[my grandmother asked me to prepare some remarks to follow our nativity reading. Enjoy] This time of year is fraught with tellings and preachings on the nativity story. Many focus on being one of the stable few who make room for Jesus. Many are also about the love of God who became human. Indeed the nativity is ripe with story ideas. It is, after all, the greatest story ever told. But what does this story mean for us. As 21st century Americans, its incredibly hard for us to see the incredible parts of this story about a 1st century Palestinian Jewish family. When we read or listen to the story we glaze over what we see as simple fillers, not recognizing their significance. But the gospelist does some very interesting things in the way of story telling. He opens, like many great story tellers, with the invocation of a powerful name like Augustus or Herod or quirinius. Emperors and Kings. Earthly rulers. But what Luke is doing is setting up the greatest conflict ever told. Here we have Caesar Augustus. Arguably the most powerful man in the world. He commanded the largest army and controlled more of earth than any other empire ever had until Britain. And this mans power is supposed to be usurped by a baby. Born to two nobodies in an outpost of the Roman Empire. A child who at his birth was placed in a feeding trough. A weak, defenseless baby not even strong enough to hold up his head is supposed to be the great liberator of the world. Why did God, in his infinite wisdom, choose to come to the world in this infantile way? He could have incarnated as a Caesar. He could have incarnated as a grown man, a nobleman. But he came as a child in the night to two people who were of no importance whatsoever. A carpenter and teenage girl. Its really utterly ridiculous that God chose to come this way. After all, weve heard prophecy after prophecy about how God will bare is arm and how he will bring justice for the poor and how he will overthrow the rulers of the world. And this is how he does it? The answer is overwhelmingly yes. For God, to quote Saint Paul, has chosen what is weak in the world to shame the strong. He has chosen what is foolish to confound the wise. The Lord bared his arm to all nations when the arm of infant Jesus reached out of his manger crib. God became man. But he became man as a child so he could experience from the very beginning what it means to be human. Christianity puts a great deal of importance on trinitarian doctrine and the belief that Jesus Christ is completely human and completely God. This is incredibly important because it means that our God is not some distant father of the cosmos but that he has walked the earth with his own two feet. Our God has experienced the pain of losing a loved one. He has experienced trusted friends stabbing him the back. He has experienced mocking and ridicule at something he believed in. He has experienced his own family losing faith in him. He has experienced torture and suffering. He has experienced death. God died. Thats the thing that makes Christianity different from every other single religion that has ever existed. We believe that our God became human but not for the sake of having a child, not for fun, or nefarious means like the Greek and Egyptian gods. Our God became human for the sole reason of taking part in human suffering and so we can say that we dont look up to a God somewhere in the clouds who benevolently or apathetically looks down upon us peons. We look up because our God hangs from a cross. And he was put there by his best friend. A God who, at his greatest hour of need, was turned away by his very best friends. Thats the God we worship. The God who told us to love our enemies. The God who told us that the law was made for man not man for the law. That societal rules and religious law were great, except when they got in the way of compassion. Except when they got in the way of the radical love of God that is to crumple the powers of the earth. The powers of anger, of fear, of jealousy, of pettiness, of pride, of self righteous piety. And his mission to do all of this began with a woman, a girl rather, saying yes to his will. It manifested as a baby. And it would go on to destroy the Roman Empire. Where are the emperors today? Where are the Caesars? Where is the successor of Augustus? I dont know. But the successor of Saint Peter is still in Rome preaching Christ crucified 2000 years later. If God can do that with an infant, imagine what he can do in your life. The question Ill leave you with is this: where is the baby Jesus in your life? Where is the one thing you feel called to do that seems so insignificant or silly that you dont even want to or are afraid to bother with? In what small, seemingly pointless, infant sized way is God asking you to change the world?
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 23:20:00 +0000
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