Wildness of Christmas
We forget how extraordinary this all is It’s a Jackson Pollock painting. It is improv, it is real jazz. The mystery of Christmas is coloring way outside the lines. The focus of this night is the very love of God a passion so uncontainable that God becomes One with and for and of us. Christmas is an astonishing wildness It is at its core an almost unbearable longing for the fullness of joy whether it be simple or lush. Tonight is complacency shattered by the effervescence of angels. Tonight is a desperate young couple in an anxious time. Tonight is urgent adaptation by strangers. A star shines, a word reveals, and the distances between the creator and created fall away, our imaginations fly across the years, and across the planet, and we don’t even really have to try. We come to the makeshift creche, to the simple cave, and we look and we ask in our heart – who are we to be here? Can we make a difference for good? The answer from this night is yes: because of this. God is for us and comes to us to liberate us from our attachment to sin and evil. Can we make a difference for good? Yes. Because of this. This baby is Love, is God, this child is made of the same stuff that you and I and the dinosaurs are. It is simply – wild.
How could we ever fall for the lie that all of this – earth and air and bodies and blood – is bad? How could we ever fall for the lie that it is all wretched, that sin and evil are insurmountable? God created it all – astonishing and fierce – and in Scripture, we tell how God chanted it is good, it is good. God loved from the beginning because God is nothing but love. God hoped in the beginning and God loves and hopes still, like a wild child who hasn’t learned from the circumstance, who believes they will get what they want no matter how often we say no.
God throws off the distance comes to our material suffering and says I am here. Dives into the seabed of primordial being-ness disappears under the mundane and danger of life and is most profoundly a child. I am with you. I cried. I know. Can we do any good – of course we can – because it is all rooted in and redeemed in love. How is the Alpha and the Omega held close by his exhausted displaced mother? How is God warmed by cohabitating sheep? How, how do our souls connect to these bodies of flesh and bone? Wrestling with the details is trying to contain it, trying to box the whirlwind. The more important question is why? The answer is love. Sacrificial love. A cosmic and holy love that is from before the beginning began. Beyond the glowing scene the vile powers that be are crushing in, working against grace and love, and peace. They were and are real and they are brutal, and we too often we are gladly complicit. This is why he is born for us. Our wretchedness, and our freedom from it. Why is God born: Love, love always. A wild love more awesome than we can properly comprehend.
Maybe you come here tonight seeking to re-center your life on God on The way of love that Jesus Taught and showed and asked of all of us still. I’m glad you’re here I hope we can help you know God better. If you come here tonight because you are simply trying to color inside the lines I hope you find something unexpectedly good and lifegiving, and I’m glad you are here. Maybe you come here tonight with the very frailty of human existence being grievously up close and personal. I hope tonight in the mystery of word and sacrament you are embraced by peace and the love that will never let you go.
Christmas is an invitation to throw off all of the boxes we have taped ourselves into, and others out of, thinking that they are freedom or security. Take him, take this child, his family, the motley crew, take it all into your self, heart, soul, mind, body, feel the absolute unboundedness of God’s incarnate love to liberate us from evil. Come and know the passionate possibility of Jesus, come and be enchanted by this material un-tameness, That is the overwhelming grace-full-ness of the Living God. Throw off the trappings and the perfectionisms,sSmash the injustices, and attend to the grief and the need. Christmas is a wide open door, a wild call from the heart of God: come all, come faithful, curious, doubtful, confused, and heartbroken. Come excluded and outcast – come into the wild extravagant love of God that blazes forth from this Holy Night forever. And may we all make this love our way of life, always.
Photo attribution Photo by Jené Stephaniuk on Unsplash