soulwerker

Last August, while perusing the headlines of the Washington Post online, I followed a link to an interview with a fairly prominent Episcopal clergy person. The interview was, more or less, one of those “get-to-know-you” human interest stories that populate the papers during the slow news cycle of late summers in DC. The reporter asked the clergy person about the usual sorts of things. There were questions about gun violence, gay marriage and the dearth of people under the age of 50 in most mainline congregations these days. And then, unprovoked by the reporter, and without any sense of irony, the clergy person referred to himself as a “non-theistic Christian.” Just let that one sink in for a minute.

At first, I thought it was a misquote. Maybe I had missed the context for the stunning statement. I backed up a couple of paragraphs and re-read the passage again. And then a third time. Then I sat at our kitchen table staring at the screen with a furrowed brow while scratching my head in confusion. A non-theistic Christian? That makes about as much sense as a Pentecostal Buddhist.

Upon further reflection, though, I shouldn’t have been so flummoxed. The idea that “Jesus was a good, moral teacher who preached a message of peace and love, undergirded by a concern for the poor and outcast, but whose message has been co-opted by organized religion for the purpose of exerting power and control over the ignorant masses” has been around for at least two hundred fifty years or so. Plenty of people have claimed Jesus as a paragon of human virtue while simultaneously distancing themselves from any notion that Jesus was somehow the embodiment of God. For these folks, Jesus is an example to be emulated, but not God to be worshiped.

My guess would be that any gathering of well-educated, 21st century folks probably contains plenty of us who, if we were honest, could really get on board with the “Jesus-as-moral-teacher” message. That would make being a follower of Jesus much simpler, wouldn’t it? After all, isn’t it more important that we live Jesus’ message of love and peace than spend time arguing over metaphysics and Creeds? Besides, who has time to argue theology when there are so many social ills that need addressing?

Most of the time, I suspect that many of us (myself included) probably live our lives as non-theistic Christians. We do good work. We are kind to our neighbors. We serve our community. We contribute to charity. We raise families. We tend to aging parents. We care deeply for justice. We vote and consider ourselves good citizens. We just don’t think much about Jesus-as-God.

So when we hear the soaring prose from the first chapter of the Gospel of John this morning, we are confronted by some difficult assertions: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being…And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

The claim of Christmas is that the baby in the manger is the God of all creation.

Now let me be clear. This sort of claim isn’t something one can solve in an eight minute homily…or by a lifetime of church attendance…or with countless recitations of the historic Creeds…or through the perfection of one’s analytical abilities. Admittedly the claim of Jesus as God-in-the-flesh is a deal-breaker for many people who might otherwise find something attractive about Christianity as a way of living. I can understand why it may be tempting to downplay the “God thing” and emphasize the “doing of good works and being a good person thing.” And yet, on this Fifth Day of Christmas we are once again nose to nose with God.

The message of Christmas from an historic, Christian point of view is a difficult intellectual and philosophical pill to swallow. Anyone who tries to tell us differently is peddling a soft-serve Gospel that will not stand up under the hard realities of human experience. There is plenty of room for struggle and doubt as we wrestle with this Christmas claim. There’s even room for disbelief. Allowing for intellectual latitude and being generous towards a breadth of opinion, though, is not the same as abandoning the Faith that has been passed from generation to generation for twenty centuries.

Today we baptize Fiona into the family of God. My guess is that with the ever-quickening pace of life that is our world, those of us gathered here today to witness this event cannot even begin to imagine the possibilities, opportunities and challenges that are ahead for her and those in her generation. As I thought about this, I was sobered by the awareness that, by the time Fiona is my age, I will have long since left this world!

Today, in a splash of water and a smear of oil, we as the Church gathered will mark her as belonging to God. She will bear the title “Christian” for as long as she lives. Even if she should decide, at some point in her life, that she “no longer believes” in God, she will never, ever, by the sheer force of her will, be able to prevent God from loving her. This sacrament of Baptism will not wash off and it will never wear out.

Before we baptize Fiona, though, we will be asked to renew our own Baptismal Covenant. We will be asked what we believe and how we will live in response to those beliefs. Some days, it’s not easy to believe. Some days, in fact, it’s pretty close to impossible. But we are not asked to go it alone as Christians. We walk this walk of faith together, in community — a community that will believe on our behalf even when we’ve lost the energy or desire to believe for ourselves. The prayer we will pray after Fiona is baptized is the Church’s prayer for each and every one of us: “Give her an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”

So here we are. We are gathered around the Font and around the Table as Christians have done for millennia. We gather in the midst of our doubts and fears. We gather, bringing our belief and our disbelief with us. We gather, even though sometimes gathering here seems to make little sense in the face of so much that is wrong in our world. We gather to hear the Good News in a world often filled with bad news — this is Good News: “the Word became flesh and dwelled among us” — and his name is Jesus, Son of Mary and Son of God.

When was your last Christmas surprise? Was it when a beloved family member showed up, unannounced for the holiday? Or was it when someone gave you a gift you didn’t even know you wanted until you opened it? Or was it when you were alone, watching the lights on the tree twinkle and you had a sudden awareness of an expansive peace flooding your heart? When was your last Christmas surprise?

Most of us have heard Luke’s version of the Christmas story so many times we can almost quote it word for word — just like Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas. We look at a creche and each one of us immediately begins to engage the story from our own perspective:

Some of us enter the story from a place of imagination. Maybe we think about Mary and Joseph, alone in the dark, while Mary, a child herself, pushes a baby into a ragged world of uncertainty, hardship and pain. Maybe we imagine the smell of the cave crammed with livestock. Or maybe the moms among us remember their own labor to give birth and wonder what it must have been like for Mary to give birth to Jesus with only Joseph, her betrothed, to serve as the midwife. A few of us may think about Joseph, who will undertake the responsibility of raising a child who belongs to only God-knows-Who.

Others of us will view the story from the squinty-eyed perspective of rational analysis. We have lots of unanswered questions! Beyond the fantastical claim that Mary was a virgin, we happen to know that this story wasn’t written down until well after the events were purported to have happened. How do we really know this story is true? What if the Gospel writer simply made it up for dramatic effect? And if the writer did such a thing, how are we to trust anything else in the story? And the bit about angelic choirs serenading shepherds in the middle of the night? Yeah, sure. Happens all the time, doesn’t it?

But regardless of whether we’re faithful believers, fanciful romantics or fervent doubters, there’s one thing that we all hold in common as we engage the story. Nothing about it is a surprise for us. And maybe that’s to our detriment. The believers cannot be surprised by the glory of this birth. The romantics cannot be surprised by the grittiness of this birth. The doubters cannot be surprised by the grace of this birth.

Yet, this story isn’t about us or about angels and shepherds or even about Mary and Joseph. This story is about God. This story is about a God who refuses to astound us with special effects. This is a God who shocks us by showing up in out of the way places amongst people on the margins who struggle for their daily bread. This is a God who awes us, not with thunder claps and lightning bolts, but with the whimpers and gurgles of a newborn swaddled in cloth. This is a story about a God who is too big to fit into our expectations of grandeur and certainty, but who takes up residence within the confines of humanity’s history embodied as a helpless infant. This is a God who enters moments of grime and doubt and transforms those moments into unexpected grace.

A year ago, we gathered to celebrate Christmas in this place after anxious hours of watching and waiting following the murder of a Wauwatosa police officer just a block away from Trinity Church earlier in the day. We prayed for Jennifer and all of those whose lives have been cut short by acts of violence. We knelt after Communion and sang Silent Night — just as we’ll do again in a little while.

There in the candlelight last year, I was surprised by Christmas all over again. No, I didn’t hear a Voice from above or see any angel choirs. My questions about the tragedy of human violence toward other human beings were not answered. My disappointment at the injustices we continue to foist upon one another in the name of the free market or the good of the nation or even religion itself did not magically disappear. My raw grief from the recent loss of my father to cancer wasn’t suddenly assuaged.

No, my Christmas surprise came as I looked around this room that night. The surprise of Christmas came in the form of the familiar faces of my sisters and brothers in Christ. I saw the faces of folks who had lived life — with all of its ups and downs, its changes and chances — and still had the audacity to pray. I saw the faces of folks who had struggled with their faith and yet still had the willingness and the courage to trust. I saw the faces of folks who were far from naive, and who were still unwilling to give in to the cynicism of our age. In the glow of the candlelight, in the simple melody of an oft-sung carol, I caught a glimpse of God’s presence…embodied in God’s people.

The raw, unfiltered message of Christmas is this: God so loved this world, that God would not, could not, remain far off from it. God took on human flesh in real time in a real place with real people. This coming of God to a backwater town to first-time parents from the wrong zip code reminds us that the God we worship is the God who inhabits all the wrong places at all the wrong times so that every place and every time can be redeemed. This God who comes to all the wrong people is the God who will not forsake any one of us. This God who displays the greatest power through the greatest helplessness is the God who comes to us in our own moments of helplessness and pain with the assurance that we are never, ever alone. This God who lives in eternal relationship as Holy Trinity is the God who invites us into ever-deepening relationships — both with God and with one another.

So tonight, dear people of God, I invite you to embrace these next few, holy moments. Breathe deeply into the stillness that is right now. No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, whether you are a staunch believer, a hopeless romantic or a definitive doubter — Christmas is here for you. Allow yourself to be surprised by God in this holy season. Christmas is here and it arrived as it always does — with a baby, gift-wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger — Jesus, Son of Mary and Son of God.