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“Wrapped in Bands of Cloth and Laid in a Manger,” Rev. Jeff Wright, 12/21/14

Wrapped in Bands of Cloth and Laid in a Manger

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church

(Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, Colorado

December 21, 2014

 Texts: Luke 2:1-7    Philippians 2:5-11

After her delivery, Mary wrapped God’s naked body against the cold and nursed the Creator of the Universe.  This is the meaning of Christmas.  Remove the natal star and the wise men traveling with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  Take away the shepherds abiding over their flocks and the angel appearing in glory.  Just these few moments, distance yourself from St. Nicholas, brightly decorated trees, gifts piled beneath them and the carols playing over the store’s sound system.  Go straight to the heart of the story that has changed history, that is changing us: chapter two, verse seven in Luke’s account.  Mary gave birth and wrapped the vulnerable flesh of God in bands of cloth.  Emmanuel, meaning God is with us.

Emmanuel, meaning God has chosen flesh.  Emmanuel, meaning God chooses life-as-we-know-it, not life-as-we-wish-it-were, chooses to identify with our nakedness, our pain, our estrangement, the mystery and the joys of being human.

It is a great reversal.  While every major world religion – including ours – prescribes beliefs and practices that promise to put us on the road to becoming more holy, God surprises us all by becoming wholly human.  Throughout the centuries, men and women have searched for a way through to God.  It turns out that God has found a way through to us.

Really?  What kind of God would expose himself so vulnerably to his creation?  It’s one thing for us to suffer life’s uncertainties; one thing for the creature to be exposed.  To the elements: desert heat, winter cold, a flood’s raging indifference to rank and wealth.  To the consequences of our own and others’ actions: a spouse’s unfaithfulness, a child’s hurtful word, the fickleness of a friend, a drunk driver’s reckless choice, the world’s turning again and again to violence as a way to settle our differences.  It’s still another, even more terrifying thing for the creature to be exposed to its Creator.

But to proclaim that the Great God Above and Beyond All has chosen to expose himself to his creation!  There’s a fifty cent word for it.  Incarnation.  Incarnation means the holy inhabiting the human.  The divine robing itself in flesh and blood.  Mary, when she kissed her baby, having kissed the face of God.  Paul wrote a carol about it, a song about the incarnation.  We read it together earlier.  In his letter to the Christians in Philippi, Paul wrote that the One in whose image we’re created chose to be manifested among us in our image, vulnerable to the elements, to us.  Paul didn’t pretend to understand it.  That’s why he wrote a song about it.  We paint pictures and create other works of art, we write songs and poems, we tell stories and stage Christmas plays – from A Christmas Carol featuring Ebenezer Scrooge to this morning’s pageant featuring our children – to describe the things we can’t explain, to get at truths about life that go beyond where words alone can go.

Maybe it’s our children’s pageant that most accurately portrays the Christmas event.  The God who so majestically ordered the universe chose to enter a world of chaos, where the wise men miss their cues and the angel, because of her fear, forgets her line, “Fear not.”  A sheep picks her nose while a shepherd, neglecting his flock, waves to his parents in the congregation.  These precious deviations from the script don’t distract from the wonder and beauty and mystery of Christmas.  They illustrate it.

Years ago, Tom and Patsy Nix’s granddaughter, Alicia, played the part of Mary in our Christmas pageant.  After, Alicia came running into the kitchen, embarrassed, almost in tears.  “Did you see?  I dropped the baby.”  “You what?”  “I dropped the baby.”  “Not the baby?”  “Yes,” she said, “Baby Jesus.”  God’s great risk: putting his life in our hands.   God’s great hope: that we put our lives in his.

You know what this means?  If God were at risk, so now are we.  It means that while we long for fulfilling spiritual experiences – or for some of us, deliberately set out to avoid them – God slips up on us unaware to reveal the divine in everyday experiences.  We have to watch out for God.  Not out there at the end.  Here and now.  In unexpected places.  Off-the-beaten-path-in-Bethlehem, back-behind-the-inn-manger kind of places.

In the sound of a familiar carol… we’ve heard it a thousand times, but this time we’re touched and moved.  This is Emmanuel.  In the wonder of a drab and wintered world snow-painted white and pure again before the neighbor leaves her footprints.  Or maybe it’s the solitary footprints that awaken us.  In the serving of a meal to the homeless bunking in Room 1, or the passing of the bread from one loved one to another at Thursday’s Christmas dinner: “This is my body, given for you.”  In the sacrifice of a soldier laying down one’s life for another or a missionary faithful to her calling to the end: “This is my blood, poured out for you.”  For the forgiveness of sins.  For the salvation of the world.

You’ve heard me say that this is not a religious thing.  We’ve made a religion of it.  Thanks, God.  We had to – to preserve the story, to know what to watch for, to prepare ourselves and our children, and to mobilize to alert the world to the Gospel that God has chosen flesh, that there’s a new way to do life.  That in the midst of whatever life brings at its worst as well as its best God is in it with us to bring something more, something deeper, something better.  But it’s not first of all a religious thing.  It’s bigger than religion.  It’s life.  God’s wonder and power and grace are revealed a hundred thousand times a day in ordinary people and places.  Emmanuel every time a cup of water is extended to a frightened immigrant, a distanced relative, an estranged coworker.  God with us every time a relationship is restored through an “I’m sorry” or a second chance is offered in a “You’re forgiven” or someone says “I love you” and means it.

Sometimes with even wider effect.  Most won’t see the fingerprints of God on the emerging reversal of our country’s relationship with Cuba.  But deciding to talk and learning to trust again: it’s a God’s thing.  It’s a part of the healing of the nations.  Will it be bumpy?  Sure.  Will there be missteps along the way.  Of course.  But it has the potential to bring us closer to the day when humankind will turn our swords into plowshares and celebrate as one this great reversal God is effecting.

In the baby born to Joseph and Mary, God showed up on our planet to speak for himself.  Now if that put God at risk – it did; we crucified him – it puts us at risk as well, those of us who commit ourselves to following Emmanuel.  To what end?  Listen, for this is a truth revealed in the Christmas story.  The Holy One, born in Bethlehem, wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger, became human in order to make us holy.

My prayer for you this Christmas: May the Holy Spirit come upon you as the Spirit came upon Mary, may the power of the Most High overshadow you, that the love and strength and purpose of God – that Jesus himself – may be born anew through you.

— Jeff Wright