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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father’s and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text comes from the Gospel reading this morning. May we be seated. Though this is a very joyful day for most of us, as we prayed last night in the prayers of the church, it is a very lonely day for many people. Many people whose lives have been changed by choices that they have made, or by choices that were made by someone else that deeply impacted their lives. And these folks are very lonely.
Today may not be the day for your loneliness, but you know what it’s like. You know those days. You have felt that empty feeling in your gut that is hard to assuage. And it makes you think sometimes, for some people, Christmas can be the worst of times, not the best of times. They think about these things because they have in their mind this kind of hallmark Christmas, this beatific vision of glory and joy and warmth. And they see the bills that pile up, and the next day follows this day, and it’s just like it for some reason.
The very first Christmas was a Christmas like that. Lonely were Mary and Joseph. There was no one to take them in. There was no family, no relative there. They had to find a cave. That’s what a stable really is in that part of the world, a cave, huddled out by water when the wadis are full. It became the place where they lay. It was the place where she gave birth. Not a hospital room sterile and full of cleanliness, but in a place that was dark and dank.
And in fact, I am sure… on this morning, it must have looked like a rural crime scene. Blood, because she was a woman, a human being just like you and me, amidst the hay and a baby that’s cleaned up as best can be, wrapped in swaddling cloths, and yet that baby is God who shares your flesh and who shares your blood. So that should make us say, really, all we want for Christmas… it’s a God like that. That is the kind of God we want for Christmas.
It’s a kind of God that can relate to people whose lives have been bruised and battered. It’s a kind of God that can relate to people whose lives have been betrayed by their choices or choices made by someone else. It’s a kind of God that can relate to people who have been abused. It’s a kind of God that can relate to those who are lonely, disenfranchised, divorced. That’s the kind of God born in this manger, not a lovely receiving table or cradle, but a manger.
This is the kind of God that I want for Christmas because this God can relate to me. This God can relate to you. He came to his own, the text says, and his own did not receive him. They were looking for the hallmark Christmas. They were looking for something other than how God chose to come to his people. They were looking for something clean, not something dirty. Something set apart, not something that seemed common.
This is the light of the world that enlightens all mankind. This is the flesh and blood that scatters the darkness of abuse, of disenfranchisement, of bruised and battered bodies and souls. This light scatters the darkness of those things and makes it a true Christmas. A Christmas that everyone can relate to, not just the ones who have their lives neatly cut out in a box with no frayed edges, according to their estimation, but a Christmas for people who know that their lives are frayed and not in a pretty package and not wrapped impeccably.
Hosanna to the Son of David who comes, humble and mounted not on a donkey, but mounted on a manger. Hosanna. We kind of go through that line in that text, you shall find him wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, and we do not think of the great thought that must have gone through the people’s heads, especially those shepherds who said, why would anyone in their right mind lay a baby in a manger? That is unclean, that is dirty, and it dishonors the very child.
By his dishonorment are you honored. By his stepping into your vile impurity… are you made pure? By his light scattering the darkness that surrounds you and is within you, are you enlightened by God’s Holy Spirit and made to be adopted as sons and daughters of the King? He rides into our darkness and all of heaven rides with him, scattering those things that we wish to stay in the dark, the things that we wish we could forget, the things that we wish we could remove from our mind. He scatters them, illuminates them, and applies the balm of healing to them like no one else.
Blessed is he who comes from the Father, from his bosom, to the bosom of Mary, to your bosom, where he lives and reigns in your manger, the dark, the dank, and the ugly manger of your heart, turning something that is unholy into holy. Changing that which is putrid into sweetness. Changing that which is lonely into finding peace and joy with the creator of the universe and the creator of you. He comes for all, dwelling within you and within they who believe and have been baptized. He comes to feed you his very flesh and blood that you may drink in that which cleanses you, purifies you, and makes you joined to fellow sinners whose darkness has also been enlightened.
Where all of us are the same, regardless of how functional or dysfunctional of a family we came. We are all the same here. Here is where the same light scatters the same darkness. No matter what we think of the darkness, that ours isn’t quite as dark as someone else’s. It is scattered nevertheless.
And he came down from heaven to let the earth, well, to let the earth have its way with him. And he came down from heaven to let the earth have its way with him so that he might have his way with you, his beloved, his precious. And his way is life, not death. And his life is divine. It is from God, the one who alone can bring life. The one who contains darkness into light and death into life.
So do not be afraid, dear brothers and sisters. This is our day of joy. The greatest gift imaginable comes crashing into our world, shattering your and my life, changing it, turning it upside down and upon itself, but bringing life and light in its place.
And we rejoice with those who have been celebrating and praising God for the last 12 to 18 hours as the sun has made its way around this globe. We are on kind of the tail end of this glorious day as the world looks at it. And we take our part with the church around the world and continue the praise, shouting glory to God in the highest, peace, life, and light to all.
In the name of Jesus, amen.