A New Reality [Christmas Day 2014]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

A New Reality

It has only been three and a half years, but sometimes I forget what it was like before I had a child.  Sometimes my son will appear in memories in which he does not belong – as if he were photo-shopped into a moment that once belonged to just me and my wife.  And usually it will be my wife who reminds me that that happened before we had kids.  It just feels like he has always been there.  Or maybe that's just because we haven't really slept in three and a half years. 

But birth does that.  It creates a new reality.  It is amazing how one small human being changes an entire family.  One small human being changes other lives; that baby makes new parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings.  Birth does that.  It creates a new reality.

Our Gospel reading from Luke begins with the world that was – that was before the birth.  There is the Emperor, Augustus.  There is the governor of Syria, Quirinius.  There is the census.  And there is this engaged couple that is on the road.  And they are expecting their first child.  They are about live into a new world, together.

And in many ways this birth will be common.  Jesus will come into the world and suddenly Mary and Joseph will be parents.  And there will be new grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.  And the baby will mean less sleep and more stress and previously unknown joy.  And his family will encounter a new reality.  Because birth does that.  It creates a new reality – it always does.

But also this birth is unlike any birth, ever, before or since.  His birth is announced by an angel, proclaimed by a multitude of the heavenly host.  He is called the Savior.  He is called the Messiah.  He is called the Lord.  And so while the birth is perhaps common, the child is anything but. 

This baby, born into humble circumstances, Jesus, the Messiah, disrupts the world; when he arrives, the world encounters a new reality. 

And it becomes difficult to remember anything before his birth.  Every thing in history seems to, all of sudden, point to this moment, this child.  All of the hopes of the ages past, the words of the prophets, the dreams of the future, are realized in this one birth – as if the world were never really real until that moment.  Birth does that.  It creates a new reality.

A new reality, pregnant with promise – of what might be, of what new thing God might do – for us, in us, through us, with us.  But also threat.  Because when God gives us our Savior, our Messiah, our Lord, it means the old lords are cast down from their thrones.  The Emperors and kings and governors of the previous age find themselves usurped.  By a birth.  By a birth that creates a new reality.

And that is why they hunt him.  That is why he flees with his family to Egypt.  A baby.  A refugee.  A symbol of everything new that everything old wars against.

It is easy to look at this birth, the birth of baby Jesus, and be charmed by the simplicity, to be warmed by the nostalgia, to be lulled by the sweetness.  But this birth, the birth we celebrate today was much more radical than it was precious.  The birth of Jesus created a new reality – shattering the world that was with a tiny cry.

This little baby was no ordinary human.  That tiny body was wrapped around the fullness of God.  God in human flesh.  The limitless living within the tightest of confines.

To create something new.  The world as it is meant to be.  To break the rod of every oppressor.  To burn the boots bloodied by war. 

Under this Messiah peace would not come through violence and war.  Happiness would not come through money and power.  Security would not come through weapons and tyranny.  The new reality would come with a birth – beautiful and vulnerable.

Jesus, born into the world of Augustus, the Emperor, born into the world of Quirinius, the governor, born into the world of the census, born to an unmarried couple.  So small in a huge world – a world of power and money, force and control, violence and war.  So small – this God in a baby body.

It was God's most desperate move.  To be born to be our salvation.  So that we might finally be born anew – to bring us into a new reality – a reality where power and money, force and control, violence and war are cast down from their thrones.  All of the hopes of the ages past, the words of the prophets, the dreams of the future, are realized in this one child – older than time, but always, always, always new. 

The Savior, the Messiah, the Lord is born.  His tiny cry shattering the world that was.  Birth does that.  It creates a new reality.