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He has taken the world by storm with his cuteness and love. His presence in the world has changed lives in a meaningful way. People cannot stop talking about him or his greatness. I am, of course, talking about Baby Yoda.
Baby Yoda is by far the cutest thing you have ever seen. He is, many would argue, the star of the new Star Wars TV show, The Mandalorian. If you haven’t gotten a chance to see Baby Yoda, feel free to Google it after the service. You will see what I mean by how cute he is.
But all that cuteness can make us forget the crux of Baby Yoda’s story. He is a being, simply because he exists, that is being chased all over the galaxy. At the start of the story, all we know is that fragments of the Galactic Empire, destroyed at the Battle of Endor at the end of Return of the Jedi, want Baby Yoda, dead or alive. They want to perform tests on Baby Yoda, many of them painful or torturous, in order to learn more about this creature’s mysterious species in hopes of discovering more about the Force.
Baby Yoda’s life is one that will never be safe. It is easy to forget that looking at his adorably cute face.
There’s another baby who had a similar journey. That baby’s name is, of course, Jesus.
It is easy to look at this day and see only that which gives us cause to celebrate: the salvation of the world, our own personal salvation, and the fact that we get to celebrate a cute baby. The images of Christmas conjure up beautiful nativity scenes, shepherds and kings coming to worship Baby Jesus, and Baby Jesus somehow getting to play with cute sheep and other animals in spite of just being born.
The reality of the situation is much different. Tonight, we have heard how Mary and Joseph could find no place in the inn to sleep. This sounds terrible to us, but would have been somewhat more common place in Mary and Joseph’s time, so, as horrible as it is, they would have known what to do.
Likely they would have gone to a cave to sleep. Likely there would have been other people there, and likely these people would have had livestock with them. Mary would have had to find a place to give birth that had a bit more privacy, and likely the feeding trough, and yes, that is where Jesus is in all those nativity scenes, was the only suitable place to lay Baby Jesus after He was born.
Jesus’ birth in this world was far from ideal, as we see in Luke. It was not an idyllic, pretty thing, but the story doesn’t end there.
In Matthew, Baby Jesus is also being chased after by those in power. King Herod the Great, a terrible tyrant, hears of Jesus’ birth from the Wise Men. Herod sees Jesus as a potential threat to his power, so he goes in and systematically kills every child born within the same period of time as Jesus. We remember those children on December 28, the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents. It is only because of an angel in Joseph’s dream that he, Mary, and Baby Jesus are able to escape Herod and flee to Egypt.
We often forget that Jesus’ birth wasn’t a cute and joyous occasion as we would like to depict it. Jesus’ life was in real danger from the world beyond Him, not to mention the danger to his mother even before His birth, as we heard this past Sunday. As cute and adorable of a baby as He more than likely was, His life was far from safe. That is something we often forget and that we would do well to remember.
But in all of that danger is hope. The odds were completely stacked against Jesus, and yet He survived, doing so in order to grow up and be able to save us all from sin and death. Even with the full force of the king against Him, Jesus came through unharmed. Only through the will of God could any of this happen. Only through the will of God could everything turn out and be all right.
Though we might wish it were different, life is rarely perfect or idyllic. When times are tough, we can remember that our life and salvation were hard fought for. Against all likelihood Jesus survived and gave us life from death. For that great gift, the true gift of Christmas, we can say, “Thanks be to God!”
You can also find the text of this sermon at The Gospel according to Superheroes.