Here [Christmas 1B - John 1:1-18]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

John 1:1-18

 

Here

 

In the turbulent days of the Vietnam War, as the sky and the streets flashed with apocalyptic fantasies, Madeline L’Engle wrote a Christmas poem called The Risk of Birth:

 

This is no time for a child to be born,

With the earth betrayed by war & hate

And a comet slashing the sky to warn

That time runs out & the sun burns late.

 

That was no time for a child to be born,

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honour & truth were trampled by scorn–

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

 

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by a comet the sky is torn–

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

 

What the poet captures is the great scandal of the Incarnation – namely that it happens here.  Here: where there is never made enough room.  Here: where the rooms are too dusty and the hearts too often inhospitable.  Here: where the pain can be devastating and the cruelty disheartening.  God in the mess of common and brutal, absurd and inhumane.  Here: in the long shadow of the cross. 

 

We talk so much about preparing our hearts during Advent – to make here worthy of divine visitation - and yet Christmas always comes before the work is complete.  But still it comes.  With us disheveled and our world still as messy as ever.  The Word became flesh and lived among us.  That is the scandal.  And that is our only hope.

 

Perhaps this is the year – our traditions interrupted, our sentimentality shattered, our hearts broken – that we come to understand the true meaning of Christmas.  The Word lives among us.  In this world.  With this virus.  In this brokenness.  In these fragile hearts.  Right here.

 

Admitting that we cannot seem clean up our own mess, we would like at least to believe that the coming of God into our world would make the bad things go away.  But it doesn’t – at least not yet.  Instead God comes as a light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not, cannot, will not overcome it.

 

That is the rugged beauty of this story: God does not come to the prepared or the put together.  God comes to a world that is decidedly not OK.  In fact, that is exactly why God comes: because we are not OK.  Because we hurt too much and because our hearts are messy and unprepared and because there are always broken pieces on the dusty floor of the raging nations.  God did not arrive unaware.  God came to live in this, to be here. 

 

And to live here as us.  Incarnation.  We needed a God we could throw our arms around.  Who would feel all our muddled emotions.  Who would choke back tears and hurt with laughter and live in the suffocating shadow of death.

 

It may be that there is no good time for love to be born in this world.  But it is always the right time.  God keeps risking God’s beautiful heart in this tragic world.  Christmas is a feast on the calendar, also it is God’s eternal present.  God is forever showing up with us and for us.  God is always here. 

 

Advent is over.  Christ has come.  I know your heart is not quite as ready as you had hoped.  But the light of Christmas burns afresh in you none the less.  God is here, in this broken world, in your broken heart.  It is Christmas and this weary world could use a little more light.  So open your heart and let your light shine.  Show the world that God is here.