sermon-dec-25-2009-mp3    (Click onto this link to hear an audio version of this sermon)

 

In 1969 I got to spend Christmas in Italy where my parents had gone to live for a year while my father did historical research for a book he was writing. As a special treat, my parents had planned a ski trip to the Italian Alps for the week after Christmas. We were joined by another American family, friends of my parents, who were on sabbatical in Europe.

 

One day our two families planned a special outing. We were all going to ski one of the trails which took off from the top of the mountain and followed a circuitous route down a valley far away from the main ski area, where my father would meet us with the car. I was sent to find out if the trail was open and safe to ski. The only problem was that I didn’t read Italian and the trail which we wanted to ski down was actually closed for lack of adequate snow.

 

The top of the trail was in good shape and we all had a great time. I managed to get ahead of the group and everything was fine until I hit an area where the trail began to be broken up by ice falls and tricky drops.

But, instead of stopping and waiting to help the rest of the group, I plowed on. I guess when I realized how tricky the terrain was I began to worry that my Dad, who was at the bottom of the trail waiting for us, would think we were lost. And I felt that I needed to keep going to warn him that we were OK.

 

I finally made it down to the bottom of the trail where my Dad was waiting. I thought I had been helpful by rushing ahead to warn him. But he told me that, all the time, he had been tracking us down the side of the mountain with his binoculars.

 

I thought I was warning my father that we were OK, but, in fact, my Dad knew where we were all along. I thought that I had found him, but it was he who had found us!

And this is the heart of the Christian  - and Christmas – message that we celebrate today. That God has found us – on a dead-end trail… on a pathway full of obstacles and dangers, where we often don’t belong…alone, and fearful.  Today we give thanks for the glorious news that we have been found by God, when we encounter this squalling newborn baby.

 

What does it mean to be found by God? It means that God had completely entered into human life and that there is nothing that God does not know about us, because God has become one with us – in our sorrow as well as in our joy. To put it another way, God has become vulnerable. God has become open to the pain of the world – to the poverty, the violence, the tragedy of human life. No matter where we find ourselves – in the darkest moments of our lives – God is there. God knows us through and through. God’s love encompasses everything about us and about our sinful world. Nothing in life is rejected. Every human being is known, accepted and loved by God.

 

John’s gospel puts it this way: “And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us; full of grace and truth.” This means that God has taken the initiative to make known God’s love for us. God has humbled himself and was born in a stable in Bethlehem for us. Wherever we turn, God is reaching out to us in love. When we ask the question, “How can I reach God? How can I come to God?” – the good news of Christmas is that God has reached out to you and me. God has made the first move.

 

As exhilarating as this message is, it can also be embarrassing and humbling. You see, we are all people of action. We all want to believe that we can do something to bring about our own salvation. And we look at God the same way. We are willing to affirm God’s acting in the world, but we have a harder time with God’s actually entering into the world.

 

But there is a big difference between God’s acting in the world and God’s entering into the world. It’s important to remember that God’s entering into history begins not with a display of God’s power…not with something God has done in history. It begins in far-off Rome, where the pagan emperor, Caesar Augustus, ordered a census in one of his unruly provinces. Through the bureaucratic channels in Rome, a peasant couple in Palestine was required to set out for a hundred-mile journey to a tiny village in Judea called Bethlehem.

 

The birth of Jesus takes place not in a palace or even an ordinary Bethlehem hotel, but in a poor, squalid stable. How can we possibly believe that this child, with these parents, in this situation will be heralded as “Savior,” the “Wonderful Counselor,” or the “Prince of Peace?” It’s as if Luke is telling us, “the course of human history will be determined by ordinary events, events which look insignificant on the surface.” God is there, but not in the way we expect it. In the birth of Jesus, we don’t see God acting decisively in world history, but entering into the world in a quiet, ordinary, seemingly insignificant way.

 

Today we celebrate the fact that God took the first step, God found us, God entered into the world. But will we make room to receive him? Will we be able to make room for this child? Perhaps the mystery of Christmas is that each one of us has to decide for ourselves how to respond to the inconspicuous way that God has entered into the world. God has found us. God has entered into our world. And if we accept the strange, even scandalous way that the Word has become flesh, how will we make that revolutionary event real for ourselves and for others? Will anyone notice that God has entered into the world by looking at us?

 

May this be a day to rekindle our faith in the strange, risky, even scandalous way that God enters into the world… a day to consider in what ways we can hold up a pair of binoculars to the people around us and to ourselves, and say, “there he is, do you see him?”

 

He is here among us. He is Emanuel, God with us. And for that we sing with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those God favors.” Amen.