Sermons

"God Enters the Human Mess"

A Sermon by the Reverend Greg Cole
Emmanuel Church, Newport, RI
Christmas Eve, 2005

In your service bulletins, you will find an insert that on one side has an announcement about the opening of our new preschool, called the Emmanuel Day School. This is the latest step in our mission to respond to the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual needs of the children of our community. The vestry and staff of Emmanuel Church believe that the school will complement the programs for children that we offer on Sunday mornings, during the summer, and on special occasions throughout the year.

We find motivation for our ministry to children from the words of Jesus, who said to his disciples, “Let the little children come to me.” We also find it in the image of the newborn child who confronts us this Christmas Eve with a challenge to experience each day with light, life, and love. On the other side of your bulletin insert (see at right), you will find a picture of the Stalingrad Madonna with these three words: “Licht, Leben, Liebe” – “light, life, love.” Lieutenant Kurt Reuber, a German physician and Protestant pastor, drew the Stalingrad Madonna in December 1942 on the back of a military map. He did so during the Battle of Stalingrad, perhaps the longest and bloodiest battle of the Second World War that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians. Reuber, sitting in his tiny makeshift room in the cold of winter, made the story of Christmas come alive for the soldiers around him.

Reuber never made it home. He died in a Russian prison camp. However, the Stalingrad Madonna and an accompanying letter did make it back to Germany. They now serve as a symbol of peace and security in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. In his letter, Reuber wrote the following:

"The picture looks like this: the mother's head and the child's lean toward each other, and a large cloak enfolds them both. It is intended to symbolize 'security' and 'mother love.’ I remembered the words of St. John: light, life, and love. What more can I add? I wanted to suggest these three things in the homely and common vision of a mother with her child and the security that they represent. When we opened the 'Christmas Door', as we used to do on other Christmases (only now it was the wooden door of our dug-out), my comrades stood spellbound and reverent, silent before the picture that hung on the clay wall. A lamp was burning on a board stuck into the clay beneath the picture. Our celebrations in the shelter were dominated by this picture, and it was with full hearts that my comrades read the words: light, life, and love."

In the midst of unspeakable horror, countless deaths, and suffering beyond anything that I can imagine, the Christ Child appeared to those soldiers, offering them light, life, and love in the midst of darkness, death, and hatred. In scenes played throughout the world, the Christ Child appears in the most unlikely and inhuman circumstances. In the midst of suffering caused by war, natural disaster, political oppression, and countless other ways, the Christ Child appears to bring light, life, and love. Likewise, the Christ Child appears to us this evening in the messiness of our lives, in the midst of whatever consumes us, whatever causes us pain, or whatever robs us of the joy and peace that God has for us.

Tonight, we celebrate the mystery of incarnation, of God becoming one of us through the child Jesus, of God living among us, of God ultimately suffering and dying as one of us. What sort of God is it that we meet at the manger on this holy night? The image is a peaceful one: of well-behaved animals, of warmth and comfort, of shepherds guided by a star, of Mary and Joseph filled with hope and joy. However, as peaceful as our sketch of the nativity might be, the story is not as neat and tidy as we might like. Mary was poor. In all likelihood, her friends and family ostracized her for becoming pregnant when she was not yet married. She was a pregnant, unwed teenager in a world much less forgiving than our own. If you have ever worked on a farm, you know that the manger, filled with barnyard animals, must have been very smelly and dirty. You also know that the manger was nothing more than a cold, pitiful feeding trough. The shepherds, characterized so wonderfully by the children of our pageant, were at the bottom of the social ladder. There was nothing auspicious about having a group of shepherds drop by for a little visit. Despite our attempts to sanitize and romanticize it, there is nothing powerful, prestigious, or even notable about the nativity scene, nothing that would hint at the world-changing story that unfolded that night.

All of this realism injected into the nativity might make for a less comfortable or peaceful image. However, with the discomfort of reality comes the knowledge that the God we meet at the stable is a God who comes to us in the ordinariness of human life. We meet a God, enfleshed in the child Jesus, who loves us - every one of us - regardless of how messy our lives seem. We meet a God who comes to us not in the perfection of sinless living but in the messiness of our humanity - our sin, our pride, our selfishness. We meet a God who forgives, who redeems, who reconciles us to God and to each other. We meet a God who calls us to lives of compassion and justice. We meet a God who offers us the gift of hope - hope that regardless of circumstance God loves us and journeys with us throughout this earthly pilgrimage.

Life offers us many false hopes, false promises of escape from our uncertainties, disappointments, and pains. We spend great amounts of energy and time running from the realities of our lives. Religious can be another form of escapism, another way to run and hide from these realities. However, the faith given to us by the God who we meet at the manger on this holy night does not offer another escape plan. God does not offer a fantasy trip to never-never land. Instead, God offers to be with us in the midst of life. The God we meet at the manger on this holy night is the God who is with us when we experience joy, peace, and contentment. However, it is the same God who is with us when our hearts are broken, the God who is with us when we feel empty and worthless, and the God who is with us when life seems to have no meaning.

There are many reasons why we are all here tonight. Only you know what motivated you to come. For some, it is Christmas Eve and that is just what you do. For others, you have children in the pageant. For some, the joys of life are so palpable that you want to give God thanks for all the blessings of this life. If that is the case, and you having blessings to share, I invite you to find ways to offer them as gifts to people who may need them.

However, for some of you, the bright lights, the festive decorations, the merrymaking and gift giving serve only to mask the emptiness of a life that cries out for love - that longs to encounter the God who we meet at the manger on this holy night. Sixty-four years ago, the infant offered light, life, and love to a group of soldiers. This very night, God offers you light, life, and love as well – not as a form of escape but as a promise of companionship, of hope, and of peace. On this happy night, may God grant to each of us light, life, and love. And may we encounter the God who joins us right where we are, as we are, and offers us the greatest gift of all: Emmanuel – God with us. Amen.

[1] http://www.feldgrau.com/articles.php?ID=74