The Two Voices of Christmas
Let us pray: O
God, the word you most wanted to speak to the world, you spoke in Jesus Christ,
your word made flesh. Startle us
again, in the midst of the familiar, loving customs of Christmas with the
freshness of your love made flesh.
Open our hearts and minds to hear that good word again. In Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
In the early 13th century, people celebrated
Christmas primarily by going to Mass, where priests would tell the Christmas
story in a language that most ordinary people didn’t speak – Latin. Christmas in that time involved
elaborate artistic renderings of the Holy Family, and the birth of Jesus was
most often expressed with jewels and gold and silk in the courts of the
nobility.
After spending some time in the Holy Land, seeing the actual
circumstances into which Jesus was born, St. Francis of Assisi was disturbed by
the Christmas pomp that seemed disconnected from the reality of the biblical
story. So St. Francis set up the
first nativity scene in a cave outside Greccio, Italy for midnight mass on
Christmas Eve 1223. St. Francis
shocked everybody by staging the story of Jesus’ birth complete with live
animals, poor people and a real baby.
During the Mass, Francis told the Christmas story from the Bible and
then delivered a sermon about the first Christmas and urging the people to
reject hatred and embrace love. All
of this he did in the language of the people gathered.
Francis’ idea caught on, obviously, and every year many
churches do something similar with a Christmas pageant. Some are very sophisticated with professional
costumes and choruses and full orchestras and live animals. Most, however, are pretty simple and
very human in the spirit of St. Francis, and frequently they involved children.
At my former church, the high
point of the Advent season was the children’s Christmas pageant, always held on
the 3rd Sunday in Advent during worship. The production was funny, chaotic but genuinely moving for
me both as a parent, as well as a person of faith. We spend a lot of time and words and money trying to figure
out exactly what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown. But it only took a couple of squirrely toddlers
in lamb costumes to remind me that the heart of Christmas means that God went
all in and decided to cast God’s lot with a whole lot of lost sheep. Which of course is all of
humanity. Thank God for that.
There are two voices present on this sacred night when we
gather to hear the story again. There is the soaring, lilting voice we hear in the Gospel of
John, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.” You know that voice,
that high, pure, transcendent, holy divine voice saying, “The light shines in
the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” That’s the first voice of Christmas. The divine voice of
Incarnation that sparkles like a Christmas light and rumbles like thunder. The
voice that reminds us that all our preparation for Christmas is, in fact, very
serious business.
But there is a second voice speaking to us this night. And that voice is a human voice that we
sometimes have to strain to hear, because it can be very faint and hard to hear
above the din of the first voice.
The Christmas carol “Away in the Manger” is a really great
carol, but there is one line in it that has always bothered me. “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he
makes.” Of course Jesus
cried. He was a baby. A totally human baby. Crying is what ensures that babies survive
despite being one of earth’s most helpless creatures. When a baby cries because
he is hungry, he is fed. When a baby
cries because he is cold, his mother tucks a blanket around him. When a baby cries because he is
frightened, someone who loves him picks him up and holds him close until he
feels safe again.
The second voice of Christmas is that human voice, the
earthy reality of God with us, Emmanuel.
Of course, Jesus cried. He
cried for us. He died for us. And he still cries and laughs and exists
with us.
In a famous Christmas sermon, Martin Luther asked his
congregation to meditate on the nativity, not in the abstract but by looking at
human babies. He said, “I would
not have you contemplate the deity of Christ, but rather his flesh. Look upon the baby Jesus. Divinity may terrify us. Irrepressible majesty will crush us. That is why Christ took on our
humanity.” The theologian Paul
Tillich said, “One of Luther’s most profound insights is that God made himself
small for us in Christ…God showed us his heart so that our hearts could be won.”
Why does this night matter so much to us? It’s because this is the night in which
we are reminded again that God knows us.
God knows what it is to be one of us, in these bodies we inhabit, in
these families we create, in the sorrow and joy and boredom and surprise of
just being a fleshy creature in this world.
What difference does it make? All the difference in the world actually. If the Word became flesh, then flesh,
our humanity, has been blessed and sanctified by God. All of it.If divine Word became human flesh, the world – the material,
beautiful, natural world is not an evil place to be escaped as religion
sometimes concludes, but a holy place, a good place, to be lived in and
enjoyed.
If the Word became flesh, our own bodies are not to be escaped and denied, but
lived in and loved and affirmed and enjoyed.
If Word became flesh, then we who believe this and trust it
and stake our lives upon it have worldly work to do. If God loves the world so much to come to it as a child and
live in it, we must take the world seriously and live in it intentionally, and
work to make all human life more kind, more safe, more just, starting with
children – all children.
If Word became flesh and light shone in darkness and
darkness has not overcome it, then even the darkness that is part of human life
is different now. We are never alone. The drug dealer from Homewood lying in a hospital bed with a bullet in his leg wondering if he'll ever walk again. The 95 year old in the nursing home who has lost her friends and most of her family, facing the end of her days. A single mom who hopes that the food in her refrigerator will be enough to keep her children fed until the end of the month. The parents who don't recognize the smiling, joyful child who has come home for Christmas as a sullen young adult. The young Marine in Afghanistan sitting in the barracks and wondering if his girlfriend has found someone else to share Christmas with. You. Me. Facing whatever we are facing. If Word became flesh, we are never alone.
Of course he cried. He cried and he laughed and he loved his parents and his friends. He ate good food and drank wine and celebrated holy days and weddings. He danced at parties and felt his body ache at the end of a long day of walking. He stubbed his toe and his skin got goosebumps when he was cold in the middle of the night. He endured acne as a teenage and learned how to build stuff with his dad. He knew what it is like to love deeply and passionately. He understood what it means to make yourself vulnerable because you love so strongly. Vulnerable enough to come into the world as the most fragile of creatures, and vulnerable enough to die as a fragile human creature.
Of course, he cried.
We need two voices tonight. We need the voices of the saints who will join us at this table, singing, "Holy, holy, holy Lord. God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory." We need the transcendence of angels singing, "Joy to the world!!" We need the light-drenched prose of the Gospel of John announcing the incarnation of God.
But God knows we need another voice to reach out to us on this silent night. The crying of a baby, breaking into our lives to meet us where we are, in all our hunger and all our human neediness. To be fed. To be warm. To know and to be fully known.
It is Christmas. Thanks be to God.
(Portions of this sermon are adapted from John Buchanan's "No Crying He Makes?")
