Christmas Eve, 2013
Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love divine. Love was born
at Christmas. Star and angels gave the sign.
I sing in a choir here in Rochester,
and we sang this lovely carol at our Christmas concert last year. It is based
on a 19th century poem by Christina Rosetti, and has been set to
several tunes over the years. From the first time we sang this beautiful piece
in rehearsal, I was captivated by that opening line: love came down at Christmas. It is such a simple, yet deeply
profound statement about what happened that night. Love came down at Christmas.
It has been the refrain echoing in my heart this year, as I have prepared for
celebrating with you this night.
In my
reflection on it, the question that has arisen is: and what does that look
like? That is, after all, so much of what makes this day when we celebrate the
incarnation so mysterious – because in becoming human, becoming incarnate, God
in essence shows us what God looks like! And to our surprise, it is not like a
mighty ruler, or a famous celebrity, or really anything extraordinary at all.
Rather, it is as a tiny, vulnerable baby, born to terrified but courageous and
faithful parents, surrounded by animals and shepherds, the lowest wrung members
of society. Yet this unremarkable birth, this squirming little baby: this is
God’s love, come down at Christmas.
That God
would take on that level of vulnerability, of course, is in turn what makes this event so remarkable and so mysterious!
I have been doing a lot of reading lately about vulnerability. Be honest here:
how many of you, when I say “vulnerable” think, “weak”? … Right, so that’s why
we want to avoid it like the plague. Who would want to be weak, if they can
help it? And yet, what takes more courage than making yourself vulnerable? What
is more heartfelt and honest than vulnerability?
And, it would seem, what is more
godly? Perhaps even harder than letting ourselves be vulnerable is perceiving
our God as vulnerable… and yet on Christmas, that is exactly what God became: a
mere baby, dependent on his parents for basic needs, exposed to the world’s
dangers, protected only by bands of cloth and his mother’s warm embrace.
This is our God? Years of telling and
retelling this story has perhaps taken the edge off. The nativity has become a
story of sweetness and light, of children in angel costumes, of lit-up lawn
decorations. But to really look at this squirming baby, unable even to hold up
his own head, and imagine: “This is the Almighty God?” I don’t know about you,
but my ideal picture of God is one that is a little more… self-sufficient.
Yet, this is our God. As incomprehensible as it may seem to us, this is how
our God chose to be revealed to the world: as a vulnerable human being. This is
how love came down at Christmas.
Perhaps you
have heard Paul Harvey’s famous story, The Man and the Birds. It is a modern
day parable, a story about a man who was, overall, a good man: good to his
family, generous, upright in his dealings with others. But Christmas was not
something he could really get behind. The incarnation didn’t make sense to him.
“Why would God become human?” he asked skeptically. It didn’t make sense that
God would lower Himself like that, to make Himself so vulnerable, and the man
couldn’t pretend to think otherwise.
And so, when
Christmas Eve rolled around, he said to his wife that he wouldn’t be going with
her to church. He’d feel like a hypocrite, he said, so he would stay home and
wait up for them to return. Sad, but understanding, she and the children left
for the midnight service.
Shortly
after they drove off, snow began to fall. He watched from the window as the
flakes got heavier and the winds harder, then he went to his favorite fireside
chair to read the paper. No sooner had he sat down than he heard a thunk. And
then another. He wondered if some neighborhood kids were throwing snowballs at
his window. But when he went again to the window to investigate, he saw not
children, but a flock of birds, huddled miserably in the snow. They had been
caught in the storm and were desperate for shelter, and they had been trying to
fly through his picture window.
Well, being
that he was a compassionate man and a lover of all creatures, he couldn’t let
the poor things freeze to death! Then he had an idea – they had an old barn in
the back. This would provide a shelter for them if he could only direct them to
it. He put on his coat and boots, and slogged through the deepening snow to the
barn.
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He opened the doors wide and turned
on the light, but the birds did not come in.
He thought food might entice them, and he ran back to the house to fetch
some breadcrumbs, which he scattered in the snow leading to the wide open barn
door. Much to his dismay the birds ignored the crumbs, and they continued to
flop around helplessly in the snow. He tried then to catch them. No luck. He
tried to “shoo” them into the barn by walking around behind them and waving his
arms wildly. They scattered in every direction except into the warm, lighted
barn.
He realized
that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and
terrifying creature. If only I could let them know that they can trust me, that
I’m not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Any move he made only
frightened and confused them. Nothing he did would make them follow. They would
not be led or shooed because they feared him.
“If only I
could be a bird,” he thought to himself, “and mingle with them and speak their
language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the
way to the safe, warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so that they
could see and hear, trust and understand.”
At that
moment, the church bells began to ring. O
Come all Ye Faithful… The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the
wind. He stood there listening to the bells, listening to the bells pealing the
glad tidings of Christmas. And he fell to his knees in the snow.
Love came
down at Christmas. Love came down and it did not look like a mighty warrior,
nor someone famous and influential, nor someone the world even noticed – this
birth was a blip on the screen, announced only to the shepherds in the fields,
the least socially connected people around. Love came down in the form of
vulnerability and humility, in the willingness to be like us and know us, to
empathize with and understand us, so that Love could then truly communicate
with us, and show us the way toward grace, and light, and life.
Let us pray… Lord God, you came down to us, became one of us, so that we might
better know you, and you us. You came down in the most vulnerable way so you
could show us that you are Love. Do the same for us this Christmas, granting us
the courage to be so accessibly loving and lovely to the people in our lives.
Amen.
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