December 24, 2006: Christmas Eve Lovefeast

Tonight our wait is over. Tonight is the night when all our preparations have been made, or abandoned, and we are here. Following a star to Bethlehem to join the crowd gathered around the manger. Tonight is the night when even the cynics among us take a Sabbatical and we all suspend disbelief and pay homage to a mystery.

Tonight is the night when, with all our singing we wish Jesus a happy birthday, and happy birthday to us too, all who claim Jesus as our Savior for the 2 nd birth of our baptism. We come to celebrate everything that has been born in us because of this indescribably wonderful child born this night so long ago. We know the carols and we know the scripture story. Some of us know the story so well we can tell it by heart.

But tonight, let's imagine experiencing this story. Look at the picture on the front of your bulletin and imagine responding to the outstretch arms of the baby by taking baby Jesus in your arms. Close your eyes. And imagine he is as heavy as a 10 pound bag of flour. See in your imagination that his olive skin head is a little mis shapenned by his entrance into the world. Examine his tiny fingers, count his toes, brush the straw that smells faintly of cow manure off his little body, and say to yourself:

Wrap this tiny infant in his blanket. Put him on your shoulder and pat his back. Hear him burp. Feel the damp warmth coming through his blanket and say to yourself: “I am holding God in my arms.” “This is who God decided to be. And all for the love of me. Me! ”

Shocking isn't it? To behold the omnipotent, the almighty, the Most Holy, most glorious one and only God who always was and always will be, the creator of planets, stars and galaxies, unable to turnover on his back, utterly dependant upon the kindness and care of his creatures.

Sure we know the story of Jesus' birth by heart, but do we have any earthly idea what it means? Sure we know why Jesus died, but let's let him be born tonight, and marvel at the vulnerability God's being born human shows us.

The mystery we come to worship tonight is the mystery of God so in love with us, so longing to be in relationship with each one of us, that God came to be one of us—flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. Just try to grasp the enormity here. God actually came and lived as a human being—experiencing being too cold or too hot, going hungry, being thirsty and tired, having sore feet! Experiencing the death of people God loved, experiencing frustration and sorrow when his closest companions and followers didn't get what his ministry, his life was all about. Experiencing the rejection by people who heard him, but did not accept his message. And the list goes on, right up to the ridicule, abandonment and torture this baby will endure at the end of his life.

God could have chosen to come among us as a clearly recognizable mighty celestial being—in some obvious make no mistake about it that's God!! kind of way. Sure would have been easier for us to recognize, maybe even to worship, but not so easy for us to love.

In God's choosing to be born a human being amid the messiness and hardship of that stable in Bethlehem . In choosing to be born and live among the common folk, the powerless, God now knows not just in an abstract theoretical way our human pain, our human sorrow, our physical difficulties, God knows what we are feeling because God has been there and done that, and joins with us wherever we are in our lives, joining in solidarity with us in our joys and sufferings. In coming to live and die among us as a real human being, God can be trusted in our times of despair and defeat, in our joys and celebrations.

Isn't that what real love is all about? Coming and being with the one you love? Taking part in whatever it is they are going through?

This is why it is so important tonight to remember the baby Jesus is not just a pretty infant on a Christmas card or in a nativity set. But Jesus was a real baby, who cried, got sick, kept his parents up at night, and who had to learn to walk and talk. A real human being who lived a life of poverty and oppression by a foreign government. A prophet and a change agent, misunderstood by many, eliminated by the powerful, but victorious in the end.

In how God chose to come and live with us God, hallows our ordinary and mundane lives. What more proof do we need that the Light will indeed shine in the darkness and that the darkness will never overcome it? For nothing will ever separate us from God's love. Let us know in our hearts that no darkness that we find ourselves in is too dark for God to be there with us. Our God who made each of us in God's image will come searching for each one of us again and again, choosing to come and be among us, choosing to share in our darkness and breaking it apart with light and hope.