O Holy Night - but Do We Remember Why?

Christmas Eve 2010
Year A + Christmas I

I would like to begin this evening by telling you a “different” Christmas story – not the one that we just heard from Luke’s Gospel [Luke 2:1-20].

A Christian woman was married to a man who said he didn’t believe in anything. In spite of this, they raised three sons who all went to church with their mother. One Christmas Eve, as she was putting on her coat to take the boys to the candlelight service, the woman said to her husband (as she did every time), “you know you’re always welcome to go with us.”

He had heard this so many times that he usually paid her no attention, but this time, something snapped in him, and he gruffly said, “I can’t believe you don’t realize how ridiculous the idea is of the Creator of the entire universe becoming a helpless baby, born to impoverished parents, laid in a feeding trough in a barn!”

The wife just smiled and kissed him. When his family had left, the man settled into his easy chair with a book. In no time at all, he dozed off.

He was awakened suddenly by the sound of a loud thump against the outside wall of the house. As he gathered his thoughts, wondering if he had really heard anything at all, two more thumps hit the house. He rose to his feet and went to the window.

He was surprised do see that a thick fog had come in, and it was snowing hard. In the dim light from the window, all he could see were three black lumps in the snow. Putting on his hat and coat, he went outside to investigate. He quickly discovered three geese who had apparently flown into the side of the house at full speed, perhaps blinded by the snow and confused by the fog. He shook his head at their tragic deaths.

Suddenly, he heard a sound behind him. Turning, he saw more than a dozen geese, huddled in the snow, afraid to fly and shivering from the cold. He wondered what he might do to save them, and then he had an idea. He carefully walked around them to his barn, opened the doors and turned the lights on. He hoped that the geese would see the warm, dry barn and go inside to survive the bitter night.

The geese, however, were afraid to move. The barn did not look like any place that they wanted to be. Carefully, the man detoured around them and from the far side, tried to shoo them into the barn. They scattered noisily but would not approach the refuge.

Frustrated, the man just shook his head. How could he persuade these stubborn creatures to do what was good for them – the thing that would save them from the bitter cold?

Then he had one more idea. He went into the barn, picked up one of his own domestic geese, and carried her, squawking loudly, to the far side of the little flock. He placed his goose on the ground. She got up, shook off the snow, and, honking her complaints the whole way, waddled back into the warmth of the barn. The entire flock of wild geese quietly followed her in.

As he was closing the barn, the man thought to himself how difficult it had been to get the geese to do what was best for them. They were so stubborn and resistant, even when he did everything in his power to get them to do what would save them. The only thing that had worked was for another goose to show them the way. “If only I could have become a goose, I could have led them myself,” he remarked aloud.

At that, he stopped in his tracks, awed and humbled. He suddenly understood exactly why the Creator of the universe had to become a helpless baby, born to impoverished parents, laid in a feeding trough in a barn!

Well, that’s a different kind of Christmas story, I’m sure you would agree. The real meaning of Christmas is not found in the Gospel of Luke that we heard tonight, but rather in the Gospel of John, which is the reading appointed for Christmas day [John 1:1-5, 10-14]:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

Angels and shepherds, wise men and a manger – these are all just ornaments surrounding the real story. They are certainly signs that a wondrous event occurred, but they are not that event. They are not the real miracle of Christmas. And I’m not talking about a virgin birth. That would be interesting and even news-worthy, but such an event would not save us. No, I am referring to the miracle of the Incarnation: the all-powerful God who created and governs the universe has humbled himself to become one of us.

One of the earliest Christian theologians, Athanasius of Alexandria, put it this way: God became man so that we could become divine. There is a prayer which the priest may say when adding a few drops of water to the chalice of wine in preparing the Eucharist: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share our humanity.” This prayer traces its origin to Athanasius.

When the drops of water enter the wine, they become indistinguishable from it. Even a professional chemist, with all kinds of modern equipment and skill, could never separate out those exact drops of water from the mixture in the chalice. The drops of water disappear―they become one with the wine. The union of water and wine represents a great mystery: Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God who is God, became one with us, so that we could become one with him.

Jesus was not pretending to be human, he was not playing a role, he was not trying it out to see what it felt like. He actually became totally human. How could he do this, while still remaining God? How is it possible for him to be both things at the same time – divine and human? That is the incomprehensible reality: God became human. The Holy One became one of us. The Son of God came to make us sons of God.

“Keeping Christ in Christmas” is not about spelling. It’s about focusing on the real story. The miracle of the Incarnation, which we celebrate tonight, is not that a baby was born in an unusual way or in a strange place. It is not about angels, or shepherds, or dreams, or prophecies. Instead, it is all about sin―our sins―and the way that God decided to show us how to leave them behind.

God loved us so much that God could not bear that we should die for our sins. God gave us Jesus―God became incarnate, one of us, for two reasons: to show us that it is possible to resist sin, and to take upon himself the punishment that we deserve because of our sins. That is the miracle of Christmas, that is the joyful event which we celebrate tonight.

May we have a blessed and holy Christmas, and may we give thanks every day for the incomprehensible love that God showed us by becoming one of us!