Sermon:
December 19, 1999

Scripture:
Matthew 1:18-21
Luke 1:43-56

Everybody wants to talk about the baby, but nobody wants to talk about the birth. Except, that is, a group of women around a coffee pot who figured they knew me well enough to inquire as to which details I did know, and which I didn't. Their questions had to do with the gynecological details of the nativity story. Apparently, they had been talking about Christmas and drifted into the subject of childbirth. Either that, or they had been talking about childbirth and drifted into the subject of Christmas. More to the point, they were interested in birth trivia ... matters of labor and delivery.

• Did Mary have a long labor (often customary with the first child)?
• Was it a hard labor?
• Was it an assisted labor?
• Did anybody boil water?
• Assuming that midwifery was common, did Mary had a midwife?
• Did Mary deliver naturally?
• Was Joseph in the room?
• If so, was he of any practical help?

Midway through this line of inquiry, it became clear to me that these women were only mildly interested in the answers I was making, but were totally enjoying the discomfort I was feeling. For gynecology has never been my long suit. Which is why I consider myself lucky that, in 35 years of ministry, I have never been asked those questions again.

But I suspect that were such information available, most of you wouldn't want to know it. I speak from experience. Over 20 years ago, I preached an Advent sermon on the choices available to Joseph in the wake of Mary's announced pregnancy. Following which, several people objected to my use of the word "pregnancy." At that time, it was perfectly acceptable to say "great with child" in the sanctuary. But anything else came under the "TMI" label ... as in "too much information."

John Wimmer, writing in the Christian Century, suggests that most of us couldn't stomach anything close to the reality of the original manger scene. Therefore, we have allowed artists to clean it up for us. Even the animals appear to have showered before entering the stable. Wimmer goes on to recall that a few years ago, one of this country's major denominational magazines featured a full-color cover, tastefully portraying Mary as being eight and a half months pregnant. The uproar over showing Mary "with child" was so great that the magazine's editors considered apologizing in print. To this day, I have never seen another visualization of an obviously pregnant Mary. What the editors discovered is that many Christians not only prefer a nativity without a natural father. Many Christians also prefer a nativity without a natural mother.

So I will speak no more of labor. I wasn't there. I don't have the faintest idea how it went. But I will speak of delivery. For "delivery" is an important biblical word. Whenever the Bible talks about a woman being delivered of a child, it also talks (in the same breath) about the deliverance of a people. Forrester Church makes this point when he writes:

Consider Sarah. Consider Hager. Consider Mary. All have this in common. Their delivery is announced by a messenger of God. And with each delivery comes, not only the child, but the promise of deliverance for other children. Sarah delivers Isaac. Hager delivers Ishmael. Each, in turn, becomes the father/deliverer of a great nation. And Mary delivers Jesus, who is (of course) the deliverer attested to by the prophets. Delivery and deliverance: the messages belong together. A mother will be delivered of a child. And the child shall be an agent of deliverance for the people.

Listen to the words of prophecy spoken in Isaiah:

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep, deep darkness, on them has light shined. They will rejoice as people rejoice when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of their burden, and the rod of their oppressor, thou hast broken. For every boot of the trampling warrior, and every garment rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for the fire.

That's powerful language. That's deliverance language. That's language that will get the blood stirring and the pulse racing. That's language which will fuel hope ... especially if you find yourself singing in the choir of the world's victims. What an image. What a set of images. The yoke of the oppressor ... broken. The rod of the oppressor ... broken. The boots of the oppressors ... burned. The bloody uniforms of the oppressors ... burned. Deliverance! And how shall it come about? Well, what does Isaiah say next? What are his words? Do you know them? Of course you do.

I can hear the sopranos beginning the great anthem with them now. I can see the tenors sucking deep for breath as they wait to join the sopranos ... knowing that they will need more than an average amount of wind if they are going to make it to the end of the line. I can see the altos and basses biding their time ... given that each, in due season, will be invited to join the sopranos and tenors. And I can hear Chris Hall urging everybody to lighten up. For if the initial entrances are made "full force," there will be nothing left to build and no place for the music to go.

Ah, the words. Of course you know them: "For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given." All this deliverance talk about breaking yokes and burning boots suddenly dissolves into delivery talk: "For unto us a child is born" ... delicately.

Let's keep this simple. We have two texts this morning. Both of them are deliverance texts. One comes from Matthew. The other from Luke. First things first. Let's start with Matthew.

Joseph, son of David (said the angel), do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus. He will deliver his people from their sins.

Delivered from sin. That's it. Or if not delivered from sin, at least delivered from the hold that sin has over our lives. Goodness knows, since the birth of Jesus, sin has not gone away. How well goodness knows that. Here and there, a few people are still being led into sin. The rest of us manage to find it by ourselves. If someone is really "making a list and checking it twice" this Christmas, he will probably find the name "Ritter" listed in both columns ... under the headings "Naughty" and "Nice." Yours too.

Some of my friends in the divinity business believe that we have lost our sense of sin. Some of you think so, too. At least five times a year, somebody asks me: "Whatever became of sin?" ... as if the word had disappeared from the earth (or the church). But it hasn't. We still say it. And we still do it. Sin, that is.

Peter Gomes, my colleague at Harvard, agrees with me. Writes Peter: "In my years of ministry here, now nearly 30 years in this place of tender egos and tough minds, I have never encountered anyone with an inadequate doctrine of sin. All people at Harvard have to do is look into their mirrors (and their hearts) to know the reality of what the old line evangelicals once called the `sin-sick soul.' No, our sins are not abstractions. Most of us can name them faster than we can name our blessings."

And most of us can, too ... even though we hide them well. I once knew an old lady who, when ill, would never go to the doctor. She always said: "I'll go when I feel better." She was same old lady who finally agreed to hire a housekeeper and then, on the day before the housekeeper was to come, would clean the house from top to bottom. When asked why, she was heard to reply: "I can't let her see me like this."

But sooner or later, even the best of us get careless ... or sloppy. Meaning that everything shows. And everyone sees. Even if we be the last. To see, I mean.

I was talking with one of our inner city pastors about the connection (in his neighborhood) between the condition of poverty and the sin of stealing. He said that, among the poorest people, stealing is so much a part of surviving, that the church's teaching against it loses much of its power. In other words, stealing is necessary. Thus, by implication, it can't be wrong. But, as my friend pointed out, if you say (often enough) that something "can't be wrong," you talk yourself into believing that it "must be right."

He then went on to tell of a young man who became a convert of his preaching, to the point that this fellow became very active in the church. One day, during Bible study, the young man (filled-to-overflowing with his new faith) blurted out: "Reverend, you mean the world to me. So anything you need ... anything this church needs ... anything at all ... just name it and I'll steal it for you."

But the worst part about his offer (said my friend) was not how blatant it was, but how attractive it was. For my friend could think of a lot of things his struggling little church needed. Which called to mind the day my wife almost bought a "hot" computer over the phone in response to a newspaper ad. She thought the lady was a little vague about certain specifics. But she didn't figure it out until she asked, "Does it have a color monitor?", and the lady hemmed and hawed before saying: "Well, the screen is green when you turn it on."

Even the most innocent of us gets caught up in the sins of the world. Which is why we need a deliverer who will save us from them. But we also need a deliverer who will save us from oppression. Which brings us to Luke. He puts his words on the lips of Mary. They are part of Mary's classic song, often called "The Magnificat." This is the song that begins, so beautifully, with a young maid singing: "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior." But then this sweet young thing, barely into her teens, goes on to sing:

He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted those of low degree.
The hungry, he has filled with good things.
And the rich, he has sent empty away.

That's heavy stuff. That's also scary stuff. But it's all a part of our heritage ... going back further than many of us know.

Last Tuesday, I spent the better part of the afternoon talking to various groups of second graders at West Maple Elementary School. This was my second year at West Maple. Apparently, I did well enough last year so they asked me back. My invitation read: Give our second graders an introduction to some of the basics of Christianity, using the Christmas story as a point of entry. Which is a daunting task at West Maple, in that Christians are definitely not in the majority. Given the school's location, I was talking to children with Muslim backgrounds, children with Hindu backgrounds, and a small army of children with Jewish backgrounds. Which made for interesting conversation, don't you see. The kids listened attentively. And they had a ton of questions to ask. One kid wanted to know if I could remember the name of my kindergarten teacher. Fortunately, Hazel Mudie made such a vivid impression on me that I've never forgotten her name. Which impressed the daylights out of the kid.

But a lot of the questions revolved around last year's hit movie ... and this year's hit video ... Prince of Egypt. As most of you know, Prince of Egypt was a wonderful recasting of the story of Moses. But virtually every kid had trouble separating the Prince of Egypt from the story of Jesus. After I finished setting the nativity scene, a little Jewish girl said: "I know all about that. I saw it in the Prince of Egypt movie."

I soon learned she wasn't alone. All of the kids had trouble separating the Moses story from the Jesus story. I guess they figured that since both stories featured infants in an unusual setting ... Moses in the bulrushes, Jesus in the manger ... they must be about the same kid. So I tried to do some story-sorting for them. Hopefully, I didn't confuse them even more.

But it occurred to me that there is a common thread between the two stories. And it has to do with the word "deliverance." Moses was a deliverer. Jesus was a deliverer. Each had something to say about bondage. Each had something to say about freedom. And each provided a means by which a believer could get from one to the other.

I have often said that those who understand Christmas best are those who are oppressed the most. But the problem is, I can never tell who is oppressed and who isn't. For I have never been any place ... even this place ... where there was a shortage of singers in the choir of victims. Consider Emily at age 15 ... and Emily's mother, ironing in the kitchen.

Emily was a beautiful baby, "a miracle," remembers her mother. But when she was eight months old, Emily's father abandoned the family, and Emily had to be left during the day with a woman downstairs ... a woman for whom Emily was no miracle at all. Then, as hardship deepened, Emily was placed in one of those nursery schools which is, at best, an indoor parking lot for children. It was years before her mother knew of the pain that was in that place for Emily.

Emily was thin girl, dark and foreign-looking in a time when little girls were supposed to be plump, blonde and cute. She was also a slow learner in a world where it counted to be quick and glib. She was not a child of proud love, but of anxious love. And now, a note had come from the school, and Emily's mother knew that too much had already happened to Emily for there to be any good news in the note.

So as she moved the iron back and forth across the ironing board, she cried, not only to herself, but to whatever power of mercy there might be beyond herself:

She has so much to her ... and probably little will come of her. Let her be. And help her to know that she is more than this dress on my ironing board, helpless before the iron.

You don't have to go very far, my friends, to find people who feel that they are "helpless before the iron." Each one of us could take a pencil and paper and write the names of five such persons right now. And more than a few of us would place our own names on the list.

So this is my word for all of you this morning. Christmas is the promise that help is on the way. Christmas is the promise that no one need be "helpless before the iron" or before the oppressor. Christmas is the promise that no one need surrender to the abuses and abandonments of life. Christmas is the promise that we need not remain at the mercy of the needle, the glass, or the disquieting rumblings of a sin-sick soul. Christmas is the promise that whether we live in the doghouse, the Big House, the crack house, the poor house or the outhouse, Christ can come to our house. For Christmas is the promise of deliverance ... announced from a delivery room.

There is, however, one small catch. There's always a catch. Of which I became freshly aware, over donuts and coffee, before dawn's early light last Wednesday morning. Some of the guys in my study group were talking about their Angel Tree routes of the previous Saturday. One of them is a really great guy ... "heart of gold" guy ... "shirt off his back" guy ... but the kind of guy who likes things to sail along "hitchless" (if you know what I mean). Apparently, his particular Angel Tree route had not gone hitchless. Leading him to say:

You know, Bill, that Angel Tree program ... where we take presents to prisoners' kids ... that's a great program. And the gals from our church who coordinate it, they do one heck of a job. But there's a few glitches on the other end, don't you see. I mean, sometimes you drive all that way, and either the kids aren't out of bed ... or they're with their grandmother ... or their mother's hung over ... or strung out ... I mean, sometimes, they're not even home, for crying out loud.

And as I sat there sympathizing with him, I thought (just for a moment) that I heard God say:

Hey Jack, I know where you're coming from. I mean, it's a real pain in the whatever to go all the way down there to make a delivery, only to find that nobody opens the door.