The Most Important Meeting Place
Sermon given by the Rev. Christine Gowdy-Jaehnig on Dec. 24, 2020
Texts for Christmas I : All Years
Isaiah 9: 2-7 * Pslam 96 * Titus 2: 11-14 * Luke 2: 1-20
It is wonderful to be here with you on this much anticipated evening. I will not speak long since it is so cold, but I invite you to ponder a few things this Christmas season:
I invite you to think about the unfathomable and enormous. I walked to edge of Phelp’s Cemetery one evening this week to observe Jupiter and Saturn’s historic conjunction. I think I saw them, with the help of binoculars. The distances in space are so great that it is easier for me to think about them in terms of temporal rather than spacial distances. Saturn is 3 years and 2 months distance from us at the speed of the Cassini space craft. The nearest star after our sun is 75,000 years away at that same speed; and the universe only enlarges from there! Now, the God who conceived, created and powers this universe also created us and loved us before we were conceived. What kind of a love is this?! What words are there to describe it?!
Next, I invite you to think about Mary and Joseph. It is easy to imagine them as “plaster saints” to whom obedience and righteousness came effortlessly, but we need to affirm their full humanity; they were two people like us, just bound to a different place, time and culture. For us so many years later, the power of the Christmas story lies in Mary and Joseph’s very ordinary humanity. When Mary answered the angel, saying “Yes,” she risked death by stoning, and if she lived, she risked being shunned and shamed by her community. Joseph struggled to make a difficult decision, ultimately defying the law and social expectations to espouse Mary. He saved her life and that of her unborn child, but subjected himself to ridicule. They were people like us who got angry and hurt, who worried and hoped; yet, when faced with this joyous and terrifying mystery, they chose to open their hearts and lives to God.
Jesus, that baby whose birth we remember and celebrate and give thanks for tonight, is the one in whom the infinite and cosmic meet the finite and domestic; the one who brings the vastness and openness of eternity into the chaotic messiness of this moment; the one through whom the blazing light of steadfast love shines in the ordinary intimacy of the family. Yes, that little one, birthed through hard work and pain, who is swaddled and sleeps in an animal feed trough. The hope of all nations and peoples for peace, healing and justice is one helpless, squalling, inconvenient, beautiful baby.