Isaiah 52:7-10 Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem.
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| Lean forward! Look forward! | ||
O God with us, grant us the strength, the wisdom
and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come
when it may, and cost what it will. |
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The Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke that Mary Blocher read in between the carols from 7 to 7:30 earlier this evening is one of the most fantastic, the most glorious, and the most unbelievable stories in all of scripture. And it’s about the unbelievable part that I want to talk about for a moment. And I think whenever I hear this story of what Albert Einstein once said. He said that “Imagination can sometimes be even more important than knowledge.” Because I want you to know that tonight it’s not about what any of us believes fervently or doesn’t believe at all. Maybe we don’t believe in God or love Jesus as much as we think we should – or as much as other people want us to – or even as much as we wish we did. Most likely none of us believes the way others do and some believe not at all. I want to tell you emphatically that this Christmas celebration is not about what any of us believes about God. Christmas is a celebration of the imagination that God believes in people – in us.
This completely incredible story is about God believing in people so much that, according to Luke, God would risk a surprise pregnancy, indeed an illegal pregnancy punishable by the death penalty. God would risk being born into King David’s tattered line -- to an impoverished Joseph, living in a cave in Nazareth. This is a story about God risking childbirth in an over-crowded, volatile city of Bethlehem, occupied by a foreign army, to an oppressed people, in a smelly stable with the livestock. In other words, the odds were not good! The odds were not good at all. The Christmas story is about how much God believes in people – and the amazing risks that God takes to be in relationship with people. This is a story of God from God, Light from Light, true Love from true Love, welcoming the unlikeliest people in. This is a story of the Light and Life and Love finding us and creating possibilities in the unlikeliest places and at the unlikeliest times.
When you consider the universe – and the particular and peculiar conditions required to create and sustain life – it’s really a wonder that any of us is here. We have not discovered an enduring reason for it, have we? And then when you look at the history of the world – and all the horrendous things that people have done and continue to do to one another (sadly, often in the name of God), it is a wonder that we continue to exist. It’s not entirely reasonable. In fact, it’s essentially unreasonable. It’s unbelievable. It’s love. It’s the mystery of love.
I want to invite you to reflect for a few moments on the Gospel of John’s “nativity.” It’s not a story of a little baby – no Bethlehem, no manger, no angel choirs or sheepherders or exotic travelers from the East delivering prophetic gifts. For John, the account of the mystery of love and the miracle of God believing in us is a story so deeply true that it can only be told as a mystical poem or a hymn. And for John, the mystery of love and the miracle of God believing in us began before creation itself.
In the beginning was the Word, according to John the Evangelist, whose words are meant to conjure up the beginning told in the Book of Genesis. The creation story of John is meant to be an overlay of the creation story at the opening of the Torah, which is also a prose poem. The prologues of Genesis and John’s Gospel are meant to form something like an anaglyph – you know, one image superimposed over another. One of my late advent daydreams this past week was about how to get my hands on a few hundred paper 3D glasses to pass out with the bulletins this evening. I wanted to have you put them on to listen to the Gospel and to this sermon. It’s not that I have a 3D picture of the beginning narrative – but I just loved the idea of standing in front of this sea of your faces with paper glasses on them. I envisioned all of you leaning forward to perceive the multi-dimensionality of the Gospel of John’s story. I wanted you to experience the story not as flat but as 3D. I wanted you to feel like the scene was moving toward you – that you were in the scene – that you could reach your hand out and almost touch it.
“What scene?” you might be wondering. Well it’s a scene much more like a dream than a stage set. It begins in the darkness when God began to create by the Word – by the speech of the divine (and I imagine the speech to be quite musical). By the Divine Song, all things are coming into being. And God, in turn, sees that it is all good. The Word of God IS good. God’s Word is Good. And Jesus is the Word of God, according to John. John the Evangelist is asserting that Jesus was of divine origin and power.”
And even better still, there is a pre-existing, a pre-historic urge of the Divine for revelation and redemption which is at One with the creating and inspiring. And Jesus was born and lived and died in a way that made that urge for revelation and redemption entirely visible – and not only visible, able to be experienced with all of our senses. Jesus was the embodiment of the compassion of God – compassion made up of tenderness to care for the most vulnerable, and ferocity to defend the dignity and integrity of all, and mischief to keep us laughing at ourselves and our circumstances and our universe, come what may..
In Genesis, the ancient Hebrew verb for create is not in the past tense. The translation “when God created heaven and earth,” really comes up short for me. The verb for create is in the imperfect (or incomplete action) tense: “when God began to create.” God’s creating is ongoing and incomplete according to that ancient text. God’s Word is underway – in unfinished sentences, an unfinished symphony. Imagine the unending resourcefulness – the limitless creativity and agency of the divine: imagine the tenderness, the ferocity and the mischief of God.
Christmas is the time to recall, recollect, remember the compassionate agency and intent of God, Who is, Who is Love, according to John the Evangelist. Recall, recollect, and remember, all mean do it again – it’s not a passive kind of nostalgia that is urged here, although I guess it might be a little sentimental. It is active and ongoing. It’s quite counter-cultural really – not to spend Christmastide focusing on what has come to an end, or the way things used to be in somebody’s good old days, or even the way things were in our own good old days. The primary declaration of Christmas is: It is now. It is happening. And that makes me think about how both of the creation stories in Genesis and in John are forward leaning and calling on us to lean forward. The primary declaration of Christmas is about what lies before and ahead of us. Look! God is making something out of nothing again and again!
So, wonder with me tonight what God is creating – what is being created and redeemed and inspired right now and right here? The joy and spendor of the Incarnation of God is ongoing and happening at this very moment with some of the unlikeliest people – us, in the unlikeliest places – here, at the unlikeliest times – now. Lean forward! Look forward!
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1/11/11