Let us pray: May this be in the name of our loving Creator God, the fully human/divine Jesus, and the Holy Spirit at work in us and around us. Amen.
Merry Christmas to you all! We did it! We’re here! What a lovely night, what a special occasion to come together with family and friends to hear the story told once again, to listen to the readings from scripture and sing the Christmas carols. Welcome, welcome, one and all. It is a joy to be together with you this night, THE NIGHT, the night when we recognize and remember the coming into the world of a little baby born in Bethlehem. The angels brought the good news to shepherds watching over their flocks in the field by night, and this good news echoes throughout time to us on this night.
“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people (for ALL the people!): to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in the manger.”
Tonight we come together to hear this Good News again. Tonight we come together in church, out of the cold and the darkness of our lives and our world to be reminded that we need not fear. Tonight we come together to hear the good news of great joy for ALL the people.
And this is a strange story, isn’t it? It doesn’t follow the normal plot lines we expect. In fact, this story of GOD coming down to earth is pretty absurd. THE MOST POWERFUL, Creator of ALL things, chose to enter in and relate with creation in the form of a helpless baby. What? Not even the best of babies, the most highly regarded, well known baby. No. God chose to come into our world and be revealed to us with the help of an unwed teenage mother from a tiny, backwater town. Mary didn’t give birth to Jesus in stately palace. Nope. There was no room in the inn, so they were outside in the barn with the animals. In the elements, with the sounds and smells of livestock. Little baby Jesus was wrapped up in strips of torn cloth, no cute onesie, hat, and don’t scratch-your-face mittens for him. The bed of God was the feeding trough. Manger, from the French, to eat, we pronounce MAINGER, this is where the all-powerful creator of everything that was and is and will be was first tenderly laid down. Absurd, right? This strange story, this paradox and reversal, this entry into our world is a sign for us. It is a sign of how the Creator of the Universe works and of how God desires to be in relationship with us.
It is EXACTLY in our imperfect, powerless, utter dependency, that God longs to know us, to care for us and to love us. Why else would God become incarnate, take on flesh, and spend time among us in the mysterious human AND divine person of Jesus if not to perfectly understand and validate our human existence? The mystery of the incarnation, the birth of the baby Jesus that we celebrate this night is SO much bigger than just the beginnings of Jesus of Nazareth’s life here on earth. Through God’s choice to enter into our world and relate to it in all of its raw, visceral, physical, emotional forms, we receive the assurance that God is indeed pleased to live and dwell among us AS one of us.
In the book of Genesis, the creation story repeats, again and again, God’s pronouncement of the goodness of creation seven times: and it was good, and it was good, and it was good, and it was good, and speaking of humanity, it was VERY good. God is good. What God created and creates out of God’s goodness is good. God came at Christmas time to affirm and to literally show us the goodness that is in our DNA. God, in Jesus, embraces every aspect of our physical, human lives. Every created thing is imbued with the goodness of its Creator God. What a difference it can make to our lives, our own self-image AND the way we view others, if we can wrap our minds around this starting point of original goodness, original blessing. ALL of us, mind, spirit, AND body.
This is the sign that a little baby, nine months nourished in Mary’s uterus, making the strenuous journey through the birthing canal, wrapped in cloth, laying in a food trough, surrounded by animals, nighty sky, wind, and stars, shows us.
Father Richard Rohr, mystic contemplative and author Franciscan explains Saint Francis of Assisi’s realization of the the message of the incarnation:
“Francis realized that since God had become flesh—taken on materiality, physicality, humanity—then we didn’t have to wait for Good Friday and Easter to “solve the problem” of human sin: the problem was solved from the beginning. It makes sense that Christmas became the great celebratory feast of Christians because it basically says that it’s good to be human, it's good to be on this earth, it’s good to have a body, it’s good to have emotions. We don’t need to be ashamed of any of it! God loves matter and physicality! (taken from: https://cac.org/daily-meditations/celebrating-incarnation/)
The message and celebration of Christmas time is the Good News that we, all of us humans, are good in ALL of our humanity, in all of who we are, EXACTLY who and how God created us to be. In all of our amazing diversity, reflecting the limitless facets of our Creator.
God came to earth as a baby 2000+ years ago and God continues to come to us through all the ways that our physicality, and the materiality of our created world show us how good, lovely, and lovable it all is! In the baby Jesus, God incarnate, we see the coexistence of divinity and humanity within each of us connecting us to each other, to our world and to our loving God. This is the Good News; this is the sign for all the world to see. God in Jesus, coming to live as one of us drawing us closer to our Creator. God is good. You are good. Grow in love for yourself, for each other, and for our world. This is the message of Christmas, the sign of the incarnation, our loving God showing us who we are and whose we are. Each and every one of us is beloved of God, in each and every way we were created to be on this earth. Oh what a night, a holy night, a perfectly human divine night! Merry Christmas to you all!
Amen.
