Christmas Eve 2016
Luke 2:1-20
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfGFntn_vI )
In preparing for tonight’s service, and in light of all
that’s gone on this year, I found myself pondering that phrase, “peace on earth
and goodwill to men.” It’s a pretty familiar phrase, and we’re used to singing
it in Christmas carols like the one we just sang, “It Came upon a Midnight
Clear.” So, I went back to the Bible to find the exact context and see who says
it. Anyone know? It’s the angels, when they come to tell the shepherds in the
fields about the birth of Jesus. Except, I couldn’t find it in the first Bible
I looked in. I couldn’t find it in the second one, or even the third. I got an
idea and looked in the old King James Bible, and there it was. After the angel
tells the shepherds, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of
great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the
city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord…,”[1]
then “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
goodwill toward men!’”[2]
So, it’s not really “peace on earth and goodwill to men,” it’s “peace and goodwill toward men.” And it’s not
in hardly any other Bible translation. The reason for this is the problem with
the King James Bible as a whole. While it has beautiful poetry, and was quite
an achievement of its time as one of the first English Bibles, one of its
sources is not as original as other Bible sources. One of its sources is the
Latin Vulgate Bible, which dates to the late 3rd century, and so a
lot of the King James Bible is a translation from that Bible, instead of original manuscripts. The Vulgate Bible was also
a masterpiece in its time and the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church
for over a thousand years, from about 400 A.D. until the 1500’s when the
Protestant Reformation occurred and then the Catholic Counter-Reformation, as
they tried to address some of the problems raised by the Protestant detractors.
Church history aside, the Vulgate is not the earliest translation of the Bible,
and there are earlier texts in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and our other modern
Bible translations are based on those earlier manuscripts instead. So, to make
a long story short, that’s why the phrase “goodwill to men” is not in most
Bibles; it was in the Latin Vulgate, but not in other, earlier manuscripts. I
hope I didn’t bore you with all that history!
Bottom line is that most translations only say, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those
whom he favors!”[3]
Most translations leave out that “goodwill to men” or “goodwill to all” part,
and for good reason. Yet it seems that goodwill toward our fellow person has
also been forgotten lately. I’ve heard multiple times that our country has not
been this divided since 1968. 1968 was the year Martin Luther King, Jr and
Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It’s the year that hostilities increased in
the war in Vietnam and locally we had the Catonsville Nine, burning their draft
cards to protest the war. Tensions were high then, and tensions are high again,
fifty years later. 2016 has not been a good year for many of us. We’ve lost
loved ones, experienced new diseases, were scared we were going to lose more
loved ones, and went through a traumatic election cycle in which some of our
relationships with loved ones were irrevocably changed. We have had a lot going
on, and it has not made us a better people. Not many of the large events have
inspired us or encouraged us to have goodwill toward our fellow person.
Instead, I think we’ve become meaner to each other. I’ve witnessed not one, but
two separate incidents on Pulaski Highway where people actually got out of
their cars to confront each other in the midst of road rage. The social climate
has changed. We’ve lost our goodwill toward men. We’re more likely to be
suspicious, to not trust, to not give someone the benefit of the doubt, to not
presume someone innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. We’ve lost our
goodwill toward our neighbor, toward our co-worker, toward our spouse, our
children, …maybe kept it toward our grandchildren J We’ve lost our goodwill toward our fellow driver and
toward the person next to us in line at the store. A friend of mine was
actually thanked the other day at Wal-Mart for saying “excuse me.” The fact
that politeness was so alien to this person that she felt the need to thank my
friend, speaks volumes about where we are as a society.
Now, we can’t change others; we can only change
ourselves. So, make it a point this Christmas season and in 2017 to use your
good manners that I know all y’all were taught. Say please and thank you and
excuse me. Let others go first. Let a car out in front of you when lanes merge
or a side street joins a main thoroughfare. Let go of grudges. Give people the
benefit of the doubt. Did you know that the first Christmas of World War I, in
1914, there was an unofficial Christmas truce? On Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day, French, German, and British soldiers from both sides left opposing
trenches on the Western front and met up in no man’s land in the middle with no
weapons, no harsh words, just gifts and food to exchange. Some soldiers even
played soccer together and others sang Christmas carols. Now, after Christmas,
the war resumed, and by Christmas of 1915, hostilities were so intensified that
both sides were too bitter and too entrenched to do it again. Brothers and
sisters, friends, let’s not get to
that point, where we can’t break bread and sing and play with people who are on
opposite sides from us. Let’s declare a Christmas Truce, not just for these
twelve days of Christmas, but to last throughout the coming year, and beyond
that, too.
There’s a Christmas song that John Denver sings, that I
know from my all-time favorite Christmas album, John Denver and the Muppets,
but he’s sung it elsewhere, too.
It’s called “The Christmas Wish.”[4]
I
don't know if you believe in Christmas,
or
if you have presents underneath the Christmas tree.
But
if you believe in love, that will be more than enough
for
you to come and celebrate with me.
For
I have held the precious gift that love brings
even
though I've never saw a Christmas star.
But
I know there is a light, I have felt it burn inside,
and
I can see it shining from afar.
Christmas
is a time to come together, a time to put all differences aside.
And
I reach out my hand to the family of man
to
share the joy I feel at Christmas time.
For
the truth that binds us all together, I would like to say a simple prayer.
That
at this special time, you will have true peace of mind
and
love to last throughout the coming year.
And
if you believe in love, that will be more than enough
for
peace to last throughout the coming year.
And
peace on earth will last throughout the year.
We need help for that to happen. We need someone called
the Prince of Peace in order to have real, lasting peace. We need something as
radical and absurd as a tiny baby to save us from ourselves and from each
other. Emmanuel means God with us. God, in this tiny, newborn baby, with us. Keeping God’s promise to never
leave us or forsake us. Keeping God’s promise to remember us and redeem us.
Keeping God’s promise to save us. Keeping God’s promise that evil and suffering
and death and miscommunication and betrayal do
not have the last word. Keeping God’s Word that God had the first word and
will have the last word.
Theologian and Bishop N.T. Wright once wrote that “what
Jesus was up to… was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing
people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so that
they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is
God’s ultimate purpose – and so that they could thus become colleagues and
partners in that large project.”[5]
Joining God in God’s work is precisely this. Enjoying now the renewal of creation, the renewal we see at Christmastime,
“a time to come together and put all differences aside,” to reach out our hand
to our fellow person, to have goodwill toward them once again. We’ve forgotten
it, but it is time to again to have peace in our hearts and goodwill in our
thoughts and actions to “the family of man,” the family of God, our brothers
and sisters, each and every person, whether they are like you or not, whether
they voted for the same person as you or not, whether they are the same
religion as you or not. It’s time. For this Christ was born. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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