God Among

The Rev. Jennifer Adams- Christmas Eve 2012

The mountains and valleys,

the darkness and light,

the wilderness, the cities,

the oceans and the land.

This is the world into which God was born.

The young and the old.

The black and the white.

The Christian.  The Muslim. The Atheist.  The Jew.

This is the world into which God was born.

The hunger and abundance.

The music and silence.

The children.

The future.

The past. The now.

This is the world into which God was born.

The census.  The shepherds.

The inn with no room.

This is the world into which God was born.

The inexplicable acts of violence.

The unexpected acts of love.

The unjust systems and justifiable rebellions.

The divisions. The resistance. The freedoms.

This is the world into which God was born.

Your family and mine.  Us and them.

Schools. Politics. Nations.

Collective memory.

Particular stories.

Meals. Playgrounds. Worksites. Dreams.

This is the world into which God was born.

Into hurt.

Into hope.

Into emptiness and excess.

Into Mary’s arms and people’s lives.

This is the world into which God was born.

And God came into the world because we needed God here  –  we needed God’s presence in the midst of all of it.   I actually think it’s that simple; that first Christmas happened because we needed God present among –  to forgive, to invite, to heal, and to redeem.  We needed God here and so heard our cries and God came to be among us as us.

We heard it proclaimed as gospel just a few minutes ago: “While they were in Bethlehem, Mary gavw birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger.”

He came among us to live as us.

With eyes to see, hands to touch

and a heart to feel the complicated mess that we are.

And to experience the incredible, beautiful miracle that we are.

God came among us to witness and to challenge

the incomprehensible disparities among us

and to inspire the reconciliations possible between us.

God came among us

to heal those who were broken, to raise up the broken hearted.

To turn things upside down and to show us a new way.

A new way in which the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, and all those who mourn would be blessed.

God came to live among us because apparently in the mind of the divine

that was the best way to show us how to love one another,

and to forever bind us with an eternity that promises to love us all.

And so tonight is about remembering that and it’s about beginning again.

Beginning again to see the world as the place into which God has come and to see ourselves as forgiven, loved and free.  It’s a night to begin again to engage the healing, the raising up, the turning upside down and the blessing that was and is God’s dream for us all.

Tonight we celebrate Christ’s birth into this blessed, broken, beautiful world.  May we do love in his name here.  May we be peace as his Body here.

May Christ be born among us as we begin again this holy night.

Amen.