In the Beginning - Christmas 3A

Christmas 3A

Pillars of Creation - Hubble Telescope

December 25, 2016

In the beginning was the word.   We’ve heard these words before, at least the first three.  In the beginning.  It’s the same phrase that kicks off the poetic start of the whole Bible story, of our whole narrative.

In the beginning, God created heavens and the earth.  Light and dark.  Sky and sea. Sun and moon.  Plants and animals,. And finally, God created man and woman.  Let’s take a moment and think about this.

Have you ever seen pictures from the Hubble telescope, that amazing tool that helps scientists actually see galaxies, stars and planets, or that vast expanse of interstellar space, as we sometimes pray in our Eucharistic Prayer?  I would encourage you to look it up sometime.  The photos are unbelievable, with shapes and stars in beautiful colors, with galaxies forming.  It’s mind boggling how vast that expanse is, and God creates that.

If you’ve ever been in a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, tornado or ice storm, you know first-hand the incredible power in our earth.  If you have not, I get that same sense when watching storm waves.  Incredible power.  God creates that.

Mountains, and seas, and sunsets, and valleys. Our earth is beautiful and bucolic.  God creates that. 

Majestic trees, birds that fly through the air, a miraculous feat. So we don’t think this creation is too vast or beyond our scale, snails have mathematically perfect spiraled shells.  If you stop and think about the plants and animals around us, if you stop to really see them, it’s a beautiful marvel.  And God created that too.

Finally, humans. From the magic of a newborn’s fingers and toes, to the strife we cause each other, to the beautiful and frightening things that our minds are capable of. We humans are conflicted, complicated and creative.  And God created us too.

So back to Genesis. In the beginning, God created all that is and all that will be.  The expansive universe, powerful natural forces, beauty, majestic and marvelous plants and animals, complicated and creative humans.  In the beginning, God created all of that.  And as the writer of Genesis says, it was all very good. 

For the history of humanity, God was present with the people in the powerful, marvelous, complicated world God created.  God was with Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, God saw the oppression of Israel by the Egyptians.  As things happened on earth, God repeatedly intervened through God’s people in history. Through Moses and the law. With the prophets who spoke out against power, greed and oppression.  With King David. Through prophets, and kings, and shepherds and soldiers.   God  dropped in to this world in ways that we could comprehend, or at least acknowledge. 

And yet, we kept messing things up. God was too far away to feel God’s presence.  We ignored the law, and we ignored God’s simple requests to us to love God and to love our neighbor, despite God’s continued presence and promise to be with us forever.  And so, in the ultimate act of assistance, God sent us God’s self in the form of Jesus Christ, which we celebrate today. 

Jesus Christ was born, not in majesty or power, but to immigrants. Immigrants in a strange land who were strangers, treated like strangers, and had were given no where to sleep, despite Mary’s delivery.  They were, effectively, homeless whom society had dismissed. An ironic place for the king of kings to be enter our life, wouldn’t you say?

Why would God send God-self to earth to be born as a man, from a homeless immigrant woman?  A person, fully human who lives and grieves and eventually dies?  I have a priest friend from Seattle shared a story he’d heard to explain why. Imagine you’re out on a walk, walking slow, admiring God’s creation.  An ant crosses your path, carrying or trying to carry a big load. The ant struggles and drops, tries again.  But it’s just too big. About that time, along comes another ant, who easily takes some of the load, and the happy ants go on their way.  But what if you’d tried to help?  Could you have taken a part of the ant’s load?  Not likely, without doing damage to the load or the ant.  In this inglorious but relatable analogy, we are the ants.  God cannot reach down and take our load directly.  God is too big, too immense, too powerful, too much not an ant.  So, God sends an ant to help.  Jesus. 

Through his life, Jesus experienced normal human events. He got separated from his parents, and subsequently scolded. His mother asked him to perform a miracle at the wedding in Cana, much to his chagrin.  Who hasn’t been prompted to do something or perform on command when you didn’t want to? He experienced the same human emotions we do.  He felt joy, contentment, frustration, anger, betrayal.  Jesus was fully human.  Jesus, this baby whose birth we celebrate today. 

Jesus was fully human.  He was born, and as we know, he dies a humiliating, cruel death.    

And while he had ten fingers and ten toes, Jesus was also fully divine.  As the Epistle reading says, Jesus is “a reflection of God’s Glory, and the exact imprint of God’s very being”.  So the created is the creator. An exact imprint of God’s very being.  That’s hard to imagine, that this little baby was fully divine. Think back to the things we see and know about God from his created world.  God is as vast as the galaxies God creates.  As powerful as seas and storms and winds. As beautiful and majestic as mountains. As creative and complicated as humanity.  All of that. God created all of that, and it was very Good.  And today, we celebrate all of that – wrapped up in swaddling cloth, born to a homeless immigrant. 

And through God’s experience in our world through Jesus Christ, God experienced all humanity had to offer, the good and the bad.  This is part of what we celebrate today. God knows first-hand of our lives, our joys, our struggles. 

But here’s the other thing.  Through Jesus Christ, an imprint of God’s own self, we experience the love and grace and forgiveness that’s only possible with God.  With Jesus the man, fully divine, we see love and tenderness of Jesus freeing the man from demons, healing the blind and sick, eating with sinners, loving the prostitute.  We see God’s grace in action on earth. 

God sent Jesus Christ to be light in the world.  And the darkness cannot overcome the light.  We have seen it in action.  We’ve felt it, God’s grace and forgiveness through the kindness of friends or strangers, and through the Holy Spirit, we have it. From Jesus’ divine nature ,we have all of that power, and majesty, beauty and creative in us.   

So today and throughout the Christmas season, we celebrate the birth of this human God child. We celebrate that God knows first hand through Jesus of our toils and tribulations, of our emotions, of our failings. And God loves us incomprehensively and indefensibly.  Through this human God child, a little piece of our human experience was lived by God, shared by God, transformed by God, and made new by God.

Finally, through the birth of this child, an exact imprint of God, learn of love, kindness, forgiveness, compassion, and grace.  We have all of that light in us and with Jesus we have seen how to use that light. Some believe we live in very dark times.  I would suggest that since the beginning of human history, humans have lived in dark times, and some probably believed their times were the darkest. But the darkness cannot overshadow the light.  Let me repeat that.  The darkness cannot overshadow the light. Your job, our job is to be that light, bringing God’s grace to every interaction, every person we meet.

Through this Christ child and now through you, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. 

Amen.