Incarnation 12-24-21
Incarnation
Is 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20
Is 9:2-7
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 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. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Luke 2:1-20
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—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. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Prayer – Living, loving and ever-present God, we come this evening to remember not only the birth of the Christ, but the hope that comes from having a divine connectedness with you. Enable us to hear new words of incarnation that they may not only redeem us but keep us in your glory – amen.
It is Christmas Eve and we have gathered here, a faith community, waiting expectantly to hear once again the proclamation that good news of great joy has come for all the people, to you this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord, has been born. We have heard this sermon many times and I have preached it on more than one occasion. And on this day, I find myself hungering for a word that will startle you in the same way that the angel’s pronouncement startled the shepherds. I really don’t want you to sleep in heavenly peace during the same sermon for this night.
As I have reflected on this passage several thing came to mind.
First, Luke nods in the direction of and turns away from religious as well as political power. On this night 2000 years ago, the word of God didn’t go to church. The angel’s announcement of the fulfillment of prophecy goes not to the Temple but to shepherds living in the fields, and the word of God came to John not in his father Zechariah’s office in the Temple but out in the wilderness. So if we want to hear a startling word, if we want to experience the newborn Christ, and we take Luke’s account seriously, the last place to be on Christmas Eve is in church, because Jesus is born where people need him most.
By the time of Jesus, shepherding had become a profession most likely filled from the bottom rung of the social ladder, by persons who could not find what was regarded as decent work. Society stereotyped shepherds as liars, degenerates, and thieves. The testimony of a shepherd was not admissible in court, and many towns had ordinances barring shepherds from their city limits. The religious elite took a particularly dim view of shepherds since the regular exercise of their duties kept them from observing the Sabbath and thus they remained ‘unclean.’ The Pharisees classed shepherds with tax collectors, prostitutes, persons who were sinners by virtue of their vocation.
I have come to regard God sending angels to shepherds as bigger than reaching out to outsiders. Spend enough time in the field, shunned by decent and religious folk, disappointed in God, or overwhelmed by life’s circumstances, and we stop caring about outsiders. We give up trying to get inside religion, or even on God, to get on with life. But Christmas Eve reminds us that God does not give up on us. God sends angels to people who have given up on God.
With the birth of Jesus the Christ, God comes in a way that is far from frightening even though our passage has the shepherds terrified by the appearance of the heavenly host. The babe born in a stable is vulnerable, helpless, just like so many of us. Jesus is born like any baby, like every baby, with no magi at the manger scene. Jesus is born among the lowly and poor and yet we proclaim him as Emmanuel, God with us, born human just like you and just like me.
Why does Luke tell his story this way? Even more, why does God do it this way? I think that by playing out this redemptive story on the fringe of things, just where you’d least expect God to be, God is telling us that the way things usually are just isn’t good enough. It’s almost like God is whispering to us something that deep down we know already but are afraid to admit even to ourselves. God didn’t come in Jesus to make things a little better, a little more bearable. God came to turn over the tables, to create a whole new way of seeing and being, to resurrect and redeem rather than merely rehabilitate us.
Perhaps that is a little startling to hear because we’ve invested a lot in our lives as they are and it can be downright frightening to give us what we know and believe. But at the same time it’s thrilling because this promise speaks to a place deep down inside each of us that wants something more, something more than a better job or higher income, something more than a more comfortable home or enjoyable retirement. These things may be good but they don’t satisfy for long. We desperately want a sense of meaning and purpose, we desire to believe that there is more to this life than meets the eye, we need to hold onto the hope that despite all appearances we are worthy of love.
And so God comes at the edges of the story and our lives speak quietly but firmly through the blood, sweat and tears of the labor pains of a young girl and cry of her infant that God is irreconcilably for us, joined in our ups and downs, our hopes and fears, and committed to giving us more than just more of the same, but something more. For in the Christ, we have the promise that God will not stop until each and every one of us have been embraced and caught up in God’s incarnation.
At Christmas we run up against the Incarnation. We have long heard that Jesus is the Christ; Christ is not Jesus’ last name. The Christ mystery – and this is said in the beginning of John’s gospel, in Colossians, in Ephesians, and in the first letter of John, the Christ existed from all eternity. The Christ is whenever the spiritual and the human coexist. (repeat) Historically we have taken the meaning of ‘incarnation’ as the enfleshment of God in Jesus, that the great mystery of divinity needed to become concrete, visible, specific, touchable. And so we took this notion of the incarnate Jesus as becoming the way to God rather than understanding that the coexistence of divine and human in Jesus is just as present in you and in me as it was in the Christ. We too are both human and divine – at the same time, just like the Christ. Do we dare believe that God has become one of us – fully one with us – and in Jesus reveals God’s self even as us, as you and as me.
God became human and so human life and time changed for all time. Not to the extent that God ceased being God-self, but God became human on our very earth, where God was no better off than we and received no special privileges, but our every fate: hunger, weariness, enmity, mortal terror and a wretched death. That the infinity of God should take upon itself human narrowness, that bliss should accept mortal sorrow of the earth, that life should take on death – this is the most unlikely truth. God has come, and therefore, everything is different from what we imagined it to be.
I am suggesting to you this evening that our vocation is to incarnate God as alter Christus, which means ‘another Christ.’ As the familiar saying from St Francis says, “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet, but yours.” I am proclaiming the good news that God’s spirit resides in you and in me, in all of us as well as all of creation. The divine DNA is in everyone and everything God has created from the beginning. As humans, we are graced with the capacity to realize this, fully enjoy it, and draw mightily from it. I am proclaiming that we all are authentic Christians because we are the Christ today – both human and divine – and we are called to live out of that reality. God cannot not see Christ in me and in you because we are the unique incarnation called . . . (name people) You and I cannot not be in the presence of God. We, all of us, are the sacred image of the Divine, we are co-creators with God; it is time for us to understand that we are the embodiment of the incarnate Christ. If God operates as me, as you, then God operates as all people – we all are the incarnate Christ.
By becoming incarnate in Jesus, God has enabled human beings to transcend themselves, to become partakers in the divine nature. Jesus was called the ‘Word, or Logos’ and became flesh and so in becoming human, the Logos of God, Jesus, came so that we could learn from a human being how a human being becomes divine. (Clement of Alexandria) We are called to be words of God and Jesus, the Christ, this is the pattern which we are to follow. And as we begin to discover, realize, accept that the Divine is dwelling within us, it is at this point that we ‘not only give birth to the Son of God but that we, in fact, are reborn as sons and daughters of God.’
I can imagine this introduction of Incarnation in a new way is a little startling, maybe even overwhelming. It has taken awhile for this notion to find a birthplace in my re-formed theology. Perhaps my gift to you is the same as God’s gift to all of us on this Christmas Eve, that just as Jesus the Christ was born 2000 years ago, tonight you and I may be born anew as Christ’s in a world that desperately needs good news of great joy – Merry Christmas –thanks be to God – amen.