Big News

​Recently Carrie shared with me a clip by comedian Nate Bargatze.
 
In this clip, Nate appears as the angel Gabriel talking to the Holy Family on the very first Christmas. Nate/ Gabriel announces that this day will inspire people to sing many joyous songs. Mary answers, with a gesture towards her baby, “Songs about Jesus?” Nate/ Gabriel pauses, then responds, “Not really. Mostly songs about snow and snow-related things.” Mary is understandably puzzled because they don’t have snow in Bethlehem. Nate/ Gabriel explains that people want Christmas to be cozy, so the holiday will have more of a Scandinavian vibe.
 
I love Nate Bargatze. For those who don’t know him, I can tell you that Nate is very funny, and it’s the kind of comedy you can enjoy with your children. But in this clip, in his funny way, Nate makes a really important point. In contemporary America, Christmas doesn’t always seem to have much to do with Jesus.
 
As Christians, we know, of course, that Jesus is the big news of this season. We know the true good news of great joy, that two thousand years ago, God took flesh to live and die among us, that two thousand years ago, to us was born, in the city of David, a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. We know that. But even we need to be reminded.
 
So, we turn again to the old familiar stories, which are the reminder that we need. And what we see in our reading for this morning is that Jesus’ birth was VERY big news to the people who were paying attention on that first Christmas.
 
Start with the wise men who travelled to Bethlehem to pay homage to the one born king of the Jews.
 
We don’t know for sure where they came from, but most people assume it was Persia, modern-day Iran. If that’s right, they travelled roughly 1200 miles, on foot and camelback, to see Christ. To put that in perspective, if we were to travel 1200 miles directly south from Saint David’s, we would be in the middle of the Caribbean Ocean, not far from the coast of South America. That’s a LONG way to travel. And that’s just one way. The wise men had to return the same distance.
 
And travel was not easy in the first-century. The wise men would be gone for months during which they would have essentially no contact with the people they left behind.
 
Making matters still more difficult, their journey included crossing the border between two great empires, Parthia and Rome, which were often at war. Much of their journey was through dangerous frontier territory that was filled with people they could assume would be suspicious and hostile.
 
Finally, the trip would have been enormously expensive. It costs a lot to travel in style for many months. Presumably the wise men carried their wealth with them. But that only added to their danger by increasing the likelihood that they would attract the attention of bandits or con men.
 
What did the wise men get in return for all that effort and expense and risk? A glimpse of Christ. And not much more. As best we can tell, the wise men began their return journey almost immediately after they arrived.
 
But the wise men thought that glimpse of Christ was worth it all. Matthew tells us, “they were overwhelmed with joy” when they saw the Christ child.
 
That gives us some sense of how important Jesus was to the wise men.
 
The baby Jesus mattered almost as much to Herod, but with a sinister and brutal twist. When the wise men told Herod about the child born king of the Jews, “Herod was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him.”
 
Herod saw Jesus as a threat, and he moved quickly to eliminate him. Herod called together his senior advisers to figure out where the child would be, went back to the wise men to find out exactly when Jesus was born, and then tried to trick the wise men into helping him locate the baby king. When the wise men outsmarted him, Herod “sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under” (Matt 2:16).
 
That gives us some sense of how important Jesus was to Herod.
 
It is clear that Jesus’ birth was very big news to the wise men and to Herod, not something that could get ignored the midst of a lot of secular festivity.
 
But why Jesus was so important to them, and why Jesus is still so important for us?
 
Again we start with the wise men. They were not Jews, and so had no stake in the birth of the next Jewish king. And they certainly weren’t impressed with Herod, the reigning king of the Jews.
 
But somehow the wise men understood that Jesus was special, that Jesus came from God, that Jesus represented a new chapter in all of human history. For the first time in centuries, the God of the Jews was inviting Gentiles, non-Jews, into covenant relationship.
 
It’s impossible for us to know how well the wise men understood what that meant for them. But they understood enough to make their journey. They understood enough to know they had to see Jesus for themselves.
 
It's fun to imagine telling Mary, on that first Christmas morning, that in two thousand years, billions of people would worship her Son, including many million living on a continent she didn’t know existed. But here we are, in the same position as the wise men, non-Jews invited into covenant relationship with the God of Israel, all thanks to the birth of Christ so many centuries ago. The wise men would be pleased.
 
And we don’t even have to go anywhere because Christ is with us, here and now and always. Thanks be to God.
 
Herod saw a different side of Jesus, but one that is almost as important. Herod was right to see Jesus as a threat. Tyrants in every time and place should see Jesus as a threat. Because there will come a day when we are all held accountable for our actions.
 
On that day, Jesus will gather all the nations before him and divide people into the sheep and the goats. The sheep will be the people who fed the hungry, and welcomed the stranger, and clothed the naked, and nursed the sick, and visited the prisoners. The goats will be the people who did not. And Jesus will tell them all that “just as you did or did not do these things to the least member of my family, so you did or did not do them to Jesus himself.” Then Jesus will invite the sheep to inherit the kingdom prepared for them, and Jesus will cast the goats into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:31-46).
 
That is an ominous prophecy for tyrants everywhere, for everyone who oppresses the needy among us. Herod surely didn’t know the details, but he did intuit that Jesus’ coming represented God’s judgment on him, and that’s a scary prospect.
 
None of us are in a position to tyrannize over thousands of strangers. But Herod’s reaction to Jesus’ birth is a reminder for us that the good news has an edge, that God invites us to live in God’s love and that God warns us not to neglect that invitation.
 
My hope and my prayer is that we can cut through the cultural noise in this season, and appreciate the birth of Christ for the big news that it is. In Christ’s name. Amen.