Directionless

We have a tendency in the church to synthesize or blend the two biblical Christmas Nativity stories in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke. And maybe that’s for good reason. Maybe that gives us a better view and understanding of all the events of that moment, but if we take these stories apart from one another we notice that in Matthew’s Gospel, there are no shepherds, and in the Gospel of Luke there are no Maji or a guiding star! In fact, the stories in Matthew and Luke have hardly anything in common between them.

And since we heard the story retold today from the Gospel of Luke, we are not going to blend the story with Matthew’s account for the sake of this sermon. Instead, we’ll focus on one of the major plot holes of the story in Luke, the fact that the shepherds have no directions from the Angel when they are told to find the newborn Jesus. And as you heard, this lack of directions or guiding star really confused the shepherds in our retelling of the Christmas story from Luke’s Gospel. They could have benefitted from some better directions or at least some beacon to help them find their way to Jesus. But they were, in a word, directionless.

They knew who they were looking for and what he’d be wearing and what he’d be lying in, but getting there was another story. I wonder if you’ve ever felt like that? Like you know exactly what you’re looking for but you just can’t figure out how to get there. Maybe this unusual time of the pandemic has given you an opportunity to take stock of your life and it has revealed that you’re called to something different yet because the pandemic is still ongoing you feel stuck or directionless. Like maybe you know what you are being called to, but how will you ever get there?

I know for me that one thing this pandemic has revealed is not personal, but more political. This pandemic has revealed that no matter what country you are a citizen of, or what state you live in, we can’t just isolate ourselves from one another to stay safe or stop this virus. Instead we are woven together in a web of interdependence and cooperation is the only way to effectively overcome this virus. But how can we ever get to this state of unity amidst all the competition and strife between countries, states, political parties, and individuals even? I know God is calling us towards international and interpersonal cooperation and peace, but it’d be nice if we also had a map with clearly laid out steps how to get there.

Often when we feel directionless like this, our hope for a better tomorrow is all too easily lost when we feel like we don’t know how we’ll ever get there. But the message of hope in the Christmas story this day is that even if you don’t know how to find where you’re going, God has found you and will continue to find you wherever you are. No matter how isolated life seems right now God has found you and you are not alone. No matter how deep the darkness is that surrounds you God has found you and will light your way. No matter how humble conditions are you find yourself in, Christ was born into such conditions and is once again born anew in your midst today.

The shepherds got to where they were called to go not because they had a map, but because God found them in a field in the darkest of night and they trusted the message of the angel to just start walking towards what God had promised they would find.

Directionless as we may be, the Christmas story today is about God finding you. Martin Luther said, “This is what is meant by ‘Thy king cometh.’ You do not seek him, but he seeks you. You do not find him, he finds you”

So Merry Christmas dear found ones, whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you have done or not done, Christ has been born to you this day and is with you and leading you towards your ultimate destination, a place we can’t get to with a map because this place is not so much a place at all, but a new day where there will be no more virus, where all will live in unity, and where love and light will fill all creation to overflowing. Amen.