Sermon | Year A - The Year of Mark

December 25, 2008 | Christmas Day

Isaiah 62:6-12; Psalm 97; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2: [1-7] 8-20

The alternate reading for Christmas morning is from St. John's Gospel. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

John's writing is not about stables and inns, angels and shepherds, nor is John's writing about cattle lowing while the baby sleeps. John writes about what is behind all the images we have come to associate with Christmas. John writes about life, light, and creation. He writes about the Word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. John writes about the light shining in the darkness.

John is writing about is the mystery of the Incarnation. It is the mystery of God becoming a human being just like any one of us. Consequently, as we read John's Gospel, the question becomes, "Why? Why did God become one of us? Why did God choose to become part of creation in a way that lives, breaths, suffers, and dies? Why did the Word become flesh?" Behind those questions stands the meaning and point of the Christian faith. God becoming a human being is what separates Christianity from all other religions. It is what makes it unique both in form and in its central message.

God did what he did in becoming flesh because of our resistance. It is in us to resist God. It is part of us to resist what God does, revels, and provides. Humans love their power, as little as it is. Humans love control, even with the little control we have. This is the nature of our resistance.

Think for a moment of King Herod. Herod typifies the resistance. Though a Jew, he is so threatened by what he hears from the wise men, who are only asking for information about finding Jesus, that he sets out to destroy every male in Bethlehem two years of age or less, just to be sure no usurper comes along to challenge his reign—as if God were interested in doing that.

We are resistant to change because it threatens our power and control. Therefore, we resist new ideas, even new ways of keeping house! “My mother always did it that way; do not change it!” “This new plan by management will never work!” “We have never done it that way before!”

We resist change even when we know it is good for us. We resist it even when we say we want it. Think of diets that have failed and New Year’s resolutions that have fallen apart. Even when we want to change, we will fall back to what we know simply because it is familiar. That is the nature of sin. We cling to what we know; we will even repeat what we do not like simply because it is in us to resist.

Then, along comes the Incarnation, Christmas, the Word made flesh. The Birth of the Messiah had been “in the works” for a long time. In fact, the whole of Scripture up to the New Testament is God’s preparation for this event, the birth of Jesus. Throughout it all, there was resistance. The people led by Moses were unruly, complaining, and disobedient. They preferred Egypt’s slavery to wandering in the desert. Many of the ancient kings of Israel turned against the ways of the Lord. The ancient prophets were repudiated, even the greats like Amos and Hosea.

However, the plan prevailed, and the birth, the Incarnation, God as one of us arrived. The birth of Jesus was a quiet, unheralded event except for a few motley shepherds, the Holy Family and some wise men from the East. The Incarnation, the birth of the Christ Child is God joining the resistance. He came to work salvation from the inside through the body, birth, life, and death of a human being. God joined the resistance, if you will, by choosing to be born into it, lowly and quietly in a backwater region of the Roman Empire.

It is this method of God’s, taking the path of joining the resistance, that makes the Christmas story central. It is the reason we love to hear the story told and retold. If Jesus’ birth had been revealed in some cosmic, earth-shaking conquests, if it had been made known by dominions, king, empires and powers being toppled, we would have run in fear. Few people approach the Messiah as conquering king. Most of us come to the crib, gaze into it to wonder and ponder at the gentle miracle that is before us. We come in feeling safe before the light of the Christ Child that is so strong that it overcomes the darkness.

Slowly, deliberately, and with what looks like to us as failures and setbacks, the plan of salvation unfolds. It is not a smoothly rising road, but a journey with rocks and deserts in the way for most of us. However, this crib is the starting place, and it reveals to us something about God’s nature. God does not choose to use power to overwhelm us; rather God joins us as the Word made flesh, being born as a child. As the prophet Isaiah said, “A little child shall lead them.”

Nothing else would have or could have worked. The writers of the Gospel saw that, and used the birth narrative to announce this truth. True, they each wrote about it from different perspectives, but the account of Joseph, Mary, the shepherds and the wise men is more than a charming story. It gives life to John’s words that the Word became flesh and lived among us. We have seen his glory, and he shall be called wonderful counselor, Prince of Peace, and King of kings. God is a child born in Bethlehem. Amen.