December 24, 2022, Rev. Justin Cheng

I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

The Netflix movie ‘Swimmers’ is a real life story about a young girl from Syria who eventually becomes a swimmer in the 2016 Rio Olympics competing in the international refugee team. The first part of the movie details her, her sister and their cousin journeying from war-torn Syria into Germany, escaping the conflict there. Along the way, they meet up with other refugees trying to escape war and violence in their home countries. One refugee they meet is a single, young African woman with her newborn baby. The refugees encounter many struggles along the way, from human traffickers who promise their safe passage, but instead take their money and leave them stranded, to uncaring government bureaucrats who view them, not as fellow human beings deserving as care and concern, but as potential burdens to their new adopted countries.We might hope that at least the woman with her baby might receive compassion and special concern regarding their vulnerability. But tragically, this is not the case, at the end of the film, we find them back in their dangerous home country, being refused acceptance as refugees. We may hope that those who are marginalized, might receive special concern, compassion, and love by those in power, but the truth is that that is rarely the case.

With that in mind, we can look at the first part of the Christmas story. Why did Mary and Joseph have to make that long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem especially because Mary at that time was pregnant and expecting? We often gloss over the census as an incidental fact of the story, focusing on the singing angels, the shepherds on the field. But the census is quite a sinister part of the story. Rome wanted to count the people to extract taxation from them, unlike today, where we hope, much of our taxes will go to public goods such as health care and education to benefit us all, Rome’s taxes were meant to benefit Rome first and foremost, Mary and Joseph and the rest of the Palestinian Jewish community were simply meant to be exploited, to be ripped off to fund the Roman war machine.

And Rome simply did not care if Mary and Joseph had to make a long, treacherous journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. They were nobodies, poor peasants, conquered people whose only value was in the money and resources they could be forced to provide. Mary and Joseph had no choice in the matter but to do what their imperial masters forced them to do. After all, we know from Good Friday about thirty years from now, what happens to people who say “No” to Rome.

In Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph find themselves lost in the crowd and they search for a place to stay. There is little space available and while their fellow people may have been sympathetic to their plight, they too were stressed and burdened by Rome’s demands. So, Mary and Joseph settled in a small cave in Bethlehem, they made due, they were nobodies, and like many nobodies in history, they accepted the plight and accepted the fact that most people didn’t really care about them. But, like the refugees in the movie who had to care more about their survival than people’s opinions of them, Mary and Joseph had to care about their own survival and the survival of the new-born child.

We then move to the fields, where the shepherds are keeping watch by night. Speaking of nobodies, shepherds at the time were considered among the lowest of the low. Shepherding itself was not a glamourous job, it was a dangerous one, fighting off wolves and bears, rescuing sheep from cliffs and ledges. Shepherds were also considered low class, part of the agricultural caste of farmers and herders, who while providing valuable food and resources to society, nevertheless were looked down upon by those at the top. And yet it was these nobodies that received the message from the angel, the announcement that the anointed one, the Christ has been born. These nobodies, for whom society rejected and loathed, were the first ones to receive the message from God, that salvation has arrived in the coming of the Son of God.

For to God, no one is a nobody, but everyone is deeply loved and cherished by God. And while everyone is equally loved by God, from the top to the bottom, it is true that those at the bottom, those who are rejected by society are the ones who need the message the most. They are the ones who desperately need the good news, because the good news was their only hope, their only assurance that the voices of society, the voices of the powerful were wrong, and that they, far from being nobodies, were indeed somebodies, beloved children of God, and deserving of dignity, respect and honour.
The angel did not appear to Mary and Joseph directly when Jesus was born, but instead went to the shepherds. The shepherds then, in the end of the story, arrive to the manager to adore the Christ Child and honour Mary and Joseph. While angels showing up to praise them might be a wonderful sign, perhaps despite the wonder of supernatural assurance, what Mary and Joseph needed was assurance, compassion and care from other human beings. And that is what the Shepherds provided. To Mary and Joseph, called ‘nobodies’ by the powerful, what they needed was reassurance and care from other human beings.

And so, that is our call as Christians to act like the shepherds, to go to the nobodies of the world, the poor, the marginalized, the downtrodden, and offer assurance, compassion and care. We are called to see them as the children of God they are and act accordingly. Those whom society kicks down, we are called to lift up, those who society erases or ignores, we make visible and reveal, those who are abandoned, we find, those who are discarded, we treasure and respect.

Because at the heart of Christmas is the mystery that God become a nobody, a helpless infant, child of common parents, victim of occupation and colonial violence; to lift up the nobodies of this world, in order to raise them into dignity, honour and respect. In becoming a nobody, God reveals the truth that there is at the end of the day, no one who is a nobody. All are cherished, all are loved, all are welcomed and embrace into the Kingdom. God has become a nobody, so that in all the nobodies of the world, we can see and embrace the face of God. Amen.