First Friends Meeting
Luke 2:1-5
‘Being Counted’
Doug Gwyn

The story Bonnie just read made me remember an experience of having to register. I was finishing my last year at Indiana University, majoring in zoology. I was going on to seminary in the fall. But over the summer, I had a chance to use some of my training in science as a state part naturalist. I was delighted to spend a summer in the woods before spending a year in Manhattan. I also looked forward to interpreting nature to park visitors. Helping others appreciate its beauty and its delicate balances. It felt like a kind of ministry, really.

But to get the job, I had to register as a Republican. It was the old patronage system, which applied even to a low-paying summer job. Well, I’d grown up Republican, but Richard Nixon turned me off, with the way he was furthering the war in Vietnam. I couldn’t be an enthusiastic Democrat either. They got us into that mess in the first place. Anyway, I needed a summer job and I wanted to be a park naturalist. And, of course, I knew that once inside the voting booth, I was free to follow my own conscience. So, next time I was in Indianapolis, my ancestral home, I marched down to Republican headquarters to register. And there, under a giant portrait of a smiling Richard Nixon (not my favorite Quaker), the deed was done. Ah, the things we do for love!

Now, I’m sure Joseph and Mary were even less enthused about their trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, to be registered in Joseph’s ancestral home. Worst of all, they had to make the trip just as Mary was due to have their child. This mystery child. This love-child of some kind. It’s well portrayed in Franco Zeffirelli’s film, Jesus of Nazareth. Joseph goes to tell Mary and her dying mother about this trip to Bethlehem. They’re all distressed. It’ll be very rough on Mary. And her mother may not live to see her or the baby by the time they return. But then it dawns on them – Bethlehem is where the Messiah is supposed to be born! Joseph exclaims, “See, even Augustus has to obey God!” Caesar Augustus, the greatest leader of the greatest power on earth, bossing the whole world around, unwittingly bends to God’s purposes, God’s will.

Of course, from the Roman point of view, the purpose in this registration was to count all the peoples of the Empire. To assess their numbers and strength, in case of uprisings. But also to assess their taxes. Their taxes supported the vast Roman bureaucracy and its great armies. Only the Romans could have enthusiasm for this census. The Jewish people found it distasteful, partly for religious reasons. That kind of military assessment was condemned in the Hebrew Scriptures. Once, King David commanded his generals to take a census of Israel’s men of fighting age. According to 2 Samuel (24), God sent a plague on Israel because of David’s census.

Today, we are counted, quantified, analyzed, and programmed as never before in history. I’m not thinking only about the census that is taken every ten years, or all the data the IRS has on us, or the unprecedented powers of Homeland Security to spy on us, or the possibility of a renewed military draft registration. It goes beyond all that. Think of all the market research that goes on, the polls and focus groups that are used to figure out what we are thinking, and what we will buy. The same techniques of analyzing consumer preference are used, whether it’s about laundry soap or Presidential candidates. And it’s not just a matter of researching public opinion and popular tastes. It’s about manufacturing these preferences among us. It’s not just market research, it’s social engineering.

Sometimes it’s so blatant, you can easily see it. I remember around 1991-92, during the reign of George I, after the first Iraq war. The media began to go after Bush about his domestic policy, especially the economy. After pounding away on that for several months, CBS took a national poll and asked people whether Bush was doing well with the economy. And the public dutifully responded with what we had been hearing for months. “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Now, of course, it was true then – as it is true now, with his son, George II. But I wondered. Were the media, and the mysterious forces behind them, actively manufacturing our readiness for a change in leadership? And around that same time, along came Bill Clinton, out of nowhere, with a mysteriously large ‘war chest’ of campaign funds. Because he had all this money, the media begin to tout him as the Democratic favorite. And sure enough, we did the right thing and voted him in. Today, another Presidential election looms. Both parties have several candidates vying for nomination. With all the media coverage, how much are we learning about the candidates? And how much are we, the electorate, being coaxed gradually toward some pre-ordained election outcome? I wonder.

Well, all this doesn’t seem like a very Christmasy message. I’m on the verge of “Bah! Humbug!” But I think of Joseph and Mary. That a trip to Bethlehem probably didn’t seem like a Christmas vacation to them. We don’t fully appreciate the miracle of Christmas unless we take stock of the cold realities of Jesus’ day – and our own.

I think that’s what Phillips Brooks, one of the great American preachers of the 19^th century, was doing in 1868. He wrote the words to ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ in that year. It was the aftermath of the Civil War, perhaps the most traumatic and discouraging moment in American history. Writing in those dark times, Phillips Brooks appreciated and articulated all the more beautifully the miracle of Christmas. For example, listen to that great third verse: “How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given, so God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven. No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.” That captures the meaning of Christmas so well. The Christ-child sneaked into a broken, unjust, and violent world, by way of a few meek souls, surrendering to God’s will, in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. With the eyes of faith, they could relish the irony of it all. We can too, even 2000 years later, in a world that continues to be broken, violent, unjust.

If we think about it, we have seen some surprising events and ironic outcomes in our own times. Twenty years ago, who could see the conflict in South Africa over apartheid ending in anything but a blood-bath? And yet, that regime changed peacefully. And a process of healing and reconciliation continues there today. It’s not without troubles. But who would have imagined it could happen at all? Or the Philippines under Marcos in the 1980s. That situation looked hopeless, probably moving toward a bloody civil war. But for years, the Fellowship of Reconciliation had been quietly sending people to the Philippines, teaching alternatives to violent struggle. They worked most often with Church groups, but also with any who would listen. And again, change happened in a sudden, surprising, peaceful way. Northern Ireland and the Soviet Empire, Serbia – those are other dangerous, hopeless situations we have seen change for the better in surprising, peaceful ways.

Israel-Palestine is a place where we still wait for some kind of breakthrough. This week, I learned that Winchester Friends have constructed their annual Christmas ‘manger scene’ with a new twist this year. A high wall runs through the middle of it. It separates the three wise men from Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It represents the wall being built to separate Israel from the Palestinians. The message is, if the wise men were traveling to Bethlehem from the East today, they couldn’t get there. Joseph and Mary probably couldn’t get there either. Our American tax dollars are helping to build that wall. And neither candidate in next year’s Presidential election in this country is likely to challenge that state of affairs.

The Christmas story teaches us many important truths. But one it has taught me this year is that God’s designs can infiltrate any power. God’s love can slip past all barriers. God’s wisdom can subvert the greatest human knowledge. God’s will can work even our darkest designs to some divine purpose. Christmas is the story of Good News revealed in unhopeful circumstances. God’s promises fulfilled in unpromising situations. Maybe that’s why we celebrate Christ’s birth “in the bleak mid-winter.” I close with words from Phillips Brooks’ first verse” “Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”