One of the funny things about our postmodern age is that it seems somehow that, despite all our plethora of communication technologies, we are still fully capable of being lonely. Of feeling unknown. Of feeling like a number or a screen name rather than a person. The world can be a terribly impersonal place.

Think about it. Cordless phones (old). Cell phones. Iphones. Instant Messaging (old). Email. Texting. MySpace. Facebook. Bluetooth for the car. We have set our lives up so that we are accessible to more people, more of the time, than at any point in the history of the world. It’s amazing.

But it’s also true that we can touch base with so many…without going deeper with any. Without knowing. Or being known. The world can be a terribly impersonal place.

Five hundred years ago, a man named Martin Luther, whose only communication tools were conversation, reading, and painstakingly slow writing spoke against the impersonal nature of the world by speaking against the mistaken perception that perhaps God too was impersonal.

When Luther read the Christmas story, he said in essence, “For God’s sake, don’t forget to read the prepositions.”

Now, unless you were an English major, you may have forgotten what a preposition even is. Prepositions are those little linking words, right?

The things that connect the nouns and pronoun and verbs, that connect them into time and space. “on,” against,” “for,” “with.” Those are prepositions.

And what Luther said was that in the Christmas story, the prepositions are critical. Little bitty words, tiny, short, unspectacular words…that make all the difference.

* So when the angels come to the shepherds, the greeting is

NOT: “don’t be afraid, I’m bringing good news,”
BUT: “I bring Good News to you.” It’s not just that there’s some good news out there generally, but it’s coming TO you, and FOR you.

* When the angel speaks again, it’s

NOT: just “There is a baby born in the city of David,”
BUT: “TO you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior Christ the Lord.”

* And again, it’s

NOT: just that there is a baby that signifies things,
BUT: It will be a sign FOR you.”

It’s not a history story, but a story made holy by its prepositions. TO you…FOR you. A story made personal by holy prepositions.

Prepositions are plain words, ordinary words, short and insignificant words which mean everything. They make all the difference.

We come to this holy night, remembering a birth. Miraculous though every birth is, in the course of world events we might be prone to say that a baby’s birth is ordinary, small and insignificant. It happens thousands of times a day. Yet this birth, exactly because it is to you and for you…is holy. It is God reaching out to people lonely, with longings and yearnings to know and be known.

And it moves this insignificant event to the most important of all time.

C.S. Lewis is known for his prose but he also wrote a few poems, and one of my favorite is called “The Turn of the Tide.” It’s a long poem, and we don’t have time to hear it all, but it’s about the night of the birth of Christ. It starts out:

“Breathless was the air over Jerusalem,
black and bare
Were the fields; hard as granite the clods…
and the deathly stillness spread from Bethlehem.”

Lewis describes a hush falling over all the world. Caesar stops signing documents. Wars stop. Something is about to happen. It might be the end of world.

“The tide lay motionless at ebb.”

And then suddenly everything changes, everything is charged with energy and hope:

“Then…came a music, infinitely small
And clear. But it swelled and drew nearer…
Heaven danced to it…
“But at Bethlehem the blessed
Nothing greater could be heard
Than a dry wind in the thorn,
the cry of the One new-born…

But it is not only that the night happened. The prepositions mean everything. They’re holy. You are not a number. You are not a screen name. Jesus Christ came TO you, Jesus Christ came FOR you. In his birth. In his life. In his death and resurrection. It is the most intimate, most personal thing we have ever known. We celebrate it this night.

Let us pray.