A couple years ago when my cousin’s son was born, my brother and I went to visit them in the hospital. When we got in their room, Shane was fussing a bit and the way the bassinet was positioned, my cousin couldn’t reach him. So she asked me if I would pick him up for her. And of course, as a twelve-hour-old infant, that change of scenery distracted him enough for him to immediately calm down. So I held him a bit, marveling at this tiny fragile human.
Which was great, except I hadn’t taken my coat off yet and it was pretty warm in the room. And sometimes when I get too warm, I can get a little light-headed. So, not wanting to pass out while holding a twelve-hour old infant, I asked my brother if he wanted to take a turn and hold the baby. David had been leaning forward looking at Shane, but immediately when I said this he put his hands up as if to block me, took several steps back, leaned back, and then sort of stretched his neck forward and said, “no thanks, I’m good. I can see him just fine from here.”
Tonight is the night that we celebrate the birth of our infant savior, and I don’t know about all of you, but after the last year, I don’t know if I feel like I’m ready to hold a baby tonight. It has been a difficult year of mixed messages and tangled thoughts. Concepts I’d long considered universal suddenly seem not only to be up for discussion, but to be legitimate grounds for disagreement. I find myself watching my words more and more, but not in ways that feel helpful or constructive. And when I have spoken, I can look back at a string of miscommunications and mixed messages, of things I should have said and didn’t, or did say and ought not to have. Times my feelings have been hurt, and when I have, intentionally or unintentionally, hurt others.
I’ve been talking on a personal scale, but this feels like a problem on a global scale, and part of my anguish with this year is a sense of powerlessness in the face of it. This does not seem like a place or a time where I feel confident welcoming something so tiny and frail as an infant.
I heard an interview last year, where a pastor in Texas talked about how he didn’t want “some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek.” In fairness, he was talking about political leaders, but I found myself both cringing from and relating to his words. Cringing, because for those of you who know me, it’s fairly obvious that this pastor and I have basically opposite theological and political opinions. But relating to, because I understood his desire to have someone just show up on the scene and fix things. Like the psalmist, I have found myself crying out to God this year, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come.” Come and fix this broken world, come and mend us broken people, come and solve all the hurt and the pain and the anger and bring us into your kingdom of peace. I want God to show up in this world and set things right. Make the bad people stop being bad, keep the oppressed people from being hurt, and just generally get this straight. The problem with this is as simple as recognizing that the pastor from Texas and I probably have very different ideas of what making things right might look like. So whose version of right would the meanest, toughest leader come to bring? And is it possible that both of our views of God’s kingdom have places where we’re right, and places where we’re not. The problem with might-based solutions is that they don’t have space for ambiguity. Might-based solutions by nature establish winners and losers, heroes and villains. If I am right, then you, by virtue of your disagreement, have to be wrong. But in the actual world we live in, it is rarely, I would say even never that clear. In our actual lives, there are no true heroes and villains. The greatest hero has some selfish edge, the worst villain has at some point been a victim. The world is not good and evil, it is varying shades of grey, and the might that we long for does not have space for such nuance to grow.
But tonight we celebrate that God did not come in might, God came in the way that is the only way for the best parts of our broken selves to thrive. God came in weakness and vulnerability and love. Tonight we celebrate that when the Creator of the Universe slipped into skin to enter into relationship with us, the skin God slipped into was the paper-thin almost translucent skin of a tiny baby. Not as an independent and powerful ruler did God come, but in the most dependent form of a refugee baby. God came in this way because might may bring submission, but only love can bring conversion. Only by creating a space of unconditional grace can we put aside our defenses and truly flourish.
It seems so counter-intuitive for God to have come in this way, but if we look back in our sacred scriptures, we can see that in weakness and vulnerability is always the way that God comes and transforms. God came to Abraham in travelers in need of shelter. God showed to Moses the cries of God’s people. Isaiah spoke of peace confirmed by the birth of a child who would be king. And it is in love and grace and ordinary miracles that God still comes to us today. In the waters of baptism, in the bread broken and wine poured of communion, our creative, redeeming, loving and infinite God slips again into tangible, finite form and comes to us today. Even as we look around a hurting world and long for God to come, we can take hope in the promise that God has already come, and is still here. In this place, in our lives, in this gathered community, we experience the promise of God made flesh among us. So tonight, when you gather around the altar, when you extend your hands to take the bread, to drink the wine, may you hear the soft voice of God whispering to you, “here I am, take your turn, hold the baby.” Amen.
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