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Sermon for Christmas Day 2011
This is Christmas; what the ancient Celtic Christians called “a thin place;” a time and place where the wall between the world of visible objects and the usually invisible realm of the divine becomes so thin that we can see through it; so porous we can catch a glimpse of the majesty and mystery of God, a time and place when we can believe all kinds of things.
“Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock” wrote Thomas Hardy in his poem “The Oxen,” “‘Now they are all on their knees,’” an elder said as we sat in a flock by the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where they dwelt in their strawy pen, nor did it occur to one of us there to doubt they were kneeling then.”
At Christmas, doubts dissolve, or at least they are set apart for a time, as the light scatters the darkness and the calm settles our souls; for a time peace, life and hope have their way in a world where war, death and despair seem to prevail.
At Christmas, when the boundaries of time and space are made thin, the old is made new as we proclaim that in a far off time, in a far off place, God arrived among us as a baby in a manger, the divine forming a connection with humanity that will never be broken. The heavens rejoiced, the earth was glad and the oxen knelt.
Perhaps they still do; for God is still with us, not above us far away, but there beside us every day.
Emmanuel, God with us, the idea difficult to fathom; the knowledge that God came so low as to lie in a stable seems too wonderful for us; it is so high that we cannot attain it, much less fully explain it. So we sing of it, we celebrate it; we pray our amazement over it.
“O my child, child of sweetness,” prays Mary in the Orthodox liturgy for today. “How is it that I hold thee who are Almighty; and how that I feed thee, who gives bread to all? How is it that I swaddle thee, who with the clouds encompass the whole earth?”
Emmanuel, God with us – because we could not bring ourselves to seek him, God sought us. Because we could not bring our selves to admit our need for him, God came to us as one in need, a baby, and there is no more helpless creature in the world.
Because we could not bring ourselves to speak to him, God spoke to us through his incarnate Word, bringing us, said Karl Rahner, “an almost unbelievable fellowship, an astonishing communion between the eternal God and us.”
“Almost unbelievable,” he said – almost. “Astonishing,” he said – astonishing. God, the creator of the stars of night, the creator of the earth and sea and sky and all that is in them, the one who breathed into humankind the very spirit of life – God, who is beyond all space and time, chose to come to us in that space, at that time. And he does so again, in this thin space, this thin time.
This is the central miracle of Christianity, said C.S. Lewis: the Word that was from the beginning and will be for all time, appeared at one time. God not only acted in history - Scripture is full of accounts of God directing the events of human behavior from afar - God entered into the living stream of history, not only blessing creation, becoming a part of creation.
That this should be is astonishing enough, but no more so than how and to whom God appeared. “Do you want to see the humility of God?” asked an eleventh century monk. “Look in the manger and see him lying there…Seeing an infant, I wonder how this could be the one who says, ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ I see a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Is this the one who is clothed in the beautiful glory of unapproachable light?”
Yes, that this should be is astonishing enough, but no more so than when and where God appeared.
Luke deliberately sets the birth in a particular place, at a particular time – against the back drop of the mighty Roman Empire, during the reign of the vaunted Caesar Augustus, the name “Augustus” meaning “revered one.” Indeed, the day of Augustus’s birth was announced and celebrated as if he were the savior of Rome, the bringer of a new age.
For a while it looked that way. Adopted by Julius Caesar, he would grow to be a victor, a conqueror of all foes, becoming emperor at age 32, bringing in his wake the so-called “Pax Romana,” the peace of Rome; one bought through the blood of others, a peace which would last for forty some years.
A long time, then, for an empire; but nothing like the peace we proclaim arrived in our midst in a little corner of that empire. In another thin place and time, while the emperor Augustus lives in regal splendor at the center of the known civilized world, reveling in a peace bought at the point of a sword, Jesus is born in a stable and laid in a manger in what is still a backwater town, far from the center of power, sleeping in heavenly, eternal peace bringing in his wake the kingdom that endures.
We know how it happened. In Bethlehem, Luke says, the time came for Mary to deliver her child. “And she brought forth her firstborn son,” says the King James version, “and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”
No room, why? Because Augustus demanded that the whole world be registered. So responding to the command of the temporal power, Joseph and Mary journey to the city of David called Bethlehem because Joseph was descended from the house and family of David. As the temporal powers are assuaged and the whole world is gathering, the eternal Word manages to work its way in. No room? Room will be found, even if it’s in an unexpected place – no, especially if it’s in an unexpected place.
Despite our best efforts, God will find a way in. No matter how often we turn away, he never ceases to come to us. Could this be the true miracle of the incarnation, God finding us? Finding us at the side of a manger, an animal’s feeding trough, finding us so that we could find him through the shepherds.
The shepherds are just as vital to the story as the manger, as the filled up inn, as the arrogant emperor. Yet another sign that God has chosen to work through common people and common things to bring to us an uncommon king; a king whose birth was first proclaimed to shepherds, notorious for dwelling on the outskirts of respectable society. Into this crowded world, among these powerless people, the baby arrives.
In Luke’s Gospel, the Holy Family’s inability to find a welcoming place among the masses even before the Son is born prefigures the world’s rejection of the Messiah later on; no room in the inn prefigures Jesus’ warning to a would be disciple that “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” From the womb to the manger; from the upper room to the empty tomb; the Savior’s head would never lay in one place for too long. Legend says that the very wood that made the manger later made the cross.
But that’s all later on; that’s all further down the road; soon enough the sword will pierce his blessed mother’s soul. Now, now he may rest; now, now, so may we. Now we have the time; now we are in the place when we can ponder, along with Mary, what this birth means to us and what, since we have seen the child, tomorrow holds for us.
“How soon will you start on the sorrowful way?” His mother whispers in the baby’s ear in Auden’s Christmas poem. “Dream while you may.”
Too soon he must start on that sorrowful way he must walk, start even before he can walk. In Matthew’s version of the Nativity, Joseph is warned in a dream: “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him.”
Very quickly God is on the run, looking for a place to lay his head; a place to work his way into our lives. His journey does not really end on a lonely hill or an empty tomb but only when we may make a place for him in our own dreams.
The way awaits, the long walk for him and for us - is about to begin.
Soon enough, as we head for our homes beginning our journey, the family makes haste to Egypt for their lives, can we echo the shepherds as they leave the child’s side and find their way back to their fields, “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen?”
The Word did not come among us solely to be pondered. The Word came among us to be proclaimed.
There is time for that. Now, this is Christmas, a thin place, a thin time; a place and a time when God has done great things for us. This is Christmas, a time to rest, to ponder; a time to dream.