Christchild

Scripture: The Nativity of Our Lord (Christmas I), A.D. 2015 C

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

There is nothing in the world more vulnerable than a child. And there is nothing in the world more disruptive than a child. Perhaps that is why they remain so vulnerable.

For thousands of years both the faithful and the hopeful awaited that first Christmas night. Something was in the air back then. The world was ready for a Savior. God’s people remembered the promise given to Eve, that the seed of a woman would crush the head of the serpent to redeem mankind. They remembered the promise given to Abraham, that his family would become a blessing for all the nations of the earth. They remembered the promise given to David, that a King of his blood would rule as God’s Anointed One for all eternity.

And then of course they had the prophets: Isaiah, who spoke of a Suffering Servant; Ezekiel, who promised an impossible Resurrection; Daniel, who started a centuries-long countdown to the arrival of the Messiah, the promised Christ. So by the time of that first blessed Christmas, after so many centuries of expectant hope, the Holy Land fairly crackled with anticipation and unrest. The Messiah was due any day now! He will come to set all things right! And we have waited, oh, so long.

But it wasn’t just Israel. Rome had prophecies of her own. When Caesar Augustus consulted the Tiburtine Sybil, she foresaw that, “A Hebrew Child will silence the oracles of the Roman gods.” I’d say she hit that one on the head. “It had been announced in ancient prophesies,” wrote Cicero, “that a King will appear, to whom all men must do homage in order to be saved.”

“It was written in the ancient books of the priests,” noted Suetonius, “that a Man from Judea will acquire world-wide supremacy,” and Tacitus agreed. And then there was the poet Virgil, one time favorite of the Emperor, who sang in his Fourth Eclogue, “Now the last age is come … Returns the Virgin, divine Kingdoms return. The heavenly Offspring descends from on high.” Oh, yes. The pagans knew to prepare for the Christ, if only to sharpen their swords.

And so into this seething cauldron of expectation and tension and prophecy and unrest, the Son of God descended and became incarnate of the Virgin Mary. He was born at midnight, as the Wisdom of Solomon predicted. It was at Hanukkah, as the legends foretold. He was heralded by a star, as prophesied by Balaam, and born in Bethlehem of Judea, as promised to the prophet Malachi. But He did not come with army. He did not come with a sword. He did not come with a righteous and pitiless wave of fire and iron and blood. He did not come in any of the ways expected by the priests of Jerusalem or the Legions of Caesar. Instead He was born upon a still and silent night, laid in a manger within sight of the shepherd’s watchtower, as prophesied in the Talmud.

What do you suppose is the worth of a baby? At once both nothing and everything. On the one hand, young children are completely useless. They cannot work, cannot earn, cannot assist in the family labors or do their duty to God and country. They demand from their parents constant care, constant vigilance, and constant exhaustion. They take from you everything that you have. Little wonder that the ancient world placed no value on the life of a child. Greeks left the sickly or colicky on hillsides to die. Canaanites offered them as sacrifices to the gods. Roman fathers retained the right to kill their children at will, even into adulthood. This is how God chooses to enter our world? As a mewling babe? As a creature considered disposable by all civilized societies?

And yet—what would life be without children in our communities? Children, who force us to put others before ourselves. Children, who give us hope for the future and strive for horizons yet unseen. Children, who remind us of a thousand joys and wonders and questions that we ourselves have long since forgotten to ask. You don’t have to be a parent to appreciate these truths. You just have to be human. Children demand from us everything we have, all that we are. And yet in caring for them, in loving them, in guarding and guiding and shepherding them, they make us so much more than we ever were before, than we ever could have been. They make us into teachers and guardians, uncles and aunts, role models and confessors, and one day they make us into grandparents.

Children destroy our world as we know it, and give to us a new one. One that is both familiar and strange, both ancient and fresh, both more chaotic and yet more stable than any of which we have heretofore dreamt. And that’s what God does too. In our world of self-definition and self-indulgence, in which we worship things and commodify people, in which we go to ridiculous lengths to deny obvious truths about age and mortality and our very human bodies, how shocking it still is to see that the indispensable symbol of Christmas is still the family—a humble, Holy Family—gathered around a crib, kneeling and bowing in awe.

The family is at once the most common, most astonishing, most stressful, most peaceful, most exasperating, most liberating, most oppressive, and most loving thing in all the world. It tears us apart and rebuilds us. It kills us and makes us anew. Just like God. Little wonder, then, that our very Name for God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—identifies God as a family, as Three in One. What does God look like when at long last He comes to us in the flesh? He looks like the Nativity. He looks like a family, gathered around a Child.

Throughout life, God tends not to come to us in the way that we expect. He tends not to work in big showy miracles or great public wonders, though He has plenty of those under His belt. Rather, God comes to us in the vulnerable, in the needy, in the inconvenient and unclean. He comes to us as a human being, through other human beings. He needs food and drink and shelter. He needs to nurse at His Mother’s breast, and be wrapped in swaddling clothes. He does not come to affirm us as we are, or to fight others in our name, but to demand, in complete and utter meekness, our submission to human need—to caring for the smallest and weakest and most uncomfortable among us—literally to love God by loving our neighbor.

Babies break down barriers. They strangle ego. They are fatal to pride. They are dirty and loud and require nothing less than everything you are, even the milk of your body. And that demand, made not by any force or threat but simply by innocent trust and genuine need, transforms us. Resurrects us. Kills us and makes us alive again! God comes demanding all that we are, all that we have, and in return He gives to us all that He is, all that He has: life and love and hope and joy and salvation eternal. He gives to us light in the darkness and warmth in the snows. He gives to us a promise as unbreakable and unfathomable as a Child’s love for His Mother, and a Father’s love for His Son.

For unto us a Child is born. Unto us a Son is given. And He shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.