Luke
2:1-20
You’ve probably noticed how Christmas
comes around every year. Ready or not. In sickness and in health. In good times
and in bad. It doesn’t really matter what’s going on in our personal lives or
in the greater world, Christmas comes, year in and year out.
And with Christmas comes a particular
message. We see in the stores we shop, in the music we listen to, in the mail
we read, from all corners of life, it seems, the message is clear at this time
of year we are to be happy, happy, happy! Which can make it hard if our lives
are not totally in sync with all of that holiday cheer. When the picture is not
so perfect. When instead of brimming with happiness, we may be tamping down
chaos - the parts of our lives where there is struggle or fear or pain or sadness.
I mean just the other day, I was part of a conversation with a group of people
when someone emphatically declared, “You
know, 80% of people are faking it right now.”
Well whether or not that is true, what is
true is that Christmas, the Christmas we celebrate here in church, is not about
being happy, happy, happy all the time. It’s a different message altogether. A
message that is a lot more real, more honest, and more true because Christmas
is about life as it really is. Hear the good news - Jesus, God incarnate, God
in the flesh, was born not in some sweet smelling, sanitized manger, but born
into a mess. A literal mess, for sure, because birth itself is a messy ordeal
even in the best of circumstances. But here comes poor Mary and Joseph, stuck
in an unfamiliar town, hard-pressed to find appropriate lodging, forced to bed
down in a place made for animals, labor through the night, and then use a
feeding trough as a makeshift crib for their newborn son. It all sounds pretty
messy to me. And then there’s the bigger picture. Jesus is born to a people
living under the weight of the oppressive Roman empire. Born into an existence
vulnerable to problems and pain. Born into the messiness that is life as we
know it.
Amazingly, this is the world into which
God chose to be born. A world where there has never been a perfect Christmas -
so let’s just let go of that fantasy once and for all. For on Christmas, we
celebrate Jesus’ birth not because it all happened perfectly. Just the
opposite. On Christmas, we celebrate Jesus’ birth because everything wasn’t
perfect. We celebrate that God chose to come to us, on purpose, in the very
midst of imperfection. God didn’t hold back, love us from a distance and wait
until the world got itself straight and in line. Rather God enters our world as
it actually is - not as we would wish it to be. So whenever you are
experiencing life as messy or imperfect take a moment to pause, look around,
and pay attention because that is exactly the type of place where God comes and
Jesus is born.
Far from being afraid of our messes, for
the love of us, God runs into the messiness. Jesus comes to you and to me where
we are, as we are, to give us exactly what we need - his very self. This is the
gift of Christmas. The gift of God with us. The gift that is God’s Yes to us.
For that baby lying in the manger will spend the rest of his life giving the
gift of “Yes” to the world. Saying yes to the poor, yes to the hungry, yes to
the sick. To the outcast, the lost, the prisoner, yes. Yes to the sinner. Yes
to the suffering. Yes to you. Yes to me.
And that Yes means that God is always coming to us, always being born among us,
always opening up life to us - God’s life of love, of acceptance, of healing,
of forgiveness, of peace. God’s Yes is the ultimate gift that answers our
deepest needs and our most profound desires. And everyone gets this Yes. No one
is left out. No matter who you are. No matter what you have done or left
undone. No matter what you believe or don’t believe. Jesus is God’s Yes to you
and for you. It is pure gift.
So it is that on Christmas we are invited
to receive this gift into our real lives, once again. To say yes to God’s Yes.
To let the gift of Jesus’ life and love fill us now and always. Which doesn’t
mean, of course, that the messiness of life goes away. It doesn’t. But
something else happens, it is infused with grace. Although Jesus’ birth in a
manger was messy, there was more to it than that. In the midst of all that
imperfection there was beauty, there was holiness, and there was love. And so
it is in our lives, too. In any state or manner God is with us saying, “Yes.”
Yes to joy that goes deeper than superficial happiness. Yes to peace that
surpasses all human understanding. Yes to hope that shines in the darkness.
This is why it is actually a really good
thing that Christmas comes around every year whether our lives feel ready for
it or not. It’s a good thing because we need to know of the gift that we are
always being given, Jesus in the flesh - God’s Yes in our mess. Which, as the
angel proclaims is, “Good news of great joy for all the people.” And on this
day it is absolutely good news of great joy for us. Merry Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment