​In the time when Paul was setting up these early Christian churches, including the one in Corinth, there was a common rhetorical image of a group of people being a single body.  But it was always used to make it clear who was the head.  Like, “we’re all one body and the Emperor is the one in charge.  The army is one strong arm and the senate is the other.”  And somewhere in that image was the idea that while the group was one body, there were definitely parts that were less important or we’d be better off without.
In some ways we still use that image.  We say someone is the head of household or the head of a corporation.  And we talk about something being at the tail end of an event, as if it were the least important bit.  But everyone who has damaged their shoulder or replaced a knee or stubbed their toe knows that when some part of our body is hurting, it doesn’t matter how clever and strong the brain is.  Don’t talk to me when I’ve bitten my cheek by mistake.  I can’t hear you.
So by taking this image that says there is a hierarchy in the body and you definitely want to be the head not the earlobe, Paul was already shaking people up.  He did something really unexpected with it and said that you need every part of the body to do the hokey pokey because the whole body is what it’s all about.  And that’s a faithful reading of what he was saying.  But there’s more to it.
In this passage Paul talks about God creating human beings, the kind of creating that happened in Genesis 1 and 2, where God starts with dirt and ends up with Adam and Eve.  But Paul uses the same language to point out that God was also creating when God created the church as the body of the Messiah.  The resurrection distills that moment of creation, like the image from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel when God’s about to touch Adam’s finger.  Something wholly new was coming into the world, created solely by God and only God was capable of creating such a thing.
Humanity would never create a group of people where everyone is valued.  The Corinthians were a church that were constantly bickering about everything. None of them was ever going to accept that everyone had a gift and that all gifts were valuable.  The only gift that was really valuable was whatever they had, they were going to make everyone else in the church miserable until everyone else acknowledged that.
Paul was telling them, it certainly feels like Paul had to be really blunt and direct with the church at Corinth, that they were missing the new thing God was creating.  There is no hierarchy of gifts where everyone wants to be the head and no one wants to be the left incisor.  But right at the end, Paul says strive for the greater gifts.  Which certainly seems to undermine his argument that there isn’t a hierarchy.  We’ll see more of Paul’s argument next week, when he talks about love being the greatest gift, but for this week, think about the Annual Meeting of the Brookline Community Church that’s coming up.
We do all have gifts and we do try to bring them together.  And we do try to support other people when they use their gifts to do something we can’t do.  I can cook, but I can’t cook 120 meals in one go and Megan just laughs and rolls up her sleeves.  I can’t read music, and every week Yifan sends a chocolate box of gorgeous treats for me to pick from.  There was a problem with the elevator door and not only did Peter send an email saying it was fixed, but he sent an explanation with photos of the circuit board explaining what had gone wrong.  It wouldn’t have occurred to me to look at a circuit board let alone repair it.  So we all have gifts, and we all respect that.  We might do a little better in some areas.  We can all shovel the doorways of the church and not leave all the shoveling to Susan and Russell, but we can work on that.
What we have an opportunity to do today is commit ourselves to the work of exploring what new thing God is creating through the Brookline Community Church.  The Vision Team has been working on that since roughly Easter of last year and we have some insights to share and some requests for further assistance.  We will need everyone’s gifts and support for everyone’s gifts and we’ll need to take care of each other in a way that is not what humans normally do with each other, even in families.
Because that is part of the promise of today’s passage.  God is still creating.  God is still bringing new things into the world in the wake of the resurrection of the Messiah.  And all those new things will shake us up and shake us loose from some of the old ideas we got stuck in our heads.  Like that our heads were the most important.  When what we needed to focus on is that we can improve the way we all work together, to forgive ourselves and welcome others and share the love we experience because we are a part of this new body

​On this night, of all nights, the roads will be so dark.  And later tonight, once everything is wrapped up here, I’ll change into my jeans and warm up my Dunkin Donuts coffee in the microwave.  Then I’ll drive three and a half hours north to my parents’ house on the coast of Maine.  I do that drive a lot.  And at this time of year, I’m often driving after dark.  And as you all well know, there are few things darker than a country road in New England.
But as someone who drives these rural roads in the dark, I’ll share a secret with you that is not so secret, because I bet many of you are part of that secret.  Tonight, for those who live in the land of deep darkness (Isaiah 9:2), there will be lights shining.  Candles in the windows and twinkle lights and nine-foot Tyrannosaurus Rexes with Santa hats.  I’m always surprised how many people leave their lights on Christmas Eve.  Or put lights out in their backyards where the only people who can see them are flying by on the interstate.  The moon won’t rise until after midnight tonight, but there will be more than starlight.
I could go tomorrow morning, Santa knows which stocking is mine and where it is, but I want to wake up in my bed in Maine.  I want to wake up in the story where my family is all together and the smells of my sister’s cooking are already creeping upstairs.  Where the best Christmas album ever, John Denver and the Muppets A Christmas Together, is on repeat until we can’t stand Little Saint Nickanymore.  There’s nothing particularly special about this story.  You all have your stories you want to wake up in tomorrow.  But it’s precious, it’s worth a three-hour drive on a dark night, because it’s the story I love, it’s the story I want to wake up in.
Mary and Joseph would have probably loved to wake up in their own bed in Nazareth.  Mary would have probably loved to have all her women friends and relations around her, helping out with Jesus’ birth.  And even now, in the city of David, they probably have a million things they have to do.  This census thing has got to be a real nuisance, because they have to talk with some imperial bureaucrat, and that’s never a good day.  Those guys only want your name on a piece of paper when they want to demand more in taxes or sign you up for the army.[1]
It was a long walk to Bethlehem and it will be a long trek back.  Plus now there’s this baby, and all the gear that entails, diapers and blankets and everything else.  Plus Mary’s still recovering and even if she’s feeding the baby, they have to make sure she has enough to keep going.
That’s all the normal stuff that happens when you have a baby when you’re not at home.  Plus there’s all that weird stuff that’s happening.  The shepherds wandering in from out of town, saying that an angel sent them.  Angels had shown up to both Mary (Luke 1:26-37) and Joseph (Matthew 1:20-21), but that had been months ago and in private.  The way the shepherds were carrying on and waking everyone up, this was no longer a little posting on an encrypted family chat.  This Mary and Joseph’s business getting the featured slot on every streaming channel.
Everyone’s amazed by it (Luke 2:18), which isn’t as good as it sounds.  Some people think it’s cool, but some people aren’t so sure there isn’t something more sinister going on.  And if King Herod ever catches wind of the rumors, particularly if there’s a conspiracy spin put on them, life is going to get a lot more complicated for this tiny family from Galilee.  Who probably just want to go home and forget this whole registration thing had happened.  Get back to their regular lives of laundry and carpentry.
And like every parent everywhere and anywhen, in the middle of a bazillion things to do, worrying about childhood illnesses and where her next meal was coming from, and how on earth they were going to get back to the other end of the country, Mary ponders all these things in her heart (Luke 2:19).  In the middle of all the challenges and annoyances and little pleasures of her life, she ponders what all these interruptions to her own story mean.
Because the darkness was pretty dark.  It seemed like violence was rising.  It felt like politics had a much bigger role in everyone’s life than it had in the past.  And people were taking sides more readily and more fiercely.  The rich were getting richer and the not rich were having a harder and harder time staying afloat.  Common courtesy, just general human kindness, seemed to be drying up, when the only space anyone could find for a pregnant lady to have her baby was a stable.
The Prophet Isaiah had spoken about such a time, about such darkness.  About how there would be a great light.  He didn’t mention nine-foot inflatable T-Rexes in Santa hats specifically, but light in the darkness certainly.  The Prophet Isaiah had said that the violence would be laid aside.  That the boots and the blood of violence would themselves be destroyed (Isaiah 9:5).  That the burdens of oppression would be lifted (Isaiah 9:4).  That a child would be born for us, a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).  God had promised all that.  God had promised that the zeal of the Lord of Hosts would accomplish all that.  But God hadn’t said how God was going to do all that.  Not at all.
So it was worth pondering.  Because Mary seemed to be waking up in a story where God’s son was born in a stable.  This story was saying that heaven and earth meet in obscure places, not in the halls of power.[2]  That the joy of that is for everyone, that God’s favor and God’s peace are not just for a favored few, but for all of us.[3]  That as much as we long to know that God is out there, God is watching over us, that we are not alone, that there is something else in this universe who loves our children and our grandchildren even more than we do.  That as much as we want to know that, there is something even more powerful who longs, who has always longed, to love us, and for us to know that we are loved.  No matter who we are, or what we’ve done or how badly we’ve messed up our own stories.  God had interrupted Mary’s life and now she was waking up in a larger story and that takes some pondering.
On this night, of all nights, with this story, amidst all the stories that are gathered up here tonight, God is interrupting us, inviting us to ponder.  God is pointing out, again and again, that there is a larger story amidst the deep darkness, amidst the violence and political upheaval, amidst the economic struggle.  God is interrupting our stories, even the ones where all we can notice is the people we’ve lost, the ones who should be here tonight but aren’t, for whatever reason, God is inviting us to look up from those stories to the bigger story and to ponder.  To ponder in our hearts what story we want to wake up in.  Because we can stick with the story about darkness and violence and do the best we can with it.
Or we can see that larger story, about exultation and joy. about justice and righteousness.  About loving yourself and loving your neighbor and loving God.  On this night, of all nights, God is asking us, what story do we want to wake up in?


[1] Raymond E. Brown, S. S., The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 395.

[2] Sarah Henrich, “Gospel: Commentary on Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)”, Working Preacher “Lectionary Commentaries for December 24, 2021, Christmas Eve: Nativity of Our Lord”, https://www.workingpreacher.org/?print-all=50869%2C50871%2C50872%2C50873  (accessed 21 November 2021)

[3] Henrich.