Christmas

Lectionary readings can be found here

+++

Imagining Hope

It began innocently enough, it was Sunday School of course…

And the children, the children, were asked to consider what they imagined angels to look like.

Anticipating talk of halos and wings…the grown-ups waited for the predictable answers.

But, children are anything but predictable.

You can imagine.

Wings of fire. Eyes alight. In human form. A monstrous sight.

You can imagine.

And so, can they. And this is where the dinosaur enters the pageant, stage left. And, here is the traveling cat with his tiger print slippers. And, here is the baby and there are the sheep. And, an Angel of the Lord…

An angel of the Lord, whose terror and glory inspires fear and trembling.

You can imagine.

How it was.

You can only imagine how it was.

There are no photos, no baby book or lock of hair.

There is no record of his birth.

Other than a story. A story that would capture the imaginations of us all…

And one told another and another told another…so on and so forth through time and space until, we reach this point in time. This point in this place where we gather to tell the story again. To read, mark, and inwardly digest the improbable, wonderful, and beautiful truth of God become us. Become one of us.

And, the best, perhaps the only way to begin to imagine, is to consider one of us. To begin with a human baby. To begin with a child. To begin with the encapsulated hope for a lifetime.

The pageant begins with a proclamation, a teenager processes down the aisle, confronting the evils of the world with her words.

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,

She prophesies. This child, standing between us and the evils of this world. She cries out.

A child has been born for us.

Dividing the waters, making a way out of the chaos and into the calm of creation.

A child has been born for us.

A child has proclaimed it.

Listen. Listen to the children prophesy!

They prophesy! Around the world, the children prophesy!  

And, from the baptistry, a baby cries.

Six weeks old. Nestled against the woman who bore him, he has no words. Yet his voice is mighty.

We pause in wonder at the immensity of his presence. So small, so, so small. Yet he is everything in this moment—upstaging us all.

The grace of God has appeared.

Angels and animals lean in to see. This grace. This grace made manifest in our midst.

He is one of us.

He is us.

And, it is this fragile, mewing, creation that is prophesied to stand in the breach.

This is it. This is all.

And, we wonder, that a baby like this, a baby like us, became the baby of our salvation.

Imagine.

Imagine. On this night when we mark his birth, imagine.

God in the flesh, abiding in us, always with us, born in us.

Born in us,

a baby who will change the course of the world in his breath and in his being.

Fully human, full divine.  This baby will change everything.

This baby will…

But, tonight he is simply a baby. Swaddled tight against the night.

And all our hopes and all our dreams.

They press in on the scene.

Come for us. Come for us!

Lord Jesus, come for us!

And our cries are answered.

Our cries are answered.

And, a baby is born.

But, not just any baby, EVERY baby. Every baby is born into the hopes we hold, into this world we inhabit.

Listen, all of you. Each and every one of you. Each and every one of you, once a baby, now grown, now the home of the abiding Christ. You, YOU are the culmination of hopes and dreams. You are the possible of God’s love. You are.

And, when we enact the story of God’s salvation we turn story into flesh. We turn the Word into the World. We become the story. We are the story.

The story of hope.

The story of an unceasing love.

The story of one become many. One become the body. One become flesh. One become us.

The body of Christ in the world.

The body born anew this night.

The body that stands in the space between hope and fear, between love and hate, between what is and what might be.

The body of Christ.

We are the body of Christ.

And on this night, my heart aches with the joy of who we are. Of who we will be.

When Christ is born in us.

Born not for Christmas, but for the fullness of God’s love.

Dear friends in Christ, let us live as the hope of the world. Let us take this one moment in time as a beginning of all that might be and live. Live as Christ’s body, doing the work that will bring peace to this world.

I want to end with the words of theologian Howard Thurman. His poem, “The Work of Christmas” reminds us of why this story matters to us and to the world,

“When the song of the angels is stilled,

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 rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart.”

Amen.

The poem “The Work of Christmas” is from Howard Thurman’s The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations.