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As I prepared to speak to you, I found myself thinking back on my first occasion to preach Christmas. I was in my first year of seminary in Virginia, with my first semester nearly finished, when I received offers to preach while visiting family in Georgia…at a new church start in Thomaston on Christmas Eve and at Grace-Calvary in Clarksville on the First Sunday after Christmas. It was intimidating to prepare the two sermons. The evening I arrived in Thomaston, the priest asked, “So what new insight will you share with us this evening from your seminary studies?”
“All of my best material is 2,000 years old,” I told him. “I am quite sure I have nothing new to say.”
“Thanks be to God!” he replied. “I was nervous about asking a seminarian to preach.”
The story is familiar and was probably best told by Linus in the old Charlie Brown Christmas special. Yet, if we let it get too familiar, we lose how world-changing it is to talk about God becoming human.
There is a different turn on Jesus’ birth that has found its way into my preaching. This way of looking at the Nativity can be difficult to share, because so many of us carry hurts related to birth and to parents, but I hope you will hang with me, as this word, Nativity, is also a healing word for all of us.
Victoria and I know first hand, the grief of losing a baby that did not make it all the way to birth. And, I have prayed faithfully with women on the difficult journey of yearning to get pregnant. Sometimes that fervent prayer appears to have resulted in the birth of a child that seems all the more miraculous and sometimes, that is never to be. Then beyond this, we know, painfully well, that not every child is born into a loving family.
The Nativity is a story of birth that holds out the hope of healing and wholeness for everyone, especially those of us who know the pain of miscarriages and those who remain childless while longing for a baby as well as those whose parents were abusive or absent. The hope of that healing comes from God with us, a Savior who fully understands this grief and all the suffering of this life.
So with this build up, it sounds like I am ready to offer some great insight. Instead, I offer something small. A moment in time.
I used to think that the most miraculous of moments was that of a mother and father looking into the eyes of their child for the first time.
I recall that moment with our daughter, Griffin.
Pure magic.
I discovered this year an even more world changing and life-giving moment of recognition.
This moment comes when a baby sees, truly sees and knows the people who nurture and care for them as people separate from all the other people who have ever been or ever will be.
This is my person. They care for me. I can count on them.
The baby learns to love from the love she sees, the love he feels.
In this I see Jesus’ birth with new eyes. For when the Word, who is Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us, the second person of the Trinity experienced this moment, finding himself in the eyes of his mother, Mary, and then seeing the love shining on Joseph’s face.
The love that is God, experienced this magical moment of recognition of perfect love looking on him.
The God who is love did not stand back like a disinterested clockmaker watching from afar, or as a righteous judge ready to condemn. The God who is love needed nothing, and yet created us out of love for love. Then the second person of the Trinity chose to enter into creation and became the neediest being of all, a baby, dependent on parents for everything. In this baby is love, for love is always vulnerable.
While Jesus was fully divine, in the Incarnation, in becoming human, Jesus was also fully human. Mary and Joseph were chosen to provide what every infant needs, eyes of love for the baby to find themselves within.
Each of us is aided by finding ourselves mirrored in the love of someone who sees us fully and loves us completely. It need not be a parent and it does not have to occur when we are an infant. When we experience that love, we experience what the love God has for us is like. For some that is a grandparent or teacher or some other person who comes to love you not for what you can do for them, but for your very existence. While I was raised by loving parents, I also saw this healthy mirroring in others, like my leaders in Boy Scouts, and so have felt what it is like to provide this same type of unconditional love for people who missed this love from their parents.
Everyone needs to experience the sure and certain knowledge that while they are not perfect, they are enough for someone, and so see how they are also enough for the King of Creation. The cost of not knowing this truth is incalculably high.
We find so much suffering unleashed as hurting people wound other people in a vicious circle, until shame and fear begin to guide someone’s responses to the people around them.
We see all of the tragedies of this world as turning from God, especially in a year where the land of our Savior’s birth has been torn apart by terrorism and war.
In the fallen reality that is human existence, the Good News is that God knows fully, pain and grief. Jesus came to know his parents’ love as they were on the run from King Herod’s rage, seeing Jesus as a threat to his kingdom.
Jesus’ first years were spent as a refugee in Egypt. He grew to adulthood in a country oppressed by an empire extracting wealth from far flung lands.
Jesus’ life revealed what the love of God looks like in the face of a Savior who could see, truly see, those who others looked past. He taught us to love our neighbors and showed us that everyone is a neighbor, no one is meant to be seen as Other. Jesus looked with eyes of compassion on those who were lost and left out or marginalized, and in so doing, transformed their lives.
Christmas is the heart of the Christian faith, for human history was forever changed by a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, and who himself, experienced love in the eyes of his mother, Mary.
As we move into the joyous celebration of the God who is love entering into creation, may the Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his face to you and give you peace. Amen.
The Rt. Rev. Frank S. Logue
Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Georgia
Christmas 2023
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