Read: Isaiah 9: 2-7 and Luke 2: 1-14
The wait is over. Tonight is the night when all our preparations have been made (or abandoned) and we settle into a mystery. We follow a star to Bethlehem and join those who are gathering around a manger. Tonight is the night when even the cynics among us take a break and we all suspend disbelief. We believe, if only for this night, that God is born among us and everything is possible. Tonight is the night when, with all our singing, we wish Jesus a happy birthday.
Everything is in place. We know the carols; we know the readings; we know the story of Mary and Joseph, of shepherds and angels. We can tell it by heart. But the story is more than just what happened on one night. God has loved humankind from even before creation, when we were only a thought in God’s mind. But the relationship has always been a rocky one. In the beginning God figured paradise would be enough for us. God gave us everything and hoped for the best, but we wanted more than everything. God made a covenant with us; gave us laws; offered to us kings and prophets and teachers; and still we were faithless. Every time the distance between us has threatened to end the special relationship, it is God who has stepped across the breach, taking on more and more of the burden, until, with the birth of a baby, God accepted it all.
That is the amazing mystery of this night. God is so in love with us that God came to be one of us. Our God is a shameless lover, willing to become a helpless thing in diapers if it will help us love our God and one another in the way that God loves us. It is an amazing gift.
John Shea tells the story of five-year-old Sharon who wound up her own version of the Christmas story by asking her listeners this question: “Then the baby was borned, and do you know who he was?” She paused and then whispered her answer, “The baby was God.” Then she leaped into the air, twirled around, and dove into the couch, where she covered her head with pillows. That is, I think, an appropriate response to this amazing story.
Tonight, the mystery becomes exceedingly clear that there is nothing more we must do, or be, or have, to be loved by God. We are already loved beyond our wildest imagining.
“For unto us a child is born. God with us – Emmanuel. Glory to God in the highest.” Amen.
Rev. Mark Conner
Western District Superintendent
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