“Where the Word Becomes Flesh”
A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Hilary Barrett
Preached at Pleasantville UCC, December 24, 2009
Isaiah 9:1-6 & Luke 2:1-20

For the first time in almost ten years, my husband, Rob, and I got out a Christmas letter this year.  I really can’t take any credit for it.  Rob wrote it, he worked his computer magic to format it and he made arrangements for it to be color-copied at our local Kinko’s.  It’s a pretty snazzy letter -- complete with photos of the family in the midst of our more interesting activities such as braving the January cold in order to witness the Presidential Inauguration and driving our son out to Chicago in September so he could begin his first year of college.  It will probably be another 10 years before we have as many interesting things to talk about.

The last time we sent out a Christmas letter, our son, Sam was playing in the Ambler Junior Baseball league and our now-ten-year-old Jack Russell Terrier was a puppy about the size of a small shoe.  It’s something we all know, of course, but the passage of time is indeed hard to fathom.  On a night like tonight, we look around the room or down the pew and we wonder at how our kids got so big, and how everybody else got so old!

More than birthdays, even, we tell time by Christmases: the Christmas photos that some folks manage to send out every year; the cards and letters we receive from friends that we still love but never see anymore; the moment we glance around the room or across the Christmas table and drink in what a difference a year has made.  I think there is no season like this one to transport us across the miles of memory.

This is a night of memory.  It's a night where we tell a story we've heard before - a story which connects us across time.  A young mother, a worried father, a fretful journey, an unlikely birthing room, and the world would never be the same.  It's a story we've heard before and yet here we are, ready to hear it again.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.  This was the first enrollment, when Quirin'i-us was governor of Syria.  And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city.  And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.  And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered.  And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.[1]

Babies have been born before.  They're born every day.  And most of us find them rather compelling creatures.  But it isn't a baby's birth which brings us all to this place on this night.  It's how the Word became flesh that compels us most.  It's how God came to dwell among us that fascinates us.  It's the Incarnation, the en-flesh-ment of God in the world -- that's the holy mystery we want to hear about; that's what keeps us coming back year after year to hear a story we've heard before, to sing songs we've sung before, to gather with people we love, to mark the passage of time, and to look for the traces of God's enfleshment in our lives.

Luke does a brilliant job telling the story.  He has a wonderful flare for the dramatic.  He sets the stage globally by reminding us of the big names of the day and those places where “the movers-and-shakers and opinion-makers were doing their daily work”[2] – Augustus and Quirinius, an Emperor and a Governor.  

But then Luke directs our gaze in an entirely different direction to show us where God was really at work bringing about the salvation of the world.  “God’s main action was not in the throne room of Herod or in the Oval Office of the Caesar.  The stuff we need to pay attention to was not in the Roman Senate or at their Supreme Court.  It wasn’t even at the Temple where solemn high priests were doing their best to serve the God of Israel and witness to Him even in the midst of a Roman occupation that had no end in sight.”[3] 

No, to see the real show we need to get out of town – to a little village about 5 miles southwest of Jerusalem; to a stable cluttered with farm animals, and to a couple exhausted from their journey.  In the shadow of the most powerful Empire in the world, the real story of God’s work was happening to a bunch of nobodies like Mary, Joseph, and a few shepherds summoned from a field outside Bethlehem.[4]  The real story of the Word becoming flesh would happen in a way so small that it’s hard to imagine it could make any difference in the world at all.

But that’s the way our God works: making a difference with small things.

So many of us spend our lives trying to make a difference.  We don’t need to be on the cover of Time magazine.  For most of us, that would be our worst nightmare.  We don’t even need to be famous.  We don’t need to win awards.  We just want to feel like we’ve done our work well; that we’ve been faithful to what God has asked of us; that we’ve done the best we could and that, perhaps that best effort has indeed made a small difference in the world.

And sometimes we’re able to see the difference we make.  Sometimes we are given brief but shimmering moments of clarity that allow us to see that we’ve done some good here.  But most of the time, we really don’t know.  My guess is that, most of the time, the really important things we do are invisible to us.  And that when God calls us home, we’ll be surprised to learn why it was that that the Holy One put us in exactly that place at that time for that purpose.

Dr. Dan Gottlieb is a clinical psychologist specializing in family therapy, and he is the host of a weekly radio program called, “Voices in the Family."  Dan Gottlieb is also a quadriplegic, the result of a car accident.  Dan shares this story about the importance of every day acts of kindness that make a difference in the world.  He writes:

From the perspective of my wheelchair, I see small acts of kindness every day.  The many people who open doors for me or pick things up that I drop.  Or the man at the concession where I buy my water who always unscrews the lid before he hands it to me.  These tiny acts of kindness not only make my life easier... [they also make a difference in the lives of those who reach out to me in compassion.]  Whenever someone helps another being, I wonder who benefits more from the encounter.

Dan first started wondering about the power of kindness after an encounter he had with the nurse who saved his life.  The encounter took place in the intensive care unit at Jefferson Hospital several days after the accident.  Dan reports this:

Despite being surrounded by many people who loved me, despite having children and a job to return to, I was still not sure I wanted to live.

On this particular evening, as my nurse approached me with my medication, she said:  "You are a psychologist, aren't' you?"  Almost without waiting for an answer, she went on: "Is it unusual for someone to feel desperate and suicidal?"  Of course, she didn't know that was exactly how I was feeling.

Suspecting the obvious, I invited her to talk to me after her shift was over.  Several hours later, she pulled a chair next to my bed and told me her story.  At the conclusion, I referred her to a therapist, and she thanked me. 

It was only then that I realized I could live as a quadriplegic.

The Word becomes flesh in moments like these.  A desperate man in a desperate hour learns, through miraculous intervention, that he can minister to another – and that knowledge is the difference between life and death for him.

The Word becomes flesh when one person ministers to another in ways so small you could hardly imagine they would make any difference at all.  I have seen the Word become flesh and I have marveled to watch it dwell among us.

The person you reached out to in love and kindness, who will forever remember the words you spoke that day, or the way you cared for them in that situation.

The student you went the extra mile for, because there was something about them you just believed in.

The time you decided to forgo that meeting because it was more important to stay home with your kid and listen to them when they needed to talk.

The Word becomes flesh is ways and moments so small and hard to notice that we can barely believe God can make anything out of them at all.

There is a story in the rabbinic tradition that speaks of these small miracles that occur between human beings and it goes something like this:

There was once a wise teacher.  A crowd had gathered around him to hear him teach. Instead he asked a question.

"Tell me" he said,"when you are waiting and watching for the morning to come, how can you tell when night has passed and day has come?"

The crowd thought hard.  One man said " I think it is when you can look at the distant hills and tell whether the animal you can see there is a sheep or a dog."

"That is a good answer, “said the teacher, “but not the one I was thinking of."

Another man said, "Perhaps, then, it is when you can look at a distant tree and tell whether it is a palm tree or a fig tree."

"Another good answer, but not the one I was looking for."

"Well," said the crowd, "what is the answer then?  How can we tell when the night has passed and the day come?"

"You can tell when the night has passed," said the teacher, "when you can look into the eyes of the person next to you and see that they are your brother or sister.  Because if you can't see that they are your brother or sister then the night will never pass and darkness will never give way to light."[5]

The Word becomes flesh, not with our face on the cover of Time magazine, but when we can look into the eyes of the person next to us – stranger or friend – and know that they are our brother or sister.  These are the hidden, seemingly unimportant moments that God delights in.  Because it is with precisely such material -- with stuff so small it’s hard to imagine it could make any difference at all -- that God works out God’s plan of salvation for the world.

Tonight we gather to listen to a story we have heard before, to sing songs we have sung before, and to pass the light from one to another in a ritual that has been taking place for thousands of years.

Tonight we gather to celebrate the birth of one born two thousand years ago, and to hope for the One who is reborn in our hearts every day.  

Tonight we gather to see how the Word is made flesh in a most unlikely place -- a King born in a stable; a Savior born under the watchful eye and hot, steaming breath of farm animals; a child upon whom the world waits in hope, born to an unwed mother.  But that's how God works.  Not with trumpet and fanfare -- but in a quiet, life-changing encounter in an ICU ward and in the private ministries of ordinary people of good will.  This is how our God steals into the world – and we may not even be looking when it happens.

The time of Advent-waiting is over.  This is the night we proclaim the holy mystery, "Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand, ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessings in His hand, Christ our God to earth, descendeth, our full Homage to demand."

May you know the wonder which comes when the prince of peace steals into your heart to demand your full homage.  May your celebrations with loved ones this Christmas Day be filled with holy awareness.  And may the Word, which is become flesh, dwell among us full of grace and truth.  Amen.