CHRISTMAS EVE 2005

If a picture is worth 1000 words, I could simply do what I am about to do and sit down. But no one has ever found me at a loss for words, and tonight is no exception. So you get the image and the words.

First—what do I have in my hands—okay—a vase and a flower.

Watch carefully.

What have I done that suggests the word that we use to describe Christmas most frequently:

Think about it. Let me do it again. Does everyone have the one word suggested by putting a carnation into a vase? Okay—Incarnation!

God made flesh. Jesus coming as God to dwell with us. Emmanuel, which means, God with us. This can all be described in one word:  incarnation.

We Episcopalians like to believe that we are first and foremost an incarnational church. Because Jesus was made flesh, we find God in the places and people and things of the world. We see the world as sacramental—full of the invisible spirit made visible.

So when we look at the story of the birth of Jesus, we learn some pretty incredible things about God made visible. The first is that God thinks birthing is a pretty amazing miracle, because the birth of a baby is at the center of this story.

Meister Eckhart, a medieval mystic theologian, posed the question, “What does God do all day long?  God lies on a maternity bed giving birth all day long.”

The whole world is full of God, having been birthed by the Creator. God has been incarnating in creation for several billion years, not just 2000 years ago in Bethlehem.

Being present for the birth of a child or having a baby ourselves is probably as close as we get to this awesome understanding of the miracle of creation and of new life. Phythia Peay says what probably all of us have felt “…I’ll never forget the rare moment that occurred after my first son’s birth. Gazing down at this incredible new being in awe, my husband and I felt so overwhelmed with love for our new family and for the whole world that we simply couldn’t believe what we were feeling. Babies were born every day—still, we wondered, how could there be war or any kind of violence in the presence of such living miracles?”

And still we know that as tender as we feel toward our own babies, or all babies, and perhaps especially toward baby Jesus, as protective as we are capable of being, King Herod was on the path to destroy him, and babies have never been spared the violence of the world.

Yet we when we take a life, baby or not, we are destroying a creation of God bearing the image of God. Every person was once held in arms of love, or so we hope, and it is in this love that a child can come to know God as love, can come to know his or her true self as a beloved child of God.

And this is the second thing; beyond birthing itself as a miracle is what happens next. The miracle of being in relationship. No baby can survive without someone to love her, to care for him. A child grows in relationship; and if this child is fortunate, the child has a relationship with mom, dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, a community, a church. We know Jesus had a mother who loved him throughout his life, a  father who watched out for him and protected him, an aunt Elizabeth and uncle Zechariah,cousin John and brothers and sisters of his own. He learned about being human from this web of relationship and caring, and he blessed the importance of learning to be human from not only our closest relationships, but those beyond our birth families.

If you are looking for a family movie this Christmas you might well consider the Chronicles of Narnia, based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by British theologian CS Lewis. It has adventure, but it also has a message about the preciousness of life and what is worth engaging in struggle for. The Daughters of Eve and the Sons of Adam have a special role and responsibility for all of creation, of which they are a special part, and they have bonds of affection for one another that require sacrifice and courage.

It bears seeing and discussing as we seek to teach yet another generation of children what it means to be a human being created in the image of God.

The third lesson of the incarnation of Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem is the gift of vulnerability.   Most of us would hardly consider this a gift. We do everything we can to protect ourselves, to be in control of our lives. Yet, here was Jesus, not only as vulnerable as any baby ever is, but as vulnerable as a homeless child, born in a back alley, and then a refugee child, who had to flee for his life.

Why would God create such a situation of vulnerability for this holy baby?  We would set this child up in a superior hospital in a comfortably well off family with the best medical care and schooling that money could buy. What was God thinking? 

I think that God was saying that God can be found where people are vulnerable, where they don’t have it all together, where life does not give the illusion of certainty and security. When we look around our country and world we can see places of great vulnerability and it is comforting to know that God is there.

When we look at our own lives, we know there are places where we are vulnerable and times that we feel especially vulnerable. This is exactly where God is able to break through our protective shells and come to us, to engage us in relationship. When we are vulnerable we know that our illusions of power and control are just that. We are at the mercy of a world that often seems random and harsh, and how comforting it is for us at these times to know the incarnational God, Emmanuel, God with us.

Last Sunday the children of this parish gave a lesson once again to themselves and the adults of the parish as they enacted the Christmas Story. Everyone was adorable and well rehearsed. Even the littlest sheep finally got to where she belonged. No disasters or miscues were obvious to the congregation, at any rate, unlike the occasion in another church where a group of children were doing a nativity play. The radiance of the baby Jesus was to be highlighted by an electric light bulb hidden in the manger. All the lights in the church were to be turned off except for that one so that the brightness of the manger would fill the set. But the boy controlling the light panel got confused and turned out all the lights. It was a tense moment for all, until one of the sheep in a loud stage whisper said, “Hey! You switched off Jesus!”

Well, heaven forbid that we should switch off Jesus this year or any year, because Jesus is the joy that comes at Christmas, yes, but at other times, when we feel switched off, cut off, denied—and at the times when we are truly present for the miracle of birth and creation, and for the tenderness of relationship. Even though these situations are very different, there is a joy that is similar in times of difficulty and times of obvious grace. That joy is the realization that truly, God is with us in that very moment, no matter what.

Our God, an incarnational God, is with us, and indeed in us.

Let our joy ring out this night!