Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

God be in my words and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our understanding. Amen.

According to the Book of Common Prayer, there are three principal feasts of the church year. Christmas — the Feast of the Incarnation — is one of them; Easter — the Feast of the Resurrection— is, of course, the second; and Pentecost — the Feast of the Coming of the Holy Spirit — is the third. There’s a lot of lovely, Trinitarian symbolism to the three feasts, being as they are essentially dedicated to God — Creator and Progenitor; God — Redeemer and Christ; and God — Sanctifier and Spirit. Sometimes, I think, in our Christmas celebrations we get so involved with the baby in the manger, that we fail to notice the enormously significant action of the First Person of the Trinity, in deciding to become human and to be born among us. There was and could be nothing external that forced God to make this momentous and unprecedented choice. This was not a mere policy change; it was not a course correction, or a new spin on an old problem. It was a fundamental, radical decision that would utterly transform the relationship of humanity and the Divine. It was a huge risk, an amazing and overwhelming gift. When God decided to enflesh the Divine love in the person of Jesus, God decided to make the Divine love and mercy real enough for people to touch, human enough for people to love, vulnerable enough for people to kill. And God did this not because we earned it, not because it seemed like a good or a safe plan, but because the love God felt for us and for Creation was vast enough to make this closeness, this incarnation, something God desired. In the imagery of the lesson from the prophet Isaiah, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who live in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined.” The love of God, made concrete in the Incarnation, is like a light that shines where no light has ever shined before. It is as new a thing, this enfleshment of God in a human being, as the first light that God called out of darkness in the very beginning of Creation. “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. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. … The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”

God became incarnate because God chose to do so; because God longed to be loved in return, God became human — a baby in the manger — something small enough and understandable enough for us to love. Babies and young children often bring out the best in people. I’m sure you’ve seen it at work: the crusty, grumpy old gentleman who melts into smiles when an infant grabs his finger; the harried clerk at the Co-op, who has to coo and make funny faces at the baby in the shopping cart; the teenager who finds himself steadying the wobbly toddler, or even picking him up so he can see what all the big people are seeing. Love is transformative; and that’s what God wanted from us — not just the “Awww-cute” response we give to infants, but also the opportunity to change our relationship to the Divine from one of awe, wonder, and even fear into one based on love.

God wanted to change human lives, change human hearts. The Epistle lesson sums this up: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all…
that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”

In the Gospel account from Luke, we hear the story of that birth, with all the familiar and beloved elements: why the young couple was in Bethlehem instead of Nazareth, how there was no room for them in the inn, the vision of angels granted to the poor shepherds in the region, and the shepherds’ wondering response to this thing that has been revealed to them. “And they went with haste, and found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.” It’s a wonder and a mystery, that God would choose that kind of birth, choose those parents — faithful, yes, but also poor, without access to wealth and power — choose an occupied country and an oppressed people. It flies in the face of everything our secular culture considers common sense; and yet, God chose to be poor, chose to live among the powerless, chose to minister on the margins instead of in the centers of power. What message does that have for us, today? Do the familiar Scripture lessons invite us to find a new insight, this year, as we celebrate the birth of our Savior?

The choices God made when deciding to be made flesh are peculiar choices, if we insist on viewing them through the lens of our secular culture’s understanding. Our culture teaches us that it is only the powerful people who can effect change; and our culture holds up the accumulation of wealth as both the road to and result of power. But in the Incarnation, God shows us something different; in that shivering babe in the manger, God shows us that the ability to effect change needn’t be associated with wealth, or military might, or any of the things that generally spring to mind when we consider the word ‘power.’ The power Jesus displays — in his utter helplessness as a newborn infant — is the transformative power of love. God chose to be born a tiny, fragile child of poverty, not as the heir to some worldly kingdom or fortune, because we didn’t need another leader or ruler — we needed to be shown the depth of God’s love for us, and to be given a way to love God in return.

In order to effect change, brothers and sisters, what’s really important isn’t power, or access to the media, or a good image. What’s important is relationship: friendship, trust, sharing, love — those are the sorts of powers that transform us, and enable us to touch and transform others’ lives. In Jesus, God was born to show us that the outward trappings don’t matter; the helpless child of poverty can grow up to become the Savior of the world — and each and every single one of us has the potential to live transformed and transforming lives.

My point, here, is that because of God’s choices, because of the child in the manger, because Jesus the Light of the world came among us, everything is different. The work that God began in the Incarnation is ongoing, and we each have a role in that work, a part to play in the establishment of the Kingdom of God. Christmas, this light-filled and joyous celebration in a dark and fear-filled world, has something to teach us about our role and our task. At least, it does as long as we cling to our sense of Christ as the center of our celebration, and resist the temptation to slip into our culture’s materialistic interpretation of the holiday as an important factor in the cash-flow of various retailers, or an indicator of the strength (or weakness) of our national economy.

In a sermon, Archbishop Rowan Williams spoke about the mystery of Christ at the center of things. It wasn’t a Christmas sermon, but what he had to say connects to the kinds of things I thought and felt, as I was working on this sermon; so I’ve decided to share it with you.

Archbishop Williams writes: About twelve years ago, I was visiting an Orthodox monastery, and was taken to see one of the smaller and older chapels. It was a place intensely full of the memory and reality of prayer. The monk showing me around pulled the curtain from in front of the sanctuary, and there inside was a plain altar and one simple picture of Jesus, darkened and rather undistinguished. But for some reason at that moment it was as if the veil of the temple was torn in two: I saw as I had never seen the simple fact of Jesus at the heart of all our words and worship, behind the curtain of our anxieties and our theories, our struggles and our suspicion. Simply there; nothing anyone can do about it, there he is as he has promised to be till the world’s end. And nothing of value happens in the Church that does not start from seeing him simply there in our midst, suffering and transforming our human disaster.

And he says to us, ‘If you don’t know why this matters, look for someone who does — the child, the poor, the forgotten. Learn from them, and you will learn from me. You will find a life’s work; and you will find rest for your souls; you will come home; you will sit and eat.’

“Nothing of value happens in the Church” — perhaps, even, in our lives — “that does not start from seeing [Jesus] simply there in our midst…” As Christians, we need to attune our senses to perceive Christ’s presence, to notice Christ’s need in the needs of others, to recognize Christ’s face in the face of a stranger or an enemy. Christ’s presence is the beating heart that enlivens all the pageantry and traditions of this holiday, and helps us to keep the generous impulses, the responsiveness to others which we sometimes call the “Christmas spirit” alive and vibrant beyond the traditional twelve days of the season. In the same way that the work of the Incarnation is ongoing, the spirit of Christmas needs to be expanded, strengthened, so that it can guide and inspire our actions long after the Christmas decorations and bright, holiday lights have been put away for another year.

In closing, I’d like to share with you a simple poem by Howard Thurman, which expresses, perhaps more eloquently than I have been able to, what I’ve been trying to say about our understanding of Christmas, and our place in the Kingdom of God.

Howard Thurman writes:

When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins —

To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To teach the nations
To bring Christ to all
To make music in the heart.

So this Christmas, let us remember that we don’t have to be rich or powerful or a celebrity of some sort in order to make a difference: Jesus wasn’t. We don’t need a special visitation from angels, or a dramatic burning bush in order to have a mission from God: we already have our charge — to follow Christ; to be, as the Epistle puts it “zealous for good deeds.” What we need to do is to strive to perceive Christ in our midst, and to remember that God loves us — each and every one of us — enough to choose to be born among us. If we want utterly to transform the world, all we need do, is to demonstrate this love, by our words and actions, to all with whom we come in contact.

In the Name of Christ, Amen.

Sermon preached by Beth Hilgartner
at St. Barnabas, Norwich