Spiritual Growth :: Sermons

Christmas Eve 2009

The Rev. Kate Ekrem

 

I have to say I’m getting a little tired of the Christmas story this year. Normally I love it, I love this night and all its beauty and meaning. But this year’s a little different, I think because our catechists, our Sunday school teachers, are doing a very good job of teaching my 4-year-old daughter about the Christmas story. Every night at bedtime for weeks now, it’s been, tell me about baby Jesus. Tell me about when God was a baby. And I have to tell her the story again. She’s totally fascinated by it, and I think it’s because of the baby aspect. Maybe she can just relate to it.

But it a way her fascination with the Christmas story this year has given me a bit of a new perspective on it. God became a baby. How weird is that. Why?

God is God, after all. And God is big. Once I went for a hiking trip, on Mt. Greylock in the Berkshires. We camped near the top of the mountain and after dark, on a starry night, we went out to an overlook to look at the stars. We leaned over the edge of the rocks and looked up, and it was this huge bowl of stars. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the thought that our little planet is one very small dot in a very huge universe. And my next thought was, God is even bigger than this, this whole universe out there, God is bigger because God made it all. I had vertigo for a moment and had to scramble back off the rocks. God is big.

I had a college professor who said she stopped believing in God, or at least believing in Jesus, because of the disconnected message her church gave her growing up. That God was both the big creator of all, powerful, almighty, all that. And also that God was a little tiny baby born on Christmas. It just didn’t make sense to her, she threw up her hands on the whole thing. But I think that that paradox is the very point. God became a baby. The power that made our whole universe became a small, vulnerable, child. It is weird.

It is a paradox. The angel is my daughter’s second favorite part of the story. She’s four, anything potentially sparkly is very big with her. In our children’s pageant at the early service today, the angel Gabriel was played by the tallest member of our youth group, very appropriate as I sort of imagine Gabriel being very large with big wings, perhaps. The Bible says that shepherds, who were pretty tough guys, were afraid of him. And this awe-inspiring angel, hovering in the starry sky, says to the shepherds, To you is born a Savior, and this will be a sign for you. What do you think the sign was? Maybe fiery letters in the sky or something? No, the sign is that the baby will be wearing – diapers (bands of cloth). That’s actually pretty ordinary for a baby. Not sure that the baby will really stand out because of that. Gabriel also says, the baby will be … in an animal’s feed trough. Well, that last one is a bit unusual; so maybe that is a good sign. But it still seems pretty.. mundane?

In those days, when the birth of a child to a royal family would have been a huge political event, one that was heralded and celebrated by all the rich and powerful, you’ve got to expect that Luke, our gospel writer here, may just be being deliberately ironic. Here’s the newborn king, born in a stable. Instead of courtiers, he is surrounded by farm animals. Instead of having heads of state come witness his birth, there are shepherds, who were basically the garbage collectors of the ancient world in terms of job status.

God became a baby, and God probably could have been born anywhere God wanted to be, and God chose to be born in a stable, to a poor refugee couple. What does that say to you? What does that say about the kind of messiah God has sent us? What does that say about God’s intentions for the world? Do we still think God wants Christianity to conquer the world – or anybody to conquer anything -- or for us to run things based on who is the strongest or richest or smartest? Maybe we don’t tell this story enough.

Jesus is God’s word made flesh, God come among us, Emmanuel, God with us. God is with us in our most vulnerable and weak places, and not with power and might but with his own weakness and vulnerability right next to ours. When we say that Jesus is God’s son, we mean that Jesus is the expression of all that God is and does. This is what God does. Jesus brings God’s love to us, not by might or power or coercion, but in submission and humbleness (TFP p. 56). And God’s faithfulness to us, God’s commitment to humanity, is worked out in simple human events, like a baby wearing diapers, even when the outward appearances seem to deny God’s presence or God’s power (LT Johnson). God is there.

And there’s another thing about God becoming a baby. Maybe this is why my daughter wants to hear this story again and again. God really wanted to be with us. Really wanted to be near us. Else why would he have bothered with all this becoming human? You know, the Christian life is not about believing in God or believing in Bible, as my college professor worried about. It is about entering into a relationship with God manifested as Jesus. (Borg) The miracle is that God meets us more than halfway in this relationship. God comes to us as the easiest kind of person to love. God comes to us with outstretched arms of a child. In my office I have an icon of Mary and baby Jesus, from the Russian Orthodox tradition. In this picture, Jesus is snuggling right up to Mary, with his arms wrapped around her neck. That’s why God became a baby. Because God loves you that much, just as much as a child loves his mother.

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Works consulted included:

Texts for Preaching, Cousar et al.

The Birth of the Messiah, Raymond Brown

The Gospel of Luke, L. T. Johnson