Many of you have heard this. It is the Christmas Eve
sermon. . .
Is
it real? Or is it Memorex? The question either takes you waaay back to
another era, or it may not even register in your lexicon (lucky you!).
Like so many marketing campaigns left in the dust of the digital age,
Memorex's seems almost quaint in this era of instant everything. And
while Memorex's slogan may have been catchy, its promise, we know, was
always elusive. Real? Or Memorex? C'mon. Of course, we know the
difference, and nothing can compare to the real thing, the live
encounter, the moment that you talk about for days, weeks, and even
years to come. We all remember those first concerts, memorable games,
and grand performances, and nothing can compare to being there. Right?
I
often feel that during this yearly remembrance of the birth of our Lord
there are not just a few people who would prefer the real encounter
rather than the annual retelling through Luke's gospel. Yes? We all
become a little like doubting Thomas in these moments and wish to touch
just a portion of this narrative, to verify it, to ensure it is real, so
that we might believe. If we could travel back in time, back through
the darkness of human history, could we arrive at a point and witness
what the angels proclaimed and the shepherds beheld? Would the light of
truth then illumine all the nooks and crannies of our questions and
drive away all of our doubts and fears? Were we privy to know beyond the
shadow of a doubt, would we be freed from the vicissitudes of life, the
fickleness of the human heart, the violence oozing out in our society
and world, or the heartbreak of events in places like Newtown?
Given
the birth narrative from Luke, it is highly unlikely that even if we
could return to the exact moment of Jesus' birth we would recognize this
remarkable thing that God was doing in the child born in Bethlehem. The
story-while replete with amazing events like angel hosts singing in the
highest heaven-is rather uneventful, unimpressive, and extraordinarily
ordinary. A peasant girl gives birth to a child in a stable in a
backwater town in the Roman empire. How many millions of times did this
happen? The riff raff-shepherds-are the first and, really, only
witnesses. Why involve a fringe group in society with one of the most
important events in the tradition? Indeed, the birth of Jesus to the
rest of the world in the first century would have elicited the same
response in the myth of King George writing in his diary as the American
colonists ratified the Declaration of Independence: Nothing much of
importance happened today.
Which
is, perhaps, part of the exercise of this observance and this season of
incarnation. We are called to see God coming to us not in spectacular
spectacles of power and might, stopping the laws of nature to pluck us
our of every pickle we find ourselves in. Rather, we are invited to see
God present to us and for us in the mundane and oh-so-ordinary moments
of life, enfleshed in those very human hearts and hands with whom we
interact. God coming incognito, but God coming nevertheless to enter
fully into our lives in all their nuances. As Frederick Buechner aptly
notes:
Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he
will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of
self-humiliation
he will descend in his wild pursuit of [humanity]. If holiness and the
awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of
all events, this birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or
time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present
there too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place
we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to
break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he
seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least
expect him that he comes most fully.
It
is this divine-coming-to-us that is such an important part of this
night and the life of Jesus. Indeed, the name we give
Jesus-Emmanuel-underscores the God-with-us reality of Jesus' life. This
connection with our humanity is the divine surprise central to the
Christian journey. While recently watching a recording of James Taylor
and Carole King's Live at the Troubador concert, I glimpsed an image of
the implications of incarnation that was compelling. As the performers
ended their set, they moved toward the audience, and the camera captured
close ups of fans and artists reaching out, grasping hands, and holding
on for an extended moment. We all know this scene, and, perhaps, we
have reached out ourselves at various venues whether a concert, game, or
political rally. We reach out to touch that which we are awed by or
respect or value. It's almost as if by touching the object of our
fondness, we may receive a portion of their gifts, a human talisman as
it were.
The
coming of God in the incarnation, however, alters this encounter ever
so slightly but surely most profoundly. In the divine-human engagement,
it is God reaching out to touch us. God, in mystery and passion, desires
to receive a portion of our reality, our humanity. Which, perhaps,
seems a bit odd, as we spend so much of our time trying to transcend or
escape the limits of our humanity. Yet, that is the heart of the
incarnation. God reaching out to know us, to connect with us, to be one
with us. Again, Buechner:
The Creator himself comes to dwell within his own creation, the
Eternal
within the temporal . . . It is as if Shakespeare could somehow have
entered the world
of Hamlet . . . becoming a character in
his
own plot although he well knows the tragic denouement and submitting
himself to all its limitations so that he can burst them asunder when
the time comes and lead a tremendous exeunt by which his whole dramatis
personae will become true persons at last.
God
enters in to transform our reality and welcome us into-not just a
little but-the totality and fullness of our life. Thus, this night is
holy, and all moments are hallowed, for there is no place that God is
not. God reaches across space and time to grasp a hold of our hands and
bless our human drama by entering fully into it with us. The divine
light shines ever so brightly-and yet vulnerably-in our midst through
the embodiment of a young child who grows and enters most fully into
that cross shaped place of abandonment. God robed in flesh sanctifies
this earthly journey, and continues to journey with us toward a time
where all flesh shall see and know the fullness of God's grace. We may
not always sense this, and Lord knows we experience enough to wonder,
and yet, the promise returns again and again. Our task, in part, is
constantly to remain ready to take the hand that is offered, recognize
the live moment that continually meets us, and acknowledge the gift of
the most very real thing present before us. Life.
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