Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on Christmas Eve, 2024, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: Grant that we, who have known the mystery of that Light on earth, may also enjoy him perfectly in heaven; where with you and the Holy Spirit he lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Readings: Isaiah 62:6-12, Titus 3:4-7, Luke 2:1-20

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

If you were to draw or paint your own rendition of the Nativity scene, what would it look like? Probably something like the creche here at St. Mark’s, which we blessed at the beginning of tonight’s service: You would have Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in a manger; an ox and ass nearby, shepherds with a few sheep; angels, wise men, maybe a few camels, the whole cast. 

How would you draw the stable itself? Probably you’d make some kind of lean-to shed, like what you see in the creche here, or in the stained glass window above it. Archaeologists tell us the stable might have been more like a cave, a hollow place in a hillside. Or, if the inn were a small one, maybe their stable was just the first floor of a two-story building, with rooms above to let out among the family’s own quarters.

If, however, you are a medieval or renaissance painter, your stable might look a little different. These artists did often depict the stable as a shed, a cave, or a house, all the above. But sometimes they depicted it as a ruin instead, a broken shell of some larger, older building: sometimes a ruined temple, sometimes a ruined castle, sometimes a ruined house. Sometimes the ruins are totally collapsed, just a jumble of broken stones and beams. Sometimes they are still partly inhabited. In one such painting, the ruin is of a colossal Roman triumphal arch, broken down and growing weeds. Archaeologists are quick to declare, no such triumphal arch was ever built in Bethlehem or was ever likely to be. And they’d say the same about all the glorious temples, castles, and manor houses that these painters ruined and turned into their stables for the Holy Family.

So, why did they depict it as a ruin? The point is a theological one. There may not have been an actual ruined triumphal arch in Bethlehem that an innkeeper used as a stable. But it is true nonetheless that the Christ child was born to “cast down the mighty from their thrones,” and “exalt the humble and meek,” to borrow from the text of his mother’s Magnificat. It is true that he would defeat and bind forever the ancient powers of sin and death, and that he would free the prisoners whom they had long held captive. It is true that this Child’s life and death would reveal the violence and injustice upon which every human kingdom depends, and open a better way to Paradise than so many towers of Babel. 

A ruin as a stable drives home the theological point: here is a child whose birth begins a new thing, opens a new path, heralds the dawn of a new day, in which all the works of every erstwhile power are thrown down. To see them ruined at the coming of this Prince of Peace is certainly cause for celebration, and for hope.

There are others, though, for whom the ruins make less a theological argument than a personal commentary, and for these people the ruins are not cause for celebration but rather for lament. No matter how corrupt or unjust it finally becomes, in human achievement there is still at least some spark of beauty, of creativity, of nobility, and sometimes quite a lot. Insofar as it is human at all, human achievement has its root in God’s own creative power. And therefore when it falls into ruin, it is only humane to lament.

For some, the lament is less for monuments and institutions than it is for personal griefs, failures, or losses. The ruins in these medieval and renaissance nativity scenes may as well be the tatters of the world I thought I knew, while suggesting that the world I live in now cannot possibly be even a shred of what I once enjoyed. These are people grieving a spouse, a parent, a child; people working through a divorce; experiencing an addiction; facing a cancer diagnosis or a bankruptcy. Perhaps they are staring down literal ruins after a wildfire or hurricane. 

For all of these, the ruins are too familiar for words, and they almost do not bear looking at. For these, the medieval and renaissance painters preach good news indeed: here, in the ruins, the Word is made flesh; God is born, the light shines in the darkness that the darkness comprehendeth not. Here, in the ruins — not somewhere else. Not in ivory palaces where everyone is well-off and well-adjusted. Right here, where it is cold and insecure and the ruins sigh only of failure, confusion, loss, and grief. Right here, this is where the Word is made flesh. 

And if I am here too, then I am not far from God after all. Rather, here in my ruins, I have a privileged position to behold how he works his love: in quiet, in gentleness, and among those who know heartbreak. So the painters offer consolation, too, in addition to commentary: for Christ to be born amongst the ruins makes them blessed who all likewise dwell in ruins, from now on and forever.

But of course the ruins are the setting, not the point, and this is the third insight these painters offer us: ruins do not have to stay ruins. Recorded history is full of significant restoration projects, from the walls of Jerusalem to the Houses of Parliament to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which reopened just a few weeks ago. 

Sometimes such a restoration is more a re-construction, even sometimes a redemption of sorts. Maybe you know about our Anglican cathedral in Zanzibar, on the coast of Tanzania. Begun in 1873 to celebrate the end of the slave trade, the cathedral was built directly over what had been the city’s largest slave market. The high altar was placed directly over what had been the market’s principal whipping post. The message is clear: here in a place where people were removed from human fellowship and bought and sold as livestock, we now partake of the sacrament of divine love; we are restored to one another as brothers and sisters, bearers of the image of God and members of one another.

So perhaps those painters were onto something, to paint the Christmas stable as a ruin, a shell. A ruin serves as a marker of something that was and is no longer. But more than that, such a stable suggests what is yet finally coming, by the will and power of the One who is born there. It is a sign of potential, of future fulfillment: the Christ child’s kingdom is new, certainly, but it is not destructive. In ways too mysterious even to guess, He takes what we have ruined, what we have destroyed, corrupted, poisoned, consumed for our own pleasure at others’ expense; He is born to take all of these things and make them good, make them whole; to restore them to us far more completely than we could ever desire or deserve.

So the ruin is not the end point of a long, sad story. Rather it is a chapter break, even a starting point — ruin is a harbinger of reunion and restoration, which purpose will be taken up by this Child as surely as Mary draws him to her breast. Ruin is where he is born. But he is born to make the desert bloom, to make cities rise from waste places, to make water flow from the rock, to make dry bones take flesh and live. For this Child is God-with-us, and where he is, there can be no more alienation, no more death, no more crying or pain or hurt. For his mercy, his forgiveness holds sway over every mere justice, and in his heart our hearts are finally at home.

This Christmas I invite you to draw near with faith to the Lord’s crib: to behold here the ruin of our world, perhaps even the ruin of your own soul; and to see in it not the end of all things, but the beginning of God’s work in you. Be assured, by the gentle touch of his grace, that work will be brought to completion, till the whole world be called “the redeemed of the Lord; a people sought out, a city not forsaken.”

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.