A Nativity Poem [Christmas Eve 2014]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Christmas Eve 2014 

A Nativity Poem

Have you seen a birth?  I've seen two.

They are not clean.  Not even in a hospital.  Not even in a sterile room.  Nothing is clean about birth.  It is messy.  The pain.  The sounds.  The bodies.  Maybe even the language.  Nothing is clean about birth.

There is something violent about the experience.  A warrior completing the final stage.  A battle that ends in victory.  An ending that is really just the beginning of the warrior's next impossible quest – raising a child. 

There is something violent about the experience.  A warrior completing the final stage.  A battle that ends in a new world.  An ending that is really just the beginning of the warrior's next impossible quest – life.

Neither looks much like what one imagines a warrior to be – except for the blood on the faces.  The birth-giver, a young woman – exhausted and glowing with relief and joy.  The new person – as frail as anything you've ever seen.  But also powerful – winning life by emerging from the impossible.  Tiny strength.  But still strength.

I've seen birth twice.  I've seen two babies who will be men.  And will do man things – whatever that means – whatever life brings. 

I've seen birth twice.  And it is the most human thing I've ever seen.  It is Jacob and Esau jostling with each other.  For dominance.  For position.  For life.  Pain and joy, jostling.  Hope and fear, jostling.  Excitement and relief, jostling.  Life and death, jostling.  And there are no guarantees.  But when life does win, everything in the world seems OK.

Actually, I guess I've seen birth three times.  Once my own.  I don't remember that day.  But also I keep remembering it.  Once each year.  Plus two times.  Those times when I saw baby boys – baby boys who share my name – gasp for life.

We never know the end.  We cannot see the twists and the turns ahead.  Every path is its own.  Even though every starting point is the same, is birth.  The good and the bad.  The boring and the common and the every-man, the every-woman.  They start with birth.  Like you and me.

And Jesus.  Jesus too.  That same beginning.  You share that with him.  He shares that with you.

God came into the world through a birth canal.  God choked on the air.  God screamed that tiny cry, powerful cry, that warrior cry – every emotion clearing out new lungs.  And God found comfort in a breast – that little nose bobbing with each desperate suck.

It had to be this way.  Jesus couldn't just show up – walk out of a portal or emerge from the mysterious depths.  God couldn't just appear human – couldn't just fake it. 

Not a ghost.  Not an alien.  Not a hologram before its time.

Born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  Born this day.  Born.

Have you seen a birth?  I've seen two.

They are not clean.  Certainly not the birth we remember tonight.  Not surrounded by beasts.  Not lying in a manger.  Not with the shepherds – their sheep-stained robes and dirty hands. 

Nothing is clean about birth.  It is messy.  The pain.  The sounds.  The bodies.  Maybe even the language.  Nothing is clean about birth.

“See, your salvation comes.”  Face covered with blood.  A warrior's cry shattering the darkness.  God wrapped in human flesh.  The savior of the world. 

Just a baby.  Is this what the prophet had in mind?  His nakedness covered with bands of cloth.  His hunger quenched with mama milk.  His tiny body laid in a feeding trough.

Hunted as a threat by the world's most powerful, most violent men.  And yet unable to hold up his own head.

This is how salvation came: wrapped in a tiny little body – shivering in a dark, new world.  Born into the messiness of the human condition. 

Nothing is clean about birth.  But that is the beauty of it.  Life is too important to be easy.  Each of us, born into a messy world.  Christmas is: God loves this messy world way too much to stay out of it.