Chrismas

Tonight we celebrate the word made flesh! …the Word of God made incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is the Word. Tonight we celebrate The Spirit of Truth inhabit the Material. It is a sign from God of our completeness, the gift of what true humanity looks like and what we are meant to grow into.


Tonight we receive the gift of God’s promise of Salvation - The Christ child: The angel of the Lord said to the shepherds: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”


What a story! A story of completeness: to be utterly connected with God…
God showing up as one of us demonstrates for us the deep desire to be connected with us completely. To be in direct communication.


One of my favorite lines is from psalm 27:


When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”


The incarnation demonstrates that while we seek to know God, God seeks to be fully human. We are wrapped in a love affair: Wrapped up like swaddling clothes.


The shepherds see a great light and an angel of the Lord tells them"Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”


The bands of cloth Mary wrapped Jesus in create what we refer to as swaddling, and what other translations of this passage call “swaddling clothes.” The bands create an embrace, like being in the womb; a cocoon of comfort. Swaddling keeps an infant from flailing around; hurting themselves; scratching themselves with those tiny, sharp little fingernails.


God comes to us this way: needing swaddling, consolation and protection. In doing so, God says to us your human frailty, your vulnerability is God-given, loved, blessed, part of the divine nature!


And in mutuality it is God’s embrace that offers us consolation and keeps us from flailing about.
This tiny infant Jesus whom we welcome, grows up to embrace us in different ways with his healings and with his teachings, forever reminding us:




When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”


Throughout the scriptures, Jesus sees us often in our flailing about, and he blesses, heals and forgives. His swaddling embrace comes with teachings to try to keep us from hurting ourselves and one another. Jesus demonstrates for us the love of humanity while he directs us through so many parables to answer the question: What does it mean to seek God’s face?


Jesus sees God’s face in us…struggling to grow into our full humanity. Jesus sees every circumstance as a way to lead us into reconciling relationship: Incarnated Love.


“This Messiah is to bring great joy to all people (not just those who look like me, or think like me, or think like us). God so loved the World.”  (not specific politics, ideologies, colors, cultures, genders, or races) but flesh and blood: everlasting spirit and frail material united. We celebrate God breaking into history through the incarnation, into frail humanity to help us love our own incarnation: To be that connected. To teach us Peace.


God’s word is enfleshed in Jesus’ life. “The word became flesh and lived among us.” What we mean is that Jesus’ life is the teaching of God. That’s why we say, we follow in his footsteps and can say in certain circumstances: “What would Jesus do?”; “What would Love do?”


We don’t always do, nor want to do what Jesus demonstrated even when we desperately want to be like him, a loving healing presence.


As we celebrate the light of God entering the World, It is important to remember the story tells us Jesus was born in the midst of genocide. He lived during a time of tyranny and war. God sought us in that time. And still seeks our face, our humanity today. We have the hope and the light of Christ. And all shall be well in our lives in God. But on earth we have not yet learned to hammer our weapons into plough shares.


In 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr said “if we are to have peace on earth and goodwill toward men [it] is the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life. Every man is somebody because he is a child of God. And so when we say “Thou shalt not kill,” we’re really saying that human life is too sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the world. …Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such. Until men see this everywhere, until nations see this everywhere, we will be fighting wars. [He said] One day somebody should remind us that, even though there may be political and ideological differences between us, the Vietnamese are our brothers, the Russians are our brothers, the Chinese are our brothers; and one day we’ve got to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. Because in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In Christ there is neither male nor female. In Christ there is neither Communist nor capitalist. In Christ, somehow, there is neither bound nor free. We are all one in Christ Jesus.”




This Christmas I turned to the voice of MLK, because he reminds us that Christ’s salvation comes whenever we look into one another’s face and seek the incarnation of God’s love. Peace comes when we work at home to seek God’s face.
And teach that lesson to our children.


When You said, “Seek My face,”
My heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.”


Christ’s salvation comes when our manifest spirits reach out to one another to protect and console. It is that redemptive swaddle that is our gift and our salvation.


Every Christmas this tiny baby is our sign of God’s promise that can be ours now, and is everlasting: Salvation in the knowledge that we are flesh and blood and we are Spirit incarnate in a great love affair with God that is meant to be expressed with and for one another.


Martin Luther King went on to say:
“I still have a dream that with this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when there will be peace on earth and goodwill toward men. It will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing together, and the sons of God will shout for joy.”




Scripture is full of poetry because it gives us images that are beyond what we can see or speak in regular language, but we know in our hearts sing true:


“the morning stars will sing together, then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the Lord when he comes, *
And
“How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace.”


“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. “


May we feel his embrace this Christmas, and may we offer it to others.

Merry Christmas!




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