Christmas is a celebration. And that is appropriate. It should be. We celebrate the advent of our Savior. God has come to us in the person of Jesus, and that is worthy of celebration. But we have turned the celebration into glitz and glamour. Now we have television specials—Christmas at Rockefeller Center. Now we have commercialization and the task of “finding the perfect gift.” Now we have lights and decorations and Clark Griswold. And I’m the world’s worst. You should see the front of my house. There are probably enough lights to land a small plane on our driveway!

But in reality, Christmas is not about celebrating the glitz and glamour, and the bright and shiny, it is about celebrating the insignificant and the ordinary and the outcast.

At least it was for the first Christmas. Think about it. What kinds of people were involved in the first Christmas? Take the shepherds, for instance. The first people, outside of Mary and Joseph, to see the baby Jesus were shepherds. Now to catch the impact of this, you have to know little bit about shepherds of that day. Shepherds were the lowest of the low in that society. They were shunned and rejected almost as much as lepers were. I mean, if you couldn’t do anything else in life, you either became a shepherd . . . or a criminal! Shepherds were not even permitted to testify in a court, because it was just assumed that all shepherds were dishonest. And they were especially shunned religiously. Tending their sheep kept them from being able to go to the synagogue for weekly services, and so they were despised by the religious leaders and the townspeople. And yet, these were the people that God chose, out of all the people around, to tell of the birth of His Son. This would be like God sending angels to a homeless shelter downtown. It really would! I mean think about it. Can you actually imagine a heavenly choir of angels coming to a back-alley, with homeless people gathered around a makeshift fire, and telling them that the long-awaited Messiah had come? Well, that’s what happened. And notice this. These were not even the best shepherds. These were the night shift shepherds. They worked third shift, 11-7, deep nights. As far as shepherds go, these were the worst. They weren’t even good enough to work the day shift.

Then there was Mary and Joseph. There is absolutely nothing noteworthy about Mary and Joseph, and yet God chose these two very normal people to raise the one who would change the world. I mean, you would think that if God was going to send his Son into the world, God in the flesh, in order to save us from our sins, that he would choose to use parents that could really further that cause. He could have had Jesus born into a wealthy family, but he didn’t. Think about how much more Jesus could have accomplished if he had had more money. He could have started schools and training centers and left his disciples with money to publish his teachings. He could have had Jesus born into an influential family, but he didn’t. Think about how much easier Jesus’ life might have been if he had just had a few lucky breaks, a few connections with the right people. He might could have by-passed an early death and lived to write and teach a lot longer. He could have had Jesus born into an intellectual family, but he didn’t. Think about how much of an advantage Jesus would have had if he would have parents who were smart and intelligent and could have taught him literature and languages and Greek philosophy. He would have been able to speak in the language of the learned and teach without having to use common stories and parables. Or God could have had Jesus born into a religious family, but he didn’t. Think about the inroads Jesus could have made with the Jewish religious leaders if he had been one of them. He would have had their respect, and thus probably the respect of the people, and would have been taken seriously as a great teacher. But God didn’t do this either. And this is so opposite of the way that I think. If I was going to start a movement aimed at changing the face of the earth, and I had the ability to do whatever I wanted to do to make it happen, like God does, I certainly wouldn’t have had the Messiah born into the home of a couple of no-names! I would have given him every advantage—money and influence and intellect and religious insights. And yet that is not what God did. God chose insignificant people as the earthly parents of Jesus. You see, God is not interested in the advantages that we can offer him. He is interested in the advantages that he can offer us.

A third group of people that came to see Jesus was the wise men, the magi. These guys were ancient astronomers, probably from somewhere in the east, India or Arabia. They were basically scientists. They studied the stars and through their exploration God revealed to them that the Messiah had come. But notice that these guys were not even Jews. They were Gentiles! They were pagans. They were astronomers, really astrologers. They were outsiders to things of God.

So Jesus came for the outcast, he came for the normal, and he came for the pagan. He came for the insignificant. And that’s good news to me. You see, this is the grace of God at Christmas. Jesus came for the insignificant, not for the important or the wealthy or the influential, or the intelligent or the beautiful or the powerful. And that’s grace. God’s grace runs to the least, to the lowest, to the undeserving, to the forgotten, to the rejected, to the poor, to the humble, to the weak, to the small, to the unable, to the uneducated, to the socially awkward, to the marginalized in society, to the sinful. God is drawn to the shy, to the overweight, to the unattractive, to the disadvantaged. The grace of God has a magnetic attraction to those who are addicted to food or drugs or lustful images, to those who worship their jobs or their possessions or their children or the approval of other people, to those who commit the same sin over and over and over again. God runs to the man in prison for child pornography, to the prostitute on the street corner, to the child who is always in the principal’s office. The heart of God is drawn to those people whose life is out of control, to those who have too much credit card debt, to those who just never seem to get the breaks that others do. The heart of God goes out to the man who stutters with his words, to the woman who is not as pretty, to the child who is a slow-learner. God is not drawn to us because of who we are. He is drawn to us because of who he is. And He is a God who, by nature, is a rescuer, a deliverer, a savior.

And that means this. Those who will celebrate the greatest this Christmas season are those whose needs are the deepest. If you are already well, then you don’t need a doctor. If you have no needs, then you don’t need a provider. If you are secure in yourself, then you don’t need a protector. If you’ve got life pretty much figured out, then you don’t need a deliverer. If you are already righteous, then you don’t need a savior. We won’t celebrate his coming unless we need him to come.