In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Merry
Christmas! On this most holy of nights we come together, way past bedtime for
some of us, to sing songs, hear lessons, and partake in a holy meal. These
hymns, lessons, and meal all point toward something rather odd though. We’ve
grown so accustomed to the Christmas story that we forget how absolutely absurd
it all is.
Think
for a moment about anything you want to. Whatever you just thought of, our
faith claims that God is its source. Every particle, every life, every moment
is all created and sustained by God. And the word “God” is really just a symbol
for something that is beyond our ability to comprehend. God is beyond being,
beyond substance, beyond time, beyond definition. We use that term, “God,” to refer
to the source, the Creator of heaven and earth, the foundation of all that is
and ever will be, and also the end towards which all of Creation is heading. It
really is beyond our ability to grasp with our minds.
And
the absurd claim of this night is that this thing, which isn’t even a “thing,”
that we call “God,” was born as a human. That God showed up, not as an
appearance from on high, not as a ghost, not as a vision, but as a person. And
not as some perfect human. This isn’t at all like Zeus or Athena coming down
from Mount Olympus with their perfectly toned bodies and their perfect hair.
No, God is born in a particular human being. His name is Jesus and he was born
in Bethlehem, though he would grow up in Nazareth. He wasn’t a king, but rather
a Jewish peasant who spoke Aramaic. Sometimes we forget that before Jesus
became the focus of our creeds or the center of stained glass windows he was a
real person, just like you or me.
If
we think about it – it really is absurd. That God came as a particular person,
at a particular time, in a particular place, and lived a particular life. Why
was Jesus born in the Middle East two-thousand years ago as the child of a
teenage mother who was married to a carpenter? I’m not going to pretend to even
have a guess. But tonight we celebrate the fact that that’s how it happened.
One theologian calls this the “scandal of the particular.” It’s a scandal
because it shocks us, because we weren’t prepared for it, because to believe it
puts us at odds with the way that the world works.
There
really doesn’t seem to be anything special about the way that Jesus was born.
It’s not as if the skies opened up and Jesus came down in a bolt of lightning.
The whole earth didn’t flock to Bethlehem to see this child. And, on the
surface level, the world didn’t change when Jesus was born. People still got
sick, wars still happened, hunger and injustice remained issues. And this is an
important part of the Christmas story – that there really isn’t anything holy
about it. The word “holy” means “something that has been set apart” or
“something that is different.” And this is a part of the “scandal of the
particular” of the nativity.
Jesus
birth was just like the billions of births that have happened on this planet.
Mary went into labor, her face grimaced with pain, and she pushed until the
baby was born. And when he came out, again, he wasn’t walking, he wasn’t
talking, he wasn’t unlike any of us in that sense. I know we don’t often think
about it, but Jesus, God incarnate, the Savior of the world, was extremely
needy when he was born. He wet himself, he needed to nurse from his mother’s
milk, he cried, and he needed to be wrapped in swaddling clothes. Jesus was
subject to germs, to bad dreams, to broken hearts, to splinters when he learned
carpentry from Joseph. Again, this is the “scandal of the particular” of God’s
life in Jesus – that there was nothing intrinsically different about Jesus.
This is what the Church has claimed since the Council of Chalcedon in 451, that
Jesus was fully human, with all of the unholiness and ordinariness that being a
human entails.
The
reason why this is so important to remember on Christmas is because it shows us
the miracle of Christmas, that God is with us. It shows us the risk that God
was willing to take in order to most fully show us how deeply, how
unconditionally, how broadly, how eternally we are loved. In Jesus, we see that
God doesn’t come to punish, to threaten, to frighten, to scold, but rather to
show us what is possible in our humanity, to testify to the fact that light can
overcome darkness, to show us that Resurrection overrides death, to remind us
that God is love.
This
time of year, we often hear the Hebrew name “Emmanuel” and hear that it is
translated as “God with us.” The same is true for Jesus’ life. Jesus is a
translation of liberating, life-giving, and loving purposes of God for us.
Jesus is God translated into human terms. So the particulars of Jesus’ birth
matter, because they are a part of that translation. If God chooses to show up
in the pain of child birth, in the messiness of life, in the political unrest
of the Jewish people living under the oppression and occupation of Rome, in the
particular life of Jesus, well then what’s to say that God wouldn’t show up
right now?
If
God is up for coming as a helpless baby, then who’s to say that God won’t show
up when you feel helpless. If God chooses to come in the scandal of an unwed
mother, who’s to say that God won’t show up in the midst of your struggles? If
God comes amidst the turmoil of Roman oppression, who’s to say God isn’t willing
to be a part of our divisions? Because God came somewhere, it means that God
comes everywhere. Because God comes in a particular life, it means that God
comes in all lives. Because God was born in a particular time and place, it
means that God is able to be present in all times and all places.
Isn’t
this what great poets do? The take something very ordinary and particular and
make it a gateway to the universal. In poetry, a bird, a flower, a cloud can
symbolize a universal human experience. This is what the Incarnation does. When
God comes as a particular person, he provides a doorway for all to walk
through. We can see God in everything because we saw God in Jesus and now we
know what to look for. So when we see beauty, when we see love, life, joy, when
we hear laughter, when we hear cries, when we are in pain, when we are in
sorrow, when we find community, when we eat bread and drink wine, we find
God. God came to us in the midst of common things: childbirth, humanity, bread
and wine, and if God can be found in these things, then God can be found
anywhere.
The 12th century
theologian Peter Abelard once wrote about the life of Jesus in terms of a
felled tree. He writes, “That dark ring there, it goes up and down the whole
length of the tree. But you only see it where it is cut across. That is what
Christ’s life was; the bit of God that we saw.” The particular leads us to the
universal. Jesus’ particular life revealed God to us, but that does not mean
that God is confined only to that moment in time. Because God came in Jesus, it
gave us a glimpse into the heart of God in the particularity of our existence,
showing us truths that transcend space and time.
So
you might wonder what we do with this? I suggest to you that the response is
doxology not dogma. That is, to respond to the miracle, mystery, and majesty of
Christmas with nothing but joy. We don’t need to understand how the infinite
became finite, but we can appreciate it. Joy isn’t something that you need to
understand, it is rather something you enter into. There is such joy in
Christmas – the joy of God’s love coming to us, the joy of the world being
saved through Jesus’ life, the joy of receiving the grace of God that we didn’t
ask for and don’t deserve.
As
Luke presents the Christmas story, there is a very personal dynamic to it. The
angels say “I am bringing you good news” and “this will be a sign for you.” The
Good News of Jesus’ birth is for you. I’m not talking about them, I’m talking
about you, each of you. It has been said that God loves us as if God had no one
else to love. This is another aspect to the scandal of the particular. The Good
News is particularly intended for you. How will you receive it?
I
realize that this may also seem scandalous, but it’s actually the gospel truth.
I know that when we think about the story of Mary and Joseph, we remember that
there was no room for them in the inn. The problem is that’s a misleading
translation. It’s very unlikely that a small city such as Bethlehem would have
had a hotel. The word that is used doesn’t mean “a room that you can rent for
the night,” rather the word refers to the second level of the house. Homes in
that culture generally had three levels. The ground level was where the animals
were kept, and where the messier household duties happened. The second level
was the living quarters and third floor was an open-air roof.
So
often we misinterpret, because of the mistranslation of the word “inn,” what
happens in this story. The homeowner doesn’t turn Mary and Joseph away. This
person doesn’t say “I’m full of paying customers already,” but rather takes
part in an ancient and holy practice of hospitality. This isn’t a transactional
relationship, rather it’s one of graciousness. This person makes room for Mary
and Joseph. Perhaps there wasn’t room in the sleeping quarters for Mary and
Joseph – that room was probably already full with the family. But the homeowner
doesn’t turn them away, but rather says “Why don’t you say downstairs?” The
homeowner didn’t turn them away, but rather made room for Mary and Joseph.
This
is a crucial point of the nativity story – that when God comes to us, we have
the choice of whether or not we will make room in our homes and lives. Even
when things are full, can you make room for God, who has come, in particular,
for you? Will you receive the joy that accompanies Christmas? Will you let God
be born again in your life this Christmas?
As
this Christmas gospel comes to a close, Luke records that Mary “treasured all
these words and pondered them in her heart.” Let that be your response to
Christmas. You don’t need to understand it, you don’t need to open the perfect
gift in the morning, you don’t need to worry if the dinner doesn’t go as
planned. Rather, simply treasure it and ponder God’s love in your heart. Ask
God to make the joy of Christmas something that you can you can feel in your
bones and see all around you. Your life, like mine, is probably quite full and
busy – so all the more reason to invite God into our lives where there is no
room. Ponder the absurdity of it all – that God, the Creator of heaven and
earth, was born in Jesus. Perhaps you can chuckle to yourself at just how crazy
it is. Ponder how it is that just as God was present in Jesus’ life, that
God is present in yours. See the particularities of Christmas as a doorway to
the universal and eternal truths of our faith: that God is with us, that God is
for us, that God loves us, and that God wants nothing more than to fill our
hearts with this joy and love. Ponder these things, and treasure them in your
heart. Amen.
