Luke’s gospel records that shepherds were watching over their flocks by night, and suddenly, the glory of the Lord shone around them. The angels said, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
Good News: The wait is finally over, church!
LOVE is here—for the world, the universe that holds all things together, and our nation is having a giant temper tantrum right now. Love is here for the broken, the strong, the oppressed, and their oppressors. Love is here for all.
The wait is over.
During Advent, we have been listening intently to the sub-text of our own lives, as well as to the stories of our faith tradition, as we journey towards that light in the sky, feeling our way through the dark, hoping that something real and honest and trustworthy is out there waiting for us on the other side.
This season permits us to testify to the HOPE we know and believe that therein lies some real and tangible PEACE. And that from God’s peace must come a JOYful noise, a song uniquely ours that will set us free as note-by-note we sing and share it with others, and that finally, as this JOY gives light to all in the house, we will see more clearly the LOVE that is waiting for us, here, on this night.
This love sets the heart free from our fears, our hardened hearts, and whatever it is that keeps us from experiencing the true gift of the manger. Love is here.
However, this Advent journey has been anchored in anything but love from the get-go. Some call it absurd: the Prophet Isaiah’s dream of salvation and redemption amidst the storms of war, as he drew utopic images of a Peaceable Kingdom as a wolf and a lamb lie down together. Then, to a broken and angry world, he offered a strategy for peace in the form of farming tools in exchange for weapons of war— all the while, the empire laughed in his face as they clashed their armor together with “cheers” and as they claimed one more victory.
Then we followed the “little girl,” teenaged Mary. As if on reality TV, we put a camera in her face, beside her pillow, in the quiet of her mind, in her darkness as her fearful tears (that were written out of the pages) fell silently to the ground. We followed her as she rose, as the song within her spirit weaved together with those of her ancestors, named and unnamed, barren and laboring alongside her each step. We followed her as she raised her soul with her body and chose to let LOVE in, the LOVE that threatened to undo her, to ruin and devastate the only life she had known.
Mary’s strength and vulnerability are as integral to what is happening in the manger as her absence, innocence, or abstinence.
Mary, the Mother of God, whose womb and witness were stolen, scapegoated, and tempered for millennia, made a choice, and what was thought to be absurd turned out to be astonishing! LOVE born, here and now.
In Joseph’s eyes, we found the same looming fear mashed together with a longing for freedom from the half-truth, the unknown, and the need to know.
A young father, a hopeful husband, and an heir to the line of God’s future reign both wrote and were unwritten from the story. For him, waiting for the magic of the manger to be real meant waiting for it to be over. When would this cloud of suspicion cease to hang above his head? When would the star fade into the morning light? When would he be “seen” as part of his own story? And the hopeful promise of God’s future reign? Sometimes, waiting for LOVE means letting go of what is behind us and looking up to receive what awaits us in the morning.
So here we are. The wait is over. The baby is here. Now what?
The real magic of Christmas is not really that Jesus is born again and again, but that we are—That’s right, breathe it in, right here, right now.
The world is unraveling at warp speed these days: one fire, one flood, one tornado, one political Earthquake at a time. People are more in tune with the flavor of the day coming out of Washington than we are with the needs of our communities, families, and souls. Perhaps this Advent journey was never supposed to lead us to a celebration of either side of the kingdom but to acknowledge the space crying out like a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes directly between them.
Jesus wasn’t born in a Kingdom palace in Rome, but he also wasn’t born in a poor widow’s bedroom, or a lowly midwife’s arms, in the temple yard, or even in the Innkeepers’ Inn. Jesus, even in infancy, resisted the posturing of either side of the aisle. Instead, he was born smack dab in the middle of Isaiah’s absurd hopes and dreams within the peaceable kingdom of God. Sheep, goats, horses, field mice, stray mangy dogs, some hens, and a ram gathered around them to witness God’s newly established position in the human story: right between us.
The real magic of the manger is born when we allow it to reposition us, not on one side or the other, but smack dab in the middle, where only God’s love can bring us together.
The wait is over; the gift has arrived, but the choice is, and always has been, ours to see and receive this miracle lying under the tree. If you look too hard, you will surely miss it. It is as tiny and insignificant as our HOPE and Belief allow, but it is as grande and whole and larger than life as our eyes and hearts are willing to imagine:
It is beautiful and strong. It is resilient and vulnerable, but it is whole and competent.
It is the real reason the angels blasted their trumpets that night; it is the only way the shepherds were convinced to leave their flocks, and it will be the only way the power of this young baby will be able to free the lost and broken world. It is the only way Isaiah’s hopes and dreams will become the lived reality of God’s dreams for this world.
The true gift of Christmas??
It is you. It is me. It is your beloved friend and your despised adversary.
It is the LOVE that lives within the seed of every soul, born to set the world free.
This tiny one—like a shoot, a seed- came and grew among us and taught and lived LOVE in the middle of humanity’s messy, unknown, conflicted, lovely, unscripted hearts- to show us that we could do the same.
Merry Christmas!
So take a moment and receive this gift, open your heart to the seeds of LOVE growing there, and see how it intertwines with the God-born baby among us whose LOVE and LIFE shall be for us “a sign,” said the angels. It is a sign for all people that God’s love has been repositioned, and we are central to its fulfillment.
Transformative love lives in each of us, and it is holy and sacred, capable of changing the world. But, just like this tiny babe, we, too, are vulnerable, and the gift is fragile. The choice is ours to let our story celebrate all that LOVE can bring. Like Mary, we are invited to choose an honest path forward and not look back. Like Joseph, we can choose to enact LOVE even when we are not center stage, even when our truth threatens to wreck everything. Like the prophets before them, we can choose LOVE by shining a light on the messy, absurd, radical, and hoped-for reality that Jesus’s life will be for all people.
The true miracle of Christmas, the HOPE and Peace and Joy and LOVE for a world dying without it depends on our opening and receiving the gift and believing that we, too, are part of the most extraordinary story ever told.
Merry Christmas, the wait is over; LOVE is here.
Thanks be to God.