Saturday, December 24, 2016

And That's What Christmas Is All About: Becoming Human On A Lark



Brad Sullivan
Christmas Eve, Year A
December 24, 2016
Emmanuel, Houston
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
Becoming Human On A Lark

And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.  Every time I hear Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth, I hear Linus telling the Christmas story to Charlie Brown, letting him know what Christmas is really all about.  Christmas is about the joy of God becoming human and how fantastic it is that God thinks highly enough of us, love us enough, that he actually wanted to be one of us.  How crazy is that?  How great, but is God just totally nuts?  Maybe.  Now, rumor has it that becoming human:  living, dying, being resurrected for our sake, was always part of God’s plan, but what if it started on a lark, kind of just a crazy, whimsical idea?  Imagine Jesus, before becoming human, saying to his Father:

Jesus:               Dad, you know how much we love those humans?

Father:             Yeah, Son.  I do.

Jesus:               Have you ever thought about how great it would be to actually be one of them?

Father:             What do you mean, Son?

Jesus:               Well, we love them so much, I’d really like to be one of them, like how people share their lives and experiences with each other, and they draw nearer to each other through sharing their lives together.  You know how you’re always wanting humans to draw nearer to you?  Well, how much nearer can you get?  We become one of them.

Father:             (considers for a moment)  You know, that’s really not a bad idea.  Let’s see what the Spirit says.  You’ve been listening, I take it?

Holy Spirit:     Of course I have, and I think it’s a lovely idea.  Connect with them, show them how much we care.  You know, it may even be a chance to redeem them.

Jesus:               Hey.
Father:             Hmm, you know that’s a heck of an idea, something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

Holy Spirit:     I know you have.

Father:             They separated themselves from us in the Garden.

Jesus:               So we join ourselves back to them by becoming one of them. 

Father:             Hmm…except there’s still that sin problem.

Holy Spirit:     Oh, there you go again.

Father:             Well, it’s a big problem.

Holy Spirit:     I know it is.

Father:             They keep hurting each other, hurting themselves, putting up barriers between each other, barriers between them and us.

Holy Spirit:     Uh huh. (kind of patronizing)

Father:             We are love.  We don’t have any barriers between us.  It’s not like we can have Jesus go out there and sin.

Holy Spirit:     I know.

Father:             (sigh, exasperated)  All I ever wanted was for them to love each other like we love our-self, like we love them.  It gets very frustrating.

Holy Spirit:     Well you know, if he becomes human, Jesus could join with all of their sins in his death.

Jesus:               Wait, what?

Father:             Oh, now you’re talking.  We could somehow pour all of humanity’s sins onto him so even their sins won’t separate them from us.

Jesus:               Um…guys, I’m not so sure…

Holy Spirit:     It’d have to be a memorable death, too, something gruesome…

Jesus:               Ok guys, hold it.  I was thinking of something simple, like a little weekend tryst…

Father:             Oh, no that wouldn’t do.  You’d need to do the whole thing, you know, grow up, be born…

Jesus:               Ewe!  You’re joking, right?  You’ve seen how that whole birth thing happens?

Father:             You said you love them.

Jesus:               Oye!  They are awfully cute.  Ok, full deal.  When do you think I should be born?  The 1970s had really good music, Star Wars…no, late 1940s, early 50s England.  I‘ll grow up with David Bowie.  It’ll be awesome.

Father:             Oh Son, I’ve got just the place.

Ok, so lest I lead us all into heresy forever, I pretty sure that conversation never took place, but I love the idea of God becoming human, of Jesus being born, on a lark, as someone who really loves someone else and simply wants to spend more time with them.  That’s what Christmas is all about.  God saying to humanity, “I love you, and I’d really like to spend more time with you.”  That may seem awfully simple, but I believe nothing in creation has greater healing power than relationship and love.

In Eden, we walked with God, naked and unashamed.  There were no barriers to our relationships with God and no barriers to our relationships with one another.  Over time then, we kept on and keep on putting up more and more barriers to each other.  Initially, we decided that we wanted knowledge:  Adam and Even ate from the tree of knowledge.  There was much unknown in creation and the fear of the unknown began gnawing at us, eroding our trust in God, until we decided that we desired knowledge more that trust, and the first barrier to relationship was raised.

Then we felt ashamed for what we had done and so we hid, and we covered ourselves with fig leaves, and the next barrier to relationship went up.  Then God came and found us and asked what had happened, and we lied, passing the buck onto the serpent, passing the buck onto Eve, rather than fessing up to our fears and our lack of trust, and so another barrier to relationship went up.  We went from naked and unashamed to hidden and full of shame, and ever since then, we’ve continued to put up barriers to relationships, as broken people raising defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from harm.  The result of course, is that we end up harming our relationships with God and with each other…wars, murders, fights, broken friendships, all because we choose not to trust but seek instead to protect ourselves from harm, when the risk and trust of relationship is really the only thing that can heal us. 

So in order to heal us, God gives us the very risk and trust of relationship that we so desperately need.  God gives us himself, naked and unashamed, vulnerable as a newborn baby:  Jesus, born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph, a young couple, faithful and kind.  They were not great rulers.  They had no great power to offer God any great protection once he became human.  God decided to trust us with the vulnerability of his human life, offering us his vulnerable, naked, and unashamed self, trusting in nothing more than the care of two loving and faithful parents. 

See, God wants us to love and trust him and so God chose to love and trust us.  God also knows that life is hard, and knows we’re not always great at trusting anyone, especially someone who hasn’t walked in our shoes.  So, God became human to say, “I love you, and I think you humans are pretty fantastic.  So I am going to show up in your life, naked and unashamed, so that you can trust me, and if you will allow it, I will take down all of the barriers that you have put up.”   

That’s what Christmas is all about.  That’s a pretty serious deal, God healing humanity by becoming one of us.  At the same time, I have to think that for the creator of everything to become human, he’s got to be kind of crazy, whimsical, fun too.  Imagine God as a toddler walking around in his creation, living amongst his beloved humans, constantly delighted by what’s around him.  Imagine 2 year old Jesus running around constantly thinking, “This place is great!  Look at that tree; I love that tree.  Ooh, a lake!  I think I’ll go swimming or maybe walking.” 

The very fact of the incarnation, God’s crazy notion to become human and live here with us shows us just how fantastic it is to be living here on this earth and that in God’s eyes, we really are pretty fantastic. 

We also need to remember of course, that life is also not always fantastic, that life is sometimes rather terrible, that we are sometimes rather terrible, and on Christmas we celebrate that Jesus came to live that part of our life too.  God gets the messy parts of our lives, the times in our lives and world when things are far from fantastic.  Jesus claimed even those bad times and those bad parts of our lives as his own when he became human.  That’s what Christmas is all about.

The greatest gift God ever gave us was the gift of God’s-self.  God gave us the gift of being naked and unashamed with us, loving and trusting us so that we might once again be naked and unashamed with him and with each other.  The greatest gift we can give each other, then, is the gift of ourselves, fully living, loving and trusting one another.

Jesus became human so that we could love each other in and through the bad times and the good times, and then see each other and see this world and think, “this is fantastic.”  Jesus became human so that we could remove our barriers, trust each other and trust God, and then love fully, love with whimsy, love on a lark.  That’s what Christmas is all about.  Amen.

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