when divinity takes on flesh

the incarnation

 

Today the discipleship sermon is about the "Incarnation," the Christmas story, God becoming human - flesh and blood. 

Today is about that story of the angel coming to Joseph and Mary, the Shepherds, the full inn and the manger, all of it.

This story is incredible, full of miracles, and it is also familiar.

Perhaps this story is a little too familiar...

One of the tells that this story has become tragically familiar is by noticing what does and does not capture our attention.

It is interesting that when reflecting on this story of the Incarnation, some people will say that detail of a virgin giving birth is just too much to swallow, too hard to believe.

The first time I heard someone actually say that, I nearly swallowed my gum!

You mean to tell me, I thought, that in a story where angels speak to humans, God's army sings hymns of peace to shepherds in the fields; in that story the detail that is just too much for you is a virgin birth?

The virgin birth?

Really?

So for those who insist on getting caught up on the detail of the virgin birth, I have to politely move on, because they are clearly not listening to the story...

And truthfully the same goes for those who get caught up on the other details, too.

To get stuck on Mary's virginity, the angels or shepherds is to miss the point altogether.

With all due respect, what I would like to suggest is that this story of the Incarnation invites us to believe much more unbelievable things than a virgin giving birth; for instance that the Incarnations happened at all, that it happens...

 

Here's a story:

One time when I was taking a cab the driver asked me what I do...

Now normally when I am asked that question in such a confined space,

well - I lie ;-)

I guess I wasn't on my game that day, though.

I said I was a pastor, and as it turned out the cab-driver was Muslim.

When he found out I was a pastor he said, 'you Christians say Jesus is God.'

To which I replied, 'yes.'

'Don't you know how offensive it is to say things like that,' he asked. 'We Muslims love Jesus, the Quran says Jesus is a great prophet,' he went on.

I said, "yes, we Christians think that too, and much more."

The cab-driver went on, "I really want to talk with you more about this."

And I replied, "aren't we about there yet???"

All the while, thinking to myself, God is punishing me for antagonizing the corner preacher yelling at everyone, I'll never do that again!

Even as I was getting out of the cab, the driver kept handing me pamphlets, wanting to talk more and so on.

Now I only tell that story, not to talk about differences, but demonstrate how the story of the Incarnation, just that story, that God becomes a human, flesh and blood, how hard that is to believe.

Forget about being born of a virgin or the angels, the simple claim of this story that God, GOD(!), becomes a human - now that is incredible, now that is hard to believe...

 

That claim has always been hard to believe, too.

The ancients, they looked at Jesus and said this one is obviously God, but how could Jesus actually be a human.

Today, we've flipped that same issue on its head; we will say things like, sure Jesus was a good man, someone tuned into God, but not God.

This story of the incarnation is so hard believe at all.

It is hard to believe, to trust that God, GOD(!), became a human.

 

 

We like to think of God as the pure and noblest idea; not a baby being born next to animal poop.

We like to think about God way out there, floating around, doing whatever heavenly bubbles do; not showing up here, showing up in flesh and blood.

We like to think of God as abstract and distant; not as showing up, not showing up and saying, in essence, if you want to know what I am like, look here; if you want to know what I think, how I feel about things, look here.

That is the challenge of believing the Incarnation!

What I am doing is simply making the point that this claim of the incarnation, that God comes here, that God gets all fleshy, is really hard to believe.

We can see how hard the Incarnation is to believe by all the ways we've concocted to try to evade the scandal of God getting born. One of the ways we try to get away from the incarnation is we try to, as we've mentioned, argue about the details of the story, the virgin birth and so on.

 

And truthfully, I prefer that strategy to the one most of us employ to keep that God who always shows up from getting too close; we consign the Incarnation to the past, we stick it in our Bibles and stick our Bibles on our shelves, we put that history behind the stone, comfortably distant from where we are today...

 

We say, sure maybe, maybe(!), that happened then, but that was then and this is now. We try to severe the present from God's story, from the Incarnation, just to try to avoid how hard the Incarnation is to believe.

That's the tragedy, arguing about the virgin birth or sticking the Incarnation in the past, these are all subtle ways to get out of believing that hard thing, that God is born, that God even shows up at all, period.

And the results of our unfaith are tragic.

Here's the thing, though, God won't leave us to our doubt.

God is, literally dying, dying to show up!

Jesus bursts from the past, out of our Bibles, from behind the stone!

Here is the real scandal, the real hard thing to believe about the Incarnation, it didn't just happen…

The. Incarnation. Still. Happens...

The real reason, I am convinced, that we try to keep the Incarnation in the past, on the shelf, behind the stone is to keep that God from getting too close, from showing up here and now, from being born for us, in us....

Finally, to those folks who say the virgin birth is just too much to swallow, I want to say what about when we profess that we believe in the holy catholic church?!?!

The holy catholic church, now that is hard to believe!

See, we believe in much more challenging things than the virgin birth, than the one Incarnation...

I have a friend, and you all probably do too, who says they don't go to church because churches are full of hypocrites and phonies.

When I heard that I said, in love; 'you fool'

Hypocrisy, why that's the least of it!

I am simply making the point that the incarnation is not some thing that happened once and is over now, the Incarnation is what God has always been up to, what God has always been about.

The Incarnation is what God does.

The challenge of believing the incarnation is NOT just about Jesus, it is also about the church:
 the incarnation is ourselves, it is about here and now. 

The hard thing to believe about the Incarnation is that just as God choose a creature that would inevitably die to proclaim life-everlasting, God also chooses broken people like you and me as how God shows up, shows up here and now, today.

That is the hard thing to believe about the Incarnation, not just that it happened in the first place, but that the Incarnation happens at all.

We can see how hard the Incarnation is to believe because all too often we go about our days expecting the future to be like the past, forgetting that when God was born in that manger the angels didn't just announce a birth, they announced that the past, history itself, changed.

We can see how hard the Incarnation is to believe because all too often we go about our days expecting the future to be like the past, forgetting that when God gets incarnated into our present everything changes.

Here's the thing about those folks who say they don't want to go to church because churches are full of phonies, they are on to something...

Foolish or idealistic as they are, these folks who are sick and tired of the church being fake, often understand our story, the incarnation better than we do!

Everyone longs for something to believe.

So for those who know a thing or two about the story of the Incarnation and the way the church all too often operates, they understand that the church is supposed to be God's presence today, here and now; and those folks are protesting to get us to stay true to our ideals, our story.

 

I am convinced that unbelieving world is unbelieving, not because the world is skeptical but because the world is longing for the church, for us, to claim this story of the Incarnation.

The world is longing for us to be God's presence.

The world is longing for us to give them something to believe.

This is a high calling, I know.

It is also a calling, though, that God apparently trusts us with.

 

Honestly I don't really think we're that different from those folks who are tired of church being business as usual, either; we have the same longing as those folks...

I am convinced that if the church loses a generation, it won't be because we've failed to entertain our youth.

These younger members will walk away from the church because they will have noticed that we talk a lot about that God who becomes flesh and blood; but then we go on our way acting as if God stays away from us as a heavenly bubble that doesn't make a difference at all, ever...

Here is the tragedy, once a week we get up, stop whatever we're doing and we come to church, we gather here...

Why, why do we do that, come here, week in and week out?

We gather here because God has broken into our lives, has shown up at one point or another.

We gather here because we're overcome with awe, with gratitude that God has shown up.

We gather here because we're waiting, hoping for that God to show up again.

See, we gather here because that incredible miracle of the Incarnation has touched our lives.

Those other stories we've covered in the discipleship series have been about moments in God's story that can give us courage for the day, help us make sense of our present situation...

This story though, the incarnation, is about a moment that is a paradigm for how God works, what God does.

 

Finally, this story about the Incarnation is about the promise that God showed up and that God keeps showing up, and how that changes everything, then as well as today.

The Incarnation declares that God is here.

The Incarnation insists that God chooses us.

The Incarnation takes folks like us, and makes us into the witness we long for, the world longs for.

The Incarnation sends us into an uncertain future proclaiming "Emanuel," proclaiming God is with us, God is here.

Amen