Just a little bit of room

Sermon for Christmas (December 25, 2022)

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Christmas Day, Selection I

Preached at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. A video of our whole 10 am Christmas Day service is available here.

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Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2:2-7

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard: In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

Good morning and Merry Christmas to all of you. Merry Christmas!

This story is so familiar. You may have heard it many times in church or maybe on the Charlie Brown Christmas special. And even though it's something we've heard many times before, there's a new beauty to it every time we hear it.

This is the story of how God came into the world to live among us, to live as one of us. And it's worth noting that God chose to come into the world in a very particular time and place and way—and not in some other way.

If you think about it, God had infinite choice about how to be born, where to be born, to whom to be born. So it's worth paying attention to the choices that God did make in being born as a human being. Now, if it were me making a choice, I might choose to be born, for instance, to parents who were really well-prepared to receive me. I might choose to be born into a community that had plenty of everything and plenty of room for a new child. I might choose to be born to a people, to a nation that were free and self-determining. When God chose to be born, God came to a nation that was living under oppression. To parents who were part of that nation, who in the final stages of pregnancy had to leave their homes and travel so that they could be taxed. God came to parents who were not prepared in any way. They hadn't even consummated their marriage.

Maybe not Mary and Joseph’s dream for their baby’s bedroom!

God chose to be born to parents who had not even a bed to lay God in after they received God. And so we're told that God came into the world in a city so crowded with people who had to be taxed, that God was born in probably what was the ground floor of somebody's residence, where the animals would've been brought in for the night. There was no special bed, no special place, but there was a little bit of room in a feeding trough for the animals, and that was where they laid this new child.

God had so many choices about how to be fully human, and God chose to be born on the margin, where there was only just a little bit of space for God.

And God chose to be born, not where everything was perfectly ready, but where everything was imperfect, noisy, chaotic. I don't know if this is true for any of you, but I feel that as we have prepared for this Christmas season, I've spoken to so many people who have felt like this month has been more chaotic, more filled with pressure than years before. I don't know if it's because we're in a new phase of the pandemic, where we have more options than we've had the last couple of years, but we're out of practice with our own traditions. I don't know if it's because we're more weary. And as we deal with that chaos and noise and feeling the pressure so that it feels almost like there's no room... We might feel like because we're not perfectly prepared, because things aren't perfectly lined up, because we've been running around under pressure, we might feel that there isn't any room for an experience of the holy.

So it's important that God came into the world where there was chaos, even violence, certainly grief. God came into the world where there was just a little bit of room for God. And that was enough. And God came, and love made a way, where there was just enough room for love to grow and bloom and flourish and to change everything. All that was needed was a little bit of imperfect space.

And so as this Christmas season begins on this beautiful and freezing morning, I invite you to pay attention, especially in the next 12 days, not to how everything is perfectly prepared, but to look for those places in your life, in your neighborhood, where there is just enough room for the love of God to be born. And where there's just enough love and just enough Yes, for that love to grow and be nurtured. Look at Christmas for these new beginnings, not where everything is perfect, but where there's just enough for love.

Amen.