May the love of Christmas be ours this night and for ever ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In my office I have two shelves of books that I intend to soon read. And those shelves would be empty if I’d stop buying new books to fill them. One of those books that I haven’t yet gotten to is called “God: A Biography.” I’m sure it’s a good read, but there’s just something about that title that seems overly ambitious. Talk about padding your résumé – “Oh yes, I’m God’s biographer.” The truth of the matter is that no mortal is able to be God’s biographer. Our intellects are too dull, our lives are too short, our perspectives are too limited.
And this isn’t even to mention that the word “God” is just the generic word for “deity.” The word comes from the Germanic family of languages and simply means “one who is called upon.” So Zeus is a god, our stomachs can be our god, or the Father of Jesus can be called “God.” But that’s as descript as saying “I ate the food for dinner,” or “I had a conversation with the person,” or “My job is to do the thing.” Saying that we believe in “God,” while a seemingly a bold declaration of faith in a post-belief world, is actually a rather bland confession.
At Christmas we find ourselves caught between these two realities – we want to say something clear and definitive about God, but we recognize the limits of saying much. In the art world, Johannes Vermeer is something of enigma. We have no letters that he sent to friends or colleagues, no journals or diaries that he kept, even public records about the details of his life are sparse. Scholars aren’t even sure who he apprenticed under and learned his skills as a painter from. There is hardly much to say about him in terms of a biography. But even if we don’t know it’s Vermeer, we’ve all seen “Girl with a Pearl Earring” or “The Milkmaid.” And by simply having seen these works, we know perhaps more about Vermeer than any biography could tell us. His works show us how he saw the world and what things seemed important enough for him to capture in his paintings. We might not know much about the facts of his life, but because of his works, we know a lot about his character.
The example of Vermeer gives us a path forward at Christmas – though we might not be able to say much in terms of the Almighty’s biography, we are given the gift of knowing the character of God because the eternal Word has become flesh. As we consider the birth of the Messiah as recorded by St. Luke, we do so asking the question “What kind of God would do this?”
That way of framing the question suggests that there is something unexpected, even unsettling about Christmas. To put clearly: Christmas is a scandal. As one writer has put it, “The miracle, wonder, and beauty of Christmas is that the only thing powerful enough to make the universe became small enough and vulnerable enough to be held in our arms.” In Christmas, the limitless takes on limits, the unknowable becomes knowable, the all-powerful comes not in might but is born to an unwed peasant mother and is attended to not by royalty but shepherds. Christmas is not a sweet and sentimental story. Christmas is a scandal. What kind of God would do this?
The story begins with the well-known words that are being read around the world tonight: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.” The word for “decree” in that passage is the Greek word “dogma.” If there’s a soundtrack for the opening of the Christmas story, it is the “Imperial March” from Star Wars and instead of Darth Vader appearing on the stage, it’s Emperor Augustus. There were two reasons to take a census – either Rome wanted to raise revenue and needed to know how much more in taxes they could collect, or they wanted to know how much of a standing army they needed to maintain control.
The dogma of Rome was the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. It was a simple dogma to understand – if pay your taxes and keep quiet, you won’t have any problems. It was a complicated the messy time to be a person of faith. This is the Promised Land given to our ancestors, but it’s overrun with unclean and irreverent Romans. But if we raise our voices, Rome will raise its army and raze our Temple.
A lot of people wanted a Messiah to liberate them from Rome. In the epic novel The Brothers Karamazov, perhaps the most well-known scene is “The Grand Inquisitor” in which Ivan attacks the idea of faith and says that Jesus betrayed humanity by coming in vulnerability instead of power. What we wanted was a Caesar, not a baby. But that was not the Divine plan. God comes not in the midst of the glory days, but the brokenness of life. God comes not as a warrior, but a rabbi. Not as a ruler, but a redeemer. Not as a champion, but a servant. God comes not to clean up the mess of imperial occupation, but God comes gets into the mess with us. Whatever mess your life is, Jesus has shown that’s exactly the sort of place God sets up shop. What kind of God would do this?
When it comes time for Mary to give birth to the child given to her by the Holy Spirit, she lays him in a manger, a food trough. All of those images we have of Jesus being born in a stable after Joseph runs into the “no vacancy” light of the motel are wrong. The word “inn” that we’re so accustomed to doesn’t mean that. It just means an extra room. When Jesus asks his disciples to find a place for the Last Supper, the word he uses is the same – it’s just a spare room. And in the whole of Bethlehem, they couldn’t get a room.
Tradition is that it was a cave that Jesus was born in, which would have functioned as something like the basement. Perhaps no one was willing to make room for the Holy Family because they knew the story – this woman is pregnant and that man is not the father. That’s too scandalous; we can’t let them inside our home. What if people think we’re okay with their “situation”?
The German pastor who was arrested for his opposition to a different empire, the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote “Until we have taken the idea of God becoming human seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demands to be taken.” God is born not in a palace, is not welcomed as royalty, but is born out of wedlock, born outside the accommodations of respectful society, born into a scandal, and laid in a something like a cardboard box. What kind of God would do this?
Mary is not attended to by midwives or visited by family. Rather, it is the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night who receive a Divine decree, one that counters Augustus’ earlier dogmatic decree. There they were, minding their own business and doing the third-shift job of watching out for predators and thieves, when God intruded into their lives. One theologian says that Christmas is when we see that God “refuses to stay in his place.”
When the angels of the Lord intrude into the night watch, Luke records that the shepherds had a “mega fear.” I would imagine so. Seeing the angel army of heaven shining in the glory of God would frighten us all. And for some reason understood only by God, these shepherds were the best people to share this Good News with. Luke balances their “mega fear” with the “mega joy” of the angel’s message. The announcement didn’t come to the religious leaders, this great fear was not brought to those sleeping in palaces and fortresses. The Christmas declaration did not intrude into their lives. Rather, God’s chosen recipients of these glad tiding were the shepherds. What kind of God would do this?
A lot of times in the ancient world, and it’s also true today, when someone wants to deliver a message they send an ambassador to handle things for them. No need to travel great distances and leave the comforts of home – just send a trusted messenger, but no need to go yourself. The most radical aspect of Christmas is that the one who was born to Mary was not another prophet like Daniel, Isaiah, or Elijah. He was not a king who would rule comfortably from a throne as David, Solomon, or Herod did. No, when it came time for God to act, the Almighty came in the form of a son. We hear the great line at the Easter Vigil, “How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son.”
Jessus is not an emissary, not an ambassador, not a messenger. He is Emmanuel: God with us. We aren’t able to comprehend the profundity of that statement – that God became human, but that is the proclamation of our faith, that the One who gave beauty to all beautiful things, the One who is the source of all joy, the One who will finally make all things well, this One gave up all of those things to come and be our Savior. What kind of God would do this?
Jesus himself tells us what kind of God would do this: A God who “so loves the world that he would give his only Son, so that everyone who comes to him will not perish, but have eternal life.” Or, as the English poet Christina Rosetti put it, “Love came down at Christmas / Love all lovely, love divine; / Love was born at Christmas.”
God has done all of this for us, for you. “A child has been born for us, a son given to us.” “To you is born in the city of a David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” “For us and for our salvation, the Almighty came down from heaven and by the power of the Holy Spirit became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made human.”
This God comes into the messiness of our world and our lives not as another ruler among rulers, but as a redeemer to set us free from the tyranny of dogmas and decrees that tell us what to do. This God comes as grace upon grace because we are his beloved. This God does not require anything from us; instead, this God tells us to enjoy your forgiveness and receive the peace that passes all understanding. This God is no stranger to scandal and will be quite comfortable in whatever messes we find ourselves in. This God bursts into our lives with the joyous news that you are always loved and already forgiven. In a world plagued by isolation and loneliness, this God comes to be with us.
The gift and glory of Christmas is knowing exactly what sort of God would do this – one who loves you without regard as to whether or not you find yourself loveable; one who will go to any length, depth, or height to bless you and be with you; one who summons you into living a life that truly matters, a life lived in harmony with the love that came down at Christmas; a God who will do whatever it takes to show us the wonders of his love. Amen.
