From Bethlehem to Egypt…to Seven Hills
Luke 2.1-14 & Matthew 2.13-15
Sermon Series –Erin Wathen, Calling All Angels: An Advent Study of Fearlessness & Strength
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2024; 8:30 p.m.
When the First World War finally came to an end on November 11, 1918 after more than four years of fighting, some 8.5 million people had died. But there had been, a mere five months after the fighting begin, an opportunity to perhaps end the war, or at least an event which provided vivid evidence that many of the soldiers desired peace. I speak of an event that has been mythologized by some and denied by others: “The Christmas Truce.”
This truce was more accurately an outbreak of local ceasefires in various places along the front lines. It began on Christmas Eve with German soldiers shouting “Merry Christmas” to the British in the opposite trenches. In many places, the Germans hoisted small Christmas Trees upon the parapets in full view of bewildered English, French and Belgian troops. Scouts from the two sides met in “no man’s land,” the cratered, muddy wasteland of splintered trees and dead bodies between the two lines. These cautious encounters turned into gift exchanges of cigarettes, pipes, chocolate and schnapps. On Christmas day, soccer games between British and German troops were held in No Man’s Land in several different places. [Mike Dash, “The Story of the WWI Christmas Truce,” Dec. 23, 2011,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-story-of-the-wwi-christmas-truce-11972213/#8qKL3cB3DfHZrvFl.99]
Historian Stanley Weintraub writes that in many areas, “it was with shared traditions and song that the two sides approached each other.” [Silent Night: The Remarkable 1914 Christmas Truce, 30] Along stretches of the front, the opposing soldiers serenaded each other with Christmas carols. Private Fredrick Heath remembered the tentative beginnings of the truce on Christmas Eve: “all down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war: ‘English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!’…. How could we resist wishing each other a Merry Christmas, even though we might be at each other’s throats immediately afterwards? So we kept up a running conversation with the Germans, all the while our hands ready on our rifles. Blood and peace, enmity and fraternity—war’s most amazing paradox. The night wore on to dawn—a night made easier by songs from the German trenches, the pipings of piccolos and from our broad lines laughter and Christmas carols. Not a shot was fired.” [quoted in Dash, “Story of WWI Christmas Truce”]
But what the shared traditions of carols, trees and soccer started did not last. Fighting began again in some places on the 26th, though in other places the ceasefire lasted a bit longer. On both sides, commanders acted to end the truce and to prevent any further instances of fraternization. As Weintraub observed, “However much the momentary peace of 1914 evidenced the desire of the combatants to live in amity with one another, it was doomed from the start by realities beyond the trenches.’ [199] And yet, the Christmas Truce has endured as a symbol of the possibility for peace, a moment of sanity in the midst of a ridiculous waste of human lives. The soldiers who laid down their guns and came out of their trenches showed that another reality was possible, but their commanders, the politicians and many of their fellow soldiers rejected that possibility.
Christmas reminds us that another reality is possible. The prophet Isaiah looks hopefully to the coming of a leader he describes as a Wonderful Counselor who will be the Prince of Peace and weaves an arresting vision of the lion and the lamb laying down together as swords are beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Mary, in her Magnificat, declares, in language reminiscent of the prophets, the Lord’s favor upon the poor and downtrodden who will be raised up and filled with good things.
At the same time, the Christmas story, as presented in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, steadfastly refuses to be sentimental. God is indeed at work to bring peace and justice and to reconcile humans to one another and God, but humans all too often refuse to participate in what God is doing. There is an all too familiar sense of reality as we read the Gospel accounts. Mary and Joseph find no room at the inn and have to make due with temporary, shoddy shelter—a old drafty barn. And then, the powers that be decide that peace is not in their interests. Herod, fearing that a usurper has been born, schemes to kill the newborn, and he has no compunction about slaughtering every infant and toddler in and around Bethlehem to make sure he gets the right one. The Holy Family is only saved by yet another angelic messanger who warns Joseph of Herod’s intentions and instructs him get up and flee to the safety of Egyptian territory. And so, Jesus, who began life homeless, becomes a refugee taken by his parents to a foreign land because their home town, and indeed, home country, is no longer safe from them.
This sounds all too contemporary, doesn’t it? Last week Kentucky Public Radio reported on an incident from September in which a Louisville police officer issued a citation to a pregnant homeless woman, even though she told him that her water had broken and she thought she might be going into labor. The officer was enforcing a new state law banning unlawful camping—a law that specifically targets homeless people, ostensibly to get them off of the street and into a shelter, or, if needed, a drug or alcohol treatment program. Of course, those who work with the homeless pretty much anywhere in the country will tell you that there are not enough shelter beds or other resources to help the growing population of homeless persons.
After the woman told him that she wasn’t due for another month and that her husband had left to try to find a payphone to call an ambulance, the officer made the call for an ambulance and then returned to the car to write a citation. On his bodycam footage he can be heard saying to himself, “So I don’t for a second believe that this woman is going into labor.” He then walks back to the woman who is now sitting on the ground with her legs spread and her breathing labored. As the ambulance pulls up, he hands her the citation which she balls up and throws back at him while calling him a horrible person.
Later that day, she gave birth to a son at the hospital. Both are reportedly doing well and now have shelter, though neither the police department nor the court system—that is to say the agencies of the government which has criminalized homelessness—provided any assistance beyond calling that ambulance. The mother is due in court in late January where she will face a fine for sleeping on the streets.
The lack of compassion shown to this homeless woman and her soon to be born child come as no surprise. Laws that treat homelessness as a criminal offense rather than as a social malady or a humanitarian issue effectively stigmatize and dehumanize homeless persons and blame them for circumstances—such as job loss, domestic abuse and lack of affordable housing—which may in fact be beyond there control.
That effect is amplified when influential people make claims like Elon Musk’s recent inaccurate assertion that the vast majority of homeless people are on the streets either because they are dangerously mentally ill. He tweeted, “In most cases, the word 'homeless' is a lie. It's usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness"—a blanket statement which exaggerates the role of mental illness in homelessness (which does need to be addressed) in an apparent attempt to undermine compassionate interventions—and one suspects government supported social service interventions—while also stigmatizing folks with mental illness as being a threat to society. [Sylvia Goodman, “Pregnant Kentucky woman cited for street camping while in labor,” Kentucky Public Radio, https://www.lpm.org/news/2024-12-19/pregnant-kentucky-woman-cited-for-street-camping-while-in-labor ; Alex Woodward, “Elon Musk calls homelessness a ‘lie’ and ‘propaganda’ — and Trump is listening,” https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-homeless-trump-vivek-ramaswamy-b2663740.html ; and Judd Legum, et al., “5 facts Elon Musk should learn about homelessness,” https://popular.info/p/5-facts-elon-musk-should-learn-about ]
The coming of Christ, the incarnation of God’s love for humanity points us in another direction, toward another way of being: the way of compassion. Jesus is born as a homeless infant. In his family’s flight to Egypt, he becomes a refugee toddler. His adult ministry will center around table fellowship with outcasts like tax collectors and known sinners. He will show compassion to a woman caught in adultery and numerous lepers—the paradigmatic social outcast of his day. And at last he will be executed by the powers that be, by the Roman state, as a criminal and hung on a cross between other criminals. But his resurrection from the dead will be God’s vindication, God’s stamp of approval on Jesus’ life of love and compassion or the least and the lost, the outcast and the hated of society.
As Thomas Merton observed, “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world." [from a Facebook post by Rev. Dr. Steve Sprinkle; December 20, 2024] And Jesus followers are called to enact that same solidarity, compassion and love.
May it be so for us. May we open the doors of our hearts to let Jesus in. And may that act, that choice, lead us to open other doors, doors of compassion, doors of love, doors of hope—and let our neighbors in. For in Christ, God has opened the doors of God’s heart and of God’s kingdom, where there is no war, no homelessness and no shortage of room, and God is inviting all of us, all humanity, to enter in. Amen.