The Night Everything Changed

Christ changed the course of human history

Allow me this evening to leave a reflection with you—something that has been on my heart for some time now that I believe is something I would like us all to remember as we go into this Christmas celebration. And as I always do, I say:

In the name of God the Mother, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who breathes through us all.

The Gospel Story

As written in Luke says, “The angel appeared to them and the glory of God shone around them. They were very much afraid. The angel said to them, you have nothing to fear. I come to proclaim good news to you. News of a great joy to be shared by the whole people, all of us today. Today in David’s city, a savior, the Messiah has been born to you.” The good news of God is still speaking.

When the angels came to the shepherds to bring good news, everything about the story was completely strange and odd to the people, the listeners of the time of this story. The idea of good news, or _evangelion_ in Greek, was up until that time used to indicate that the emperor had obtained a great military victory. The gospel of Luke from which we read today was written about 10 years after the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem and leveled the temple. The Roman general Titus sent the good news of that victory to the emperor Vespasian: “Jerusalem has been destroyed. The temple has been leveled.”

In the days of Christ, ordinary people, poor people, people who couldn’t find a room in the inn were not the subject of good news. It is hard to imagine with contemporary eyes and ears what a radical shift the birth of Jesus was to bring in the course of history of the western world. The idea that this little baby in the manger was indeed the son of God was such a radical departure from ordinary understanding that human beings could not fully grasp it.

It was not unheard of that humans became gods, but that was for the heroes like Hercules or the emperors like Augustus and Nero. And what made you a god was the ability to destroy Jerusalem or the temple like the Romans had done. The Greek and the Roman world of that time was centered around a hierarchy of free men who were a minority of society. Women were not free. The poor were not free. And many people were enslaved, owned, not free. That was considered the normal way of the world. Nobody frowned upon it. Nobody questioned it.

Good News to the Shepherds

It is into this world that the angel comes to some of the lowliest of the lowly workers of the time, namely the shepherds—a group of people greatly distrusted and much maligned, people who were considered disreputable and dirty. That is where the angel appeared to bring good news and joy. “Today, today,” they exclaimed, not some distant time in the future, not some other era, not some time far away. Today in your midst, the Messiah has been born to you. The angel said, “I have come to bring good news to you and great joy to you because the Savior has been born to you.”

The world has changed in that moment, in that manger in that foreign land. When an entire society is organized around the principle that you are not worthy, you may begin to believe it yourself—until a messenger of God reminds you of your inherent belovedness in the eyes of God.

A Revolutionary Birth

It was the life of Jesus and later his death and resurrection that changed the course of history. Jesus had died a most shameful death, the death of crucifixion, much later of course in his life. But the idea that upon this person, this common criminal who died naked and ashamed, could be bestowed the title of son of God—a title which properly belonged to emperors—was simply ludicrous.

The little vulnerable baby in the manger had no bed, no shelter, no protection. His father and mother were fleeing the wrath of the king propped up by the Romans. The son of God, the true son of God, pointed towards a future in which not power or strength were valued, but vulnerability and service. The son of God inspired a faith in which women could participate freely and with honor. A faith where free and enslaved people worshiped side by side because in the eyes of God they were equals. A faith that demanded that those who had the means provide for those who are poor.

We struggle today to grasp how revolutionary this was. The idea of providing for the poor simply because it was right was until that time unthinkable. The idea that there might be worth and dignity in the poor, the women and the enslaved had simply not yet entered into the minds of most Romans or most Greeks. It was a tradition that began in Judaism, but it took Christ to spread it into the entire world beyond the boundaries of Judea and Galilee to create a revolution of moral imagination that still shapes the world today.

A Moral Revolution

A moral revolution, unlike a political revolution, is slow, but its effect is lasting. It was several centuries later after Jesus that the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity. Some believe that he was sincere in his faith and others thought he was being pragmatic. We shall never know. His immediate successor was an emperor called Julian. Julian, in contrast, had a renewed zeal for the old pagan ways, the worship of the gods of old.

By the time that Julian became the emperor, however, the cults of the gods had waned dramatically. At one point in his reign, he traveled to Galatia and saw that the temples to Cybele, once so honored and majestic, were now laying squalid, where priests were mostly interested in drinking and feasting. Julian wrote to them and said, quote, “How apparent to everyone it is, and how shameful that our own people lack support from us when no Jew ever has to beg. And the empire’s Galileans, the Christians, support not only their own poor but ours as well.”

Julian demanded that the priests take care of the poor also. And this was ironic because it would have never occurred to any priest in any temple in the Roman world to make care for the poor a primary concern. It was the example of Christians and their success that prompted Julian to inspire his priests to do the same.

The Legacy Continues

In the Roman Empire, the sick were left to their own devices. So Basil the Great, Bishop of Cappadocia, created the first ever hospital. Unfortunately, we still debate health care today.

In the Roman Empire, slavery was as common then as wage labor is now. But Gregory of Nyssa, the brother of Basil the Great, railed against all forms of slavery. And children are today separated from their parents at our border.

In the Roman Empire, it was common to lay babies by the side of the road. So Macrina, the oldest sister of both Basil and Gregory, brought little baby girls into her home because in every outcast child, we can see a glimpse of the divine. Today, transgender youth are being denied access to gender affirming care.

Again, the moral revolution is slow. It is also certain.

Our Failings and Our Hope

But don’t make me out to sound overly triumphalistic about the change in history that the birth of Jesus brought. We all know too much. Over the centuries, Christians have committed many sins in the name of their faith. Most Christians like me have failed to fully live up to the reality that every person matters, that every person has dignity and that every human being is free. The Christian faith and the institution of the church have deserved the mistrust that so many people now hold. The sins of omission and commission against other human beings are simply too numerous to mention this evening.

But let us not forget that when people argue that the Christian faith and the institution of the church have failed to uphold the inherent dignity of every human being, they are using a most Christian argument against the faith and against the church—and they should, and they are right to do so. Only since Christianity came into the world was it thinkable that anyone in the western world, including Christians themselves, can see the divine in each and every person.

This Christmas Season

And so in this Christmas season, over the last few weeks, we have contemplated whether we have been silent long enough or whether the truth of God is welling up within us and urging us to speak. In this Christmas season, we have uplifted all the mothers—no matter how our society at times casts certain mothers as unworthy or even unfit, the life of God flows through them also. In this Christmas season, we have upheld all the various fathers because they are asked to raise the children of God.

So let us carry on and let us remember that the good news, the _evangelion_, does not come to presidents and billionaires, not to congressmen or movie stars. Tonight on this Christmas Eve, we must ask ourselves, where is the good news most needed? Who does the messenger of God need to come to most urgently? Who are today’s shepherds, waiting in the cold for someone to tell them that they are beloved?

Because as with the shepherds, the good news will come to the unhoused who are left in the rain. The good news will come to the migrants who are separated from their families in the dead of night. The good news will come to our transgender youth increasingly denied access to our health care system. The good news will come to you, to you—you who need to remember that like the vulnerable baby Jesus in the manger, you are the beloved child of God.

Christ has come.

The world is changing.

Let us keep living into this good news.

Amen.