December 25, 2006
Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Titus 2:11-4 + Luke 2: 1-14
In the lean and simple language of Luke,
we take delight again in the ageless story which begins
in the most humble setting, with the least likely people.
The story of tells of boundaries broken and creation restored.
It proclaims as John’s Gospel puts it, that the Word is Made Flesh.
In English, five words so powerful and significant
That today when we proclaim them in the Creed, we are instructed
by the ritual to put our knee on the floor: to genuflect.
Already in Luke’s telling of this new Genesis,
two figures have emerged
who tell us what happens when the Word takes flesh.
Elizabeth and Mary are the first to experience this new creation,
but they are not the last.
Elizabeth the barren, and Mary the Virgin have both had an encounter with the creative power of God’s Word.
She who was counted as nothing, discarded as useless and old
without even an identity in Israel because she could not bear a son
to continue the race is suddenly redeemed and made whole by this wonder.
And a young girl from no-where, out of the main stream of life,
from out in the hill country is called highly favored and chosen.
The boundaries are broken.
Heaven and earth get mixed up together.
The Divine and the Human mingle in flesh and blood
breath and spirit, dream and hope, and the future becomes the present.
Words have the power to change the course of human events.
“Be it done to me according to your word.” said Mary.
Because of that willingness to say “Yes” to the Word, the course of human events changed forever. And it still does.
“Is it your with that we Baptize this child?” parents are asked at that font.
They say: “Yes.” and that child is changed forever.
“Will you marry me?” one says to another, and those people are changed forever.
“Will you love and honor each other for the rest of your lives?” the priest or deacon asks, and nothing is ever the same.
There is such power in Words.
They can sting and kill, and they can give life and joy, peace and hope.
Words of kindness to a stranger can bring joy.
Words of comfort can bring hope.
Words of forgiveness can bring peace between enemies.
We assemble here because a Word has been spoken.
So once again we retell the story of the Word
which when spoken in Genesis made all things good.
Once again we retell the story of the Word
which when spoken restores that good creation
with its promise that human life and God have once and for all
been bound together as they were meant to be from the beginning.
It means that our future and our growth are in God’s own hands.
We need not wonder where our life is taking us.
The peace, the joy, the satisfaction of Isaiah’s vision is what lies ahead.
Whatever burdens we may bear now,
whatever we may have suffered in the past,
whatever we may have yet to endure,
is really not important.
Whatever our burdens may be, they are uncomfortable and inconvenient, but that is all they are.
They do not last, and they do not keep us from the promise.
What happened to Elizabeth and to Mary
is happening to everyone who will listen and say, “yes.”
This world is now a holy place, a sacred place because what we proclaim today is that God has come to dwell here,
and so we are a holy people living in a sacred world.
The only evil here is a refusal to honor and recognize that holiness.
This is not a birthday party. It is an invasion. It is an interruption of a “business as usual” world by the divine insistence
that we live up to what we were made and called to be.
Why? Because God loves us.
This no sentimental love that fits into a thirty-minute TV special,
but a terrifying divine love that is literally ready to turn the world inside out to rescue and restore us. We are not spectators in this divine plan.
This is not just about the birth of Christ.
It is about our birth into life everlasting