Number the Stars

Texts: Genesis 15: 1–6, 22:15–17

I remember a gift given to me one Christmas by my grandfather. It was one of those years when I had just turned double digits—11 or 12—when you are told that you are too old for toys, but the practical gifts that people give you are largely disappointing. I opened a large blue envelope and pulled out a piece of paper that looked like some sort of legal document. It was, upon further investigation, a description of a piece of property, someplace located between the Land of Manna and the Sea of Tranquility. These were the years when the United States Space program had set its sights on landing on the moon, and I eventually figured out that I had just been given a piece of the moon.

The gift puzzled me for months, for years really. I completely missed the poetry of the gesture. No, my grandfather was not speculating in lunar real estate; to be given a piece of the moon was my grandfather’s way of telling me that I was beloved. That’s a hard thing for a twelve year old to grasp. For that matter, it is hard at any age to truly believe that you are beloved by another. We spend so much time and energy believing that no one loves us or understands us or appreciates us. It was not until I became a father and now, a grandfather, that I begin to understand the gift and what my grandfather meant by it. I wish that I had reacted better when I was a child, because now I know that I would give my children and grandchildren the moon and the stars and everything else, were it in my power to do that.

I remembered this gift when I read one of the Old Testament readings for Christmas Eve. God and Abraham take an evening stroll in the desert. Just as once, God walked with Adam in the garden, now God goes out for an evening stroll with Abraham, east of Eden. There God tells Abraham to look at the night sky and number the stars. That is how many descendents Abraham and Sarah will have; that is how broad the land will be where those descendents will dwell; that is how wide God’s blessing of Abraham and all human beings will stretch.

The first two gifts are practical gifts—land and descendents. For a farmer or rancher, for someone who shepherds flocks and makes a living from the bounty of the earth, land and children are an essential part of making a go of it. But it is this last gift that is puzzling: “By your name, the peoples of the earth shall be blessed.” What good is such a gift? It has no practical value. You can’t grow one more bushel of grain on this gift. You can’t hold that blessing on your lap or raise up that blessing into a good, strong field hand. “By your name, the peoples of the earth shall be blessed.” This is what it means to be God’s beloved.

From almost the first moment that people began calling themselves Christians—that is, followers of Jesus—they understood their identity as this part of Abraham three-fold blessing. Christians cannot trace our DNA back to Abraham; neither can we point to a particular plot of land as the place where God intends us to fulfill the purposes of creation. We are, however, the people who claim God’s blessing in the name of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel… and even more definitively, we are the people who claim blessing in the name of God’s beloved son, Jesus Christ.

Out in some deserted place, keeping watch over their flocks by night, there were a group of shepherds. Perhaps some were even numbering the stars on that first Christmas Eve, when they were surprised by the sudden presence of angels. The text, in English, calls them a heavenly host, which softens the description from its original Hebrew. The Israelites would have heard the phrase more accurately as an army of angels. No wonder the shepherds were sore afraid.

Truth is, there is a lot of fear in the Christmas story. Mary and Joseph, shepherds, King Herod and all of Jerusalem with him, all these are shaken by their dark fears of the unknown, of God’s power to disturb and disrupt our lives and set the known world upside down. We fear because we don’t want to lose what we love. And we fear intensely when we love intensely—when we think that someone or something we love is in real danger. A world without fear would also be a world without love. No wonder this night is surrounded by fear… because it is also surrounded by God’s love.

From the moment of his birth, however, Jesus comes to us with reassurance that God’s breaking into the world is no cause to be paralyzed by our fear. Every time there is fear, from Jesus’ birth through his resurrection appearances, Jesus shows us how to respond, how to have faith, and how to act as though we are not afraid.

Jesus first comes to us in his incarnation. Whether it is as an infant in the little town of Bethlehem… or as the one who commands the wind and the rain from the depths of the sea… or as the Risen One who appears from behind locked doors and breaks bread and feeds us, Jesus comes to us as the Word made flesh. Then Jesus touches us with teaching and healing in his hands. When we respond with faith, Jesus raises us up and clothes us with power and shows us to walk through our fear. Jesus raises us up even while we are afraid and gives us practical gifts like courage and power and truth so that we can walk through that fear toward faithfulness, hope, and love.

We always come before God with fear: fear that our lives and our troubles are so large and looming that God won’t be enough to save us; or fear that we are too foolish and trivial and unworthy for God to care about us. But every single time that our heads are down and our face is in our hands, Christ makes that long journey of incarnation into our hearts and minds and lives. Jesus comes to us in scripture and story, in wisdom and insight, in kindness and gentleness¸ but most of all, in tender, uncomplicated human form.

Amid all the practical gifts we receive from God in Christ, we also receive an unfathomable gift: that we are God’s beloved, yes—you and me—beloved of God. It will take a lifetime to ponder the wonder of this gift, which is why we sit down next to Mary tonight. But we also walk with shepherds and magi because, there is not one thing stopping us from setting about God’s business. Tonight, go out and number the stars and recognize all the blessings that are yours, and then tomorrow… and all of your days… let those blessings multiply in loving service of God and neighbor.

Merry Christmas!