Christmas Eve: Who Counts

I was thinking about the way that the Roman Census set in motion all the events of Christmas, which got me to thinking about counting … and about who counts …

 Who Counts?

Isaiah 9:2, 6-7  Luke 2:1-20

They went to be registered, to be listed in the record books of the Roman Empire. Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem because the Romans wanted to count them – along with all the other inhabitants of their Empire.

There is some irony in that, because the whole story of the birth of Jesus is peopled with people who didn’t count for much – Mary and Joseph for starters.

We don’t know much about them, which suggests that there wasn’t much to know about them. They were ordinary folks, so ordinary that they didn’t rate a place to stay at the inn in Bethlehem. We hope they were hardworking, honest, and pious, because that would make us feel better about their unlikely vocation as the parents of Jesus, but there’s not much way to know if that is true.

The shepherds didn’t count for much either. It was not a noble profession, and the men who watched the sheep were thought to be a tough bunch. They had a hard time of it, living without much shelter in all kinds of weather. They were poor, and they often smelled bad; their job was a lonely and isolated one. Nobody thought too much about the shepherds.

Even the magi didn’t count for much – though for a different reason. They were rich, all right, but they were foreigners, sages from the East. They spoke a strange language, were educated in matters unknown to the people of Judea, and they probably traveled in a caravan with more luxury than the local people had ever seen. Their clothing was exotic, and so was the food they brought with them. And the gifts they brought to the child were, well, odd: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Yes, the gold would be valuable to the family, but the spices were of the kind used for healing and for preparing bodies for burial – curious gifts for a child, even a child whose name was written in the stars.

But it was among these people – these people who didn’t seem to count for anything – it was among these people that the story of Jesus’ birth unfolded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. God moved among people who didn’t seem to count, and counted on them. God counted on Joseph and Mary to receive the surprising and upsetting news of her pregnancy; God counted on the shepherds to listen to the angels and spread the word; God counted on the magi to invite the rest of the world into the miracle of the Jewish nation.

The story of the nativity is not the only place in scripture where God counts on unlikely people. Time and again people are called out from their ordinary lives and given extraordinary assignments: to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land; to save humans and animals from the great flood; to bring the good news of God’s mercy to Ninevah; to comfort and goad the people carried off to exile in Babylon. And later, when Jesus begins his own ministry, it will be ordinary, flawed people that he calls to be his disciples.

There are Christmas lessons for us in all of this counting. The first is to remember that everyone counts in the eyes of God. Let us not be fooled by the voices around us that say that poor people don’t count, or women don’t count, or gay and lesbian people don’t count, or people in Africa don’t count. God counts everyone.

The second is to remember that we, ourselves, count. Even when things are hard, even when we make mistakes, even when things don’t go in our favor – we still count. God’s love and mercy cannot be thwarted.

And the third is that God uses ordinary people, the people who are overlooked in the world, to carry out the most important divine work. God chose to become flesh on Christmas Eve, to be born in human form, to live with us and share our common lot. The promise of Christmas is Emmanuel, God with Us.

The Roman officials had no idea that their census, their registration of all the people in their empire, would set the stage for the amazing events of this night. They thought they were just counting – but they weren’t counting on this: that the birth of Jesus would change everything.