God With Us
Christmas Eve
Throughout most of the year, I’m a lectionary preacher, and that means that I would typically only end up preaching from the same text one every three years. But Christmas Eve just has to be different. And by different, I mean that it has to be the same each year. Which means trying to place the same story in the midst of a world that, year after year, does not seem to grasp the message of hope, peace, joy, and love that we year, year after year. How do we reconcile this idea that God, in God’s infinite compassion and love for us mortals, came to dwell among us—even as wars continue to claim the lives of children. Even as the very children that Christ tells us are closer to God have their lives upended by a violent immigration system. Even as the children born today are made to reckon with the devastation wrought by climate change, economic uncertainty, and a growing disregard for others. This is the world that seeks to welcome, once again, the Christ child, the Prince of Peace, the messiah in our midst.
Much was the same in Jesus’ time. Jesus’ people were enduring a brutal occupation. They were held captive by the Roman authorities, subject to the economic, cultural, and military domination of an imperial government. They were not a free people, and so they longed for freedom. There were those who looked for the coming of the messiah, of God’s chosen one. There were those who expected a military leader, a warlord who could challenge the power of Rome. Some cried out for an uprising, for an armed overthrow of the Roman authorities in the occupied territories. Out of the desperation of the people grew a desperate desire to see a restoration of their autonomy. And, of course, the prophet Isaiah famously wrote about nation taking up sword against nation, about the people arming themselves with farm implements, and God’s vision for a never-ending war, right?
Of course not. The vision that the prophet relays is one that doesn’t make sense. It’s an end to the wars that are meant to set us free and keep us free. It’s an end to the human mindset that we can achieve a positive end by violent means. It’s an assertion that love will only prevail, that justice will only prevail, when faced with the unarmed truth. The truth that each of us needs to eat. The truth that each of us carries inherent worth as bearers of the image of God, of the Imago Dei. The truth that God’s vision for us is that of the Good Life, lived in the community of the City of God. Truths that are embodied in the infant in the manger—truths that we can see echoing outward in the lives of each child we encounter. And truth doesn’t come much more unarmed than in an infant, who must depend fully on others in order to survive.
This is the truth that Mary sings about in her Magnificat, when she proclaims that her soul magnifies the Lord, the Lord who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. The Lord who stands with the poor, with the vulnerable, with the weak, with the brokenhearted. The one born into the roughest of conditions, into this impoverished, unconventional family doing their best to get by in a world not fit for their survival. This is the child whom we are to trust will lead us to freedom. Not with swords and great armies that guarantee victory by some human definition.
As we commence this Christmas season, may we be called to see the Christ child in the face of each child born to that same poverty. May we hear the call to see Christ in the children on food stamps, in the migrant children torn from the arms of their parents. In the queer and trans children, who struggle each day for the right to be seen. Each of these is the Christ Child, born again and again into this hurting and broken world. May we hear this call this night, to cherish this love. Amen.