heading. To get where we are supposed to be.
But here’s the funny thing, my friends.
God rarely works like that.
Actually, it seems that God likes to go about it in the exact opposite way.
For after the days of burning bushes and floods and whirlwinds, and after those stars in the sky led those magi, God apparently saw fit to guide us completely differently.
For on that most holy of nights, God chose to interact with humanity in the most basic and elementary way of all.
In how it begins for all of us here on Earth: in childbirth
But not in some noisy hospital. Nor even in a large, crowded house. But in a place so less than loud and large. In a place so small, plain, and lowly.
In but a simple manger, where there were cattle and oxen, and a poor woman who didn’t even have enough money or notoriety to secure a room in an inn.
But it was there and then, in that mean estate, with a baby wrapped in bands of cloth, that God changed the signs. The directions. The landmarks of history.
Such that we no longer get to our destination by looking for the big flashing lights, and then impossible to miss signs, following long directions, or verses committed to memory.
But rather, when we notice and trust in a little child who shall lead us.
Such that when we open our hearts in everyday places. In everyday moments. In everyday interactions with everyday people, we might there find that God’s grace abounds in every single direction because of this child.
And that, my friends, is what makes this incarnation, of God made flesh, so beautiful.
For all we need now is a heart of love that beats in rhythm with Christ’s own.
Because if that exists then God promises that we can’t miss where we are going.
Let every heart prepare him room, and all of heaven and nature sing!
Alleluia.
Amen
