ICCM; Christmas Eve 2019; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
Instead of opening Christmas cards and letters that come in the mail, here in Mexico we make do with emails or Facebook posts. Once again, this year I received a greeting from my cousin. She always manages to gather her whole extended family for a spectacular photo—the blond and blue-eyed family is dressed in coordinated outfits, hair tidy, smiles perfect. Their accompanying greeting is filled with news of their trips and awards and achievements. One might think it was a professionally produced advertisement.
Jesus’ birth wasn’t picture perfect. He was born into a shaky, uncertain family. Mary and Joseph were trembling that night, I’m sure, not thumping their matching sweater clad chests in a family photo. They were just a young mother, yet unmarried, and her soon to be husband, trying to follow their calling. Certainly, they were baffled, needy, making do in a stable find themselves holding the sweet little Jesus boy. I doubt it looked anything like a Christmas card picture. We don’t see the mess of childbirth, or the smell of the animals, or the fear and joy mingled together in those pretty manger scenes.
If your family isn’t picture perfect, that’s ok. Neither was Jesus’ family. But, in that humble family Jesus learned to be merciful, to love, to follow God’s call. That’s what we get to do too. We hurt each other, and then we forgive. We live in a messy world that is not picture perfect.
People did not know who Jesus was at his birth. He was seen as one more baby born on the run, born into poverty and anonymity. Jesus was not given a place of honor but a place of leftovers. There were no warm towels waiting to receive him, only the warm arms of a very tired mother and father. The world treated him with contempt and disdain. Jesus practiced what he preached—a gospel of God’s great kingdom reversal where the mighty are brought low and the low are lifted up and the outcast have special reserved seating at the banquet while the insiders have to move down a seat to make room for them at the table.
This great reversal sees men and women and children—all, not some—sees all, first and foremost, as children of God and are to be treated with the kind of care and dignity that that claim demands. A young woman is called to smuggle God’s salvation into the world. Lowly, ordinary shepherds are the first ones visited by angel choruses with the good news. I am convinced that God would not have had it any other way but to be born into a leftover place and to a left-out people, knowing full well no one else knew what God was doing in that sweet little Jesus boy.
By being born as unwelcome and unknown, God was taking the daring risk of Great Love. God was proclaiming to us all that God loves us so much that God is not content to be without us. God was determined to show us God’s constant presence and love by getting down into the grit of our lives, down into the grime of our pain, down into the messiness and beauty of being a human being, a child of God, a baby—completely weak in power, completely vulnerable to the world.
As William Sloane Coffin once preached, “To break through our defenses, [God] arrives [in Jesus] utterly defenseless. Nothing but unguarded goodness in that manger” (William Sloane Coffin, “Power Comes to Its Full Strength in Weakness,” 25 December 1977). God knew exactly what God was doing at this moment of birth into a leftover place to a left-out people, even though no one else did.
Here in this congregation one of the traditions we look forward to is Carl Williams, this time with Keith Reid in support, singing Sweet Little Jesus Boy. That song was written by Robert McGimsey in 1934, in the depth of the Great Depression. He had attended a midnight Christmas Eve worship service in New York City and was walking past some private nightclubs on his way home. He witnessed drunken people singing and shouting and swearing through the doorways and the poor huddled in corners and doorways for warmth. His biography says he wrote his thoughts that formed the basis for this song on the back of an envelope: What a strange way to celebrate the most loving, influential person that ever lived. We seem to have missed the whole significance of his birth.
So here we are, on this night to claim hope and sing for joy. We do so because of the way God chose to be Immanuel, God-with-Us, a baby, born into poverty and anonymity, born into a world full of violence and fear, born completely vulnerable and totally unguarded—because this is the way God has chosen to make God’s love most fully known. The God who chose to come to be with us like that is a God who will never harm us. Any God who would choose to come be with us like that can only be a God full of more love and grace and mercy than we can ever imagine.
So yes, God knew exactly what God was doing at this moment of birth, what we call incarnation. Even if they didn’t know who the baby was. Even if we still don’t completely know who this Jesus is. God knows what God is doing. And that is more than enough.
Therefore on this night hear anew what the angels sang: “Be not afraid. For I bring you good news of a great joy for all the people. To you, for you—messy, beautiful, broken you—is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, who is God-with-Us, who is the Lord.” Sweet little Jesus Boy. God’s Love-Made-Flesh. Amen.