Christmas Eve Meditation 2023, Colchester Federated Church (John 1:1-14)

On Christmas Eve we hear some of the most moving stories in our faith tradition.  We hear about a couple who had to embark upon a long journey.  We hear about a baby born and laid in a manger because there was no room for that family in the Bethlehem inn.  We encounter shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  We are dazzled by the multitude of the heavenly host appearing to those shepherds in the darkness of the night sky, singing their Glorias.  We journey with the magi following the light of a star to pay homage and bring gifts to the precious child.  We contemplate sweeping poetry: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . The life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”[1]

Sometimes, we may find ourselves sitting still in the peace and quiet of a darkened church sanctuary on Christmas Eve asking ourselves what does this all really mean and why does it matter?  These sacred stories are thousands of years old after all.  Stories passed down from generation to generation.  Our world is not exactly the same as it was when Jesus the Christ was born.  So what do these stories have to say to us now?

On Christmas Eve, Christians contemplate the idea that Jesus was and is Emmanuel, God-with-us.  In our sacred stories and sacred songs (Lessons & Carols), we encounter over and again the theological concept of the incarnation.  That somehow God took on human form in the birth of Jesus.  The incarnation is a unique belief within Christianity in comparison to other World Religions.  This idea that God came to dwell with us and among us on earth at a specific time and place and as a specific person—Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus born of Mary (whose birth we celebrate this night) and lovingly raised to adulthood by Mary and Joseph.  We can remind ourselves that this belief is rather extraordinary!  This Christian claim that God entered our world in the most vulnerable form of a human baby.  In Jesus, God is born among us and laid in that manger as a helpless infant.  Like all infants, Jesus was dependent on his caregivers for food and clothing, for shelter and safety and comfort.  Jesus was dependent on his caregivers for life in the beginning. 

So what does this Christian belief say about God?

There’s a wonderful book of poems by Cynthia Rylant with illustrations by Marla Frazee called God got a dog.  Dear friends gave me God got a dog as a Christmas gift years ago, so perhaps that’s why the poems and Christmas are especially linked in my mind.  Anyway, Cynthia Rylant presents God in all sorts of scenarios—God woke up, God went to beauty school, God got in a boat, God made spaghetti, God went to the doctor, God got arrested, God took a bath, God went skating, God caught a cold, God wrote a book, God got cable, God found God, God got a desk job, God wrote a fan letter, God went to India, and God got a dog.  God is depicted in all sorts of physical manifestations. 

My favorite poem in the book might be “God went to beauty school.”  There’s this great line that God went to beauty school “to learn how to give a good perm and ended up just crazy about nails so He opened up His own shop.  ‘Nails by Jim’ He called it.  He was afraid to call it Nails by God.  He was sure people would think he was being disrespectful and using His own name in vain and nobody would tip.”[2] 

The situations in God got a dog (some of them funny and some quite poignant) can’t help but make us think about the incarnation.  Because in the Christian tradition we can hold both the humanity and divinity of Jesus.  We have all sorts of ways of understanding this theological claim.  Though it doesn’t make sense to deny that God had human experiences if we believe Jesus was God-with-us. 

So maybe Jesus didn’t go skating, get cable, or make spaghetti (that we know of anyway).  But Jesus walked and talked and slept and ate.  Jesus had a group of friends and a family.  Jesus was sometimes happy, and sometimes angry.  Jesus cried when he was sad—Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died.  Jesus was born among us in Bethlehem and lived a fully human life.  And that deeply matters.  We can be in awe and wonder at the beginning of Jesus’ fully human life.

Franciscan priest and ecumenical teacher Richard Rohr wrote about the incarnation in one of his Daily Meditations during Advent.  Richard Rohr shared that, “Christmas became the great celebratory feast of Christians because it basically says that it’s good to be human, it’s good to be on this Earth, it’s good to have a body, it’s good to have emotions. We don’t need to be ashamed of any of it! God loves matter and physicality.”[3]  God loves matter and physicality so much that God chose to take on the mantle of our humanity. 

Or as our United Church of Christ Statement of Faith proclaims, “In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Savior, you [God] have come to us and shared our common lot, conquering sin and death and reconciling the world to yourself.”[4]  God coming to us and sharing our common lot is what we can truly celebrate on Christmas Eve.  It is indeed good to have a body and to have emotions.  It is good to be human!  Because in Jesus, God shared our common lot and God obviously loves physicality.

In the end, Christmas helps us better understand God and how God may view the world.  God shared our common lot because of the depth of God’s love for humanity.  Christmas helps us better understand how we are to treat one another as neighbors.  Because it ends up that all of us have the divine spark within.  “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”[5]  The light not just of some people.  All people are beloved children of God.  Christmas helps us to remember the beauty of our own humanity.  Merry Christmas, and thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] John 1:1, 4-5, NRSV.
[2] Cynthia Rylant, “God went to beauty school,” in God got a dog by Cynthia Rylant and Marla Frazee.
[3] Richard Rohr, “Celebrating Incarnation,” Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation, Week Fifty-One: Incarnation, December 17, 2023.
[4] United Church of Christ Statement of Faith in the form of a doxology, https://www.ucc.org/what-we-believe/worship/statement-of-faith/#doxological-version
[5] John 1:3-4, NRSV.

Photo by Rev. Lauren L. Ostrout of Colchester Federated Church & the Colchester Town Green in Colchester, Connecticut.