Christmas Eve Message on Luke 2:1-21 given on December 24, 2024 at St. Luke's Lutheran Church, Richardson, Texas.
Link to St. Luke's YouTube to watch worship;
Tonight, we celebrate the scandal of God becoming a human being. It’s outrageous really. For the Source and Creator of all that is to become so small, so limited, so weak, so finite, so….. ungodly?
It is a scandal—so much so, that there’s no other god-story like it. Oh sure, there are stories of other virgin births…Romulus and Remus, Karna from India, the Aztec war God, Lau Tzu. But all of these are born as gods or demi-gods, remaining far superior to the frailties and vulnerabilities of being human. No self-respecting god becomes fully human.
We are, after all, a bit icky. We smell if we don’t bathe regularly, we are weak, we are born helpless, and dependent, and it takes years before we can fend for ourselves. We get sick and our bodies don’t work as well as we age. We must eat 3 times a day at least, and we sleep a third of our lives. We learn by trial and error,
we don’t get along with those who are different from us, and wars continue to rage. Some of us are pretty smart, but we have no superpowers to speak of: No lightening bolts like Zeus, no power-wielding hammer like Thor, no super-human strength that can tame wild beasts like Hercules. And worst of all, we do not live forever. We all have an expiration date.
It's no wonder that in every other god-story, they bypass the pain, suffering, and mortality that define human life. The gods live far off like on Mt. Olympus and come in as heroes, or for conquest, resolving challenges with superpowers.
Except for this one and only God-story of the Source and Creator of all that is who became so humble and so small, pressing down into an infant inside a human mother, to enter every single human experience with us, about us, alongside us, and for us. Rather than remaining far off, Jesus collapses the distance between God and us, and becomes—not a god with a few human traits—but fully human, fully like us, born of a young woman.
Jesus embraced all the limitations of our humanity—learning, growing, grieving, weeping, hungering, sleeping, and suffering. I wonder how many times he argued with his brothers and sisters growing up; how many cuts his mother had to bandage, how misunderstood he felt as a teen, how many crushes he had that didn’t work out, how lonely it felt when people misunderstood and betrayed him and his mission.
What a scandal that God—with all the power in the universe—would walk among us in our frailty.
What scandalous, joyful, good news that God loves us this much—to enter the messiness of our lives, embrace our vulnerability, and know us so intimately, so intenesely.
By becoming like us, God makes sacred all of our lives--every experience. Sleep, sickness, growth, aging, even dying—all of it is full of meaning because it is replete with Jesus’ presence and love, because he is with us in all things. Jesus Christ transforms all of our life into holy ground. Our limitations and struggles are no longer barriers between us and God. Because of the manger—they are the very places where God meets us.
If the God of the universe being born in a stable among the animals means anything at all, it certainly means that Jesus is with you in the most difficult experiences, dare I say crappiest moments of your life. Our challenges or weaknesses are the very places where Jesus accompanies us to give us strength to get us through, peace that calms our mind, hope that gives us a vision ahead, love that embraces us with grace no matter what.
The greatest scandal of all is that Jesus was not only willing to experience death like we do, but he overcame it with life, turning the finality of the grave into the doorway of eternal life. The God who became human now holds our humanity in the eternal presence of the divine love who made us at the beginning.
The God of all superpowers did not come to impress us with divine might. God came to love us, to heal us, and to be intimately a part of our lives here and now.
In Jesus, born anew this night, our infinite God embraces you from within where love makes your whole life sacred as part of God’s unfolding story in this world.
Fully embracing this miraculous love and living in faith now is YOUR superpower! And it's the best super in the whole universe!
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Linda Anderson-Little