One Helpless Child

Luke 2
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2015
 Hard to believe it’s been two thousand years.
Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say on a birthday?
It doesn’t seem that long at all.
 But it’s true, two thousand plus years ago,
the savior of the world was born.
 Actually, for two thousand
The world doesn’t seem much different
then than it does now.
 People still need companions in life
they still get engaged and married,
We still form families
the birth of a child is still a wondrous thing.
People still laugh at funny things,
and they cry when people die.
 People still do kind things to one another,
and we still do horrible things too.
There is still violence and corruption,
there are still people who are poor
and can’t afford housing or food.
 Even the crazy census 
which we hear about every Christmas,
we can still relate to it.
Even if we’ve never had to travel to the place
of our birth in order to be counted for taxes,
We still know about burocracies and intuitions
systems and governments
who just see people as numbers and money.
 No, things haven’t changed much at all
in two thousand years.
People like you and me still ask for God’s intervention
We yearn for God’s ways, and God’s will,
and yet, our human sin and foibles get in the way.
 And just like now, things then seemed
to be hopeless, and un-repairable.
The darkness seemed like it would take over everything.
but like now God’s people still pray for peace
for compassion,  joy, freedom, happiness, relief.
Then, like now, people still prayed for God do to something.
 And that night,
more than two thousand years ago, God did.
The all mighty and all powerful
God of Abraham and Sara,
the creator of the universe and all things in it,
the artist who made the mountains and
forests and oceans and all the creatures in them,
the sculptor of the planets and the skies,
in response to all those prayers and hopes
did this one interesting thing:
 God became one of us.
 God’s response was not control or manipulation
it was not retaliation or violence
it was not to provide security or even
more instruction or rules.
 God became human,
God was born in the same old fashioned
way, just like you and me,
with all it’s risks and challenges
and God heaped on even more risks
and more challenges on than normal.
  God’s response to our hurt and pain and sin
and the stupid things that we humans do
was absolute vulnerability.
 God came in the most helpless way
The vulnerability of a woman,
the vulnerability of child birth
the vulnerability of poverty,
the vulnerability of Judaism,
the vulnerability of a strange town
the vulnerability of an open-air delivery room.
So many things could have gone wrong.
 But this is the way God brought salvation to the world.
Two thousand years ago, the light of the world was
pure openness and helplessness.
And it is still the same today.
 Then as now,
God shows us what will save the world
not military might or security,
not money or presents or financial markets,
but unconditional openness and love.
 God’s gift to all of us was to
offer God’s whole self to the world
in trust and receive
all that we had to give,
it’s joy and comfort and pain and sorrow.
 Christ in a stable,
Christ at a table,
Christ on a cross.
Open and revealed
This is how God wants to be seen.
 The greatest gift that God gives us
is God’s own life, open to us
there for the taking
This is the answer to our prayers.

May we open this gift over and over again
every year for the next two thousand years or more
and may the gift of Christ live in
all of our hearts right now.