IS GOD REALLY IN ALL OF THIS?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

Fourth Sunday in Advent, December  20, 1998

Isaiah 7: 7-14; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

The other day I came across a brand new book called The Physics of Christmas.  The author, Roger Highfield, Science Editor of London's Daily Telegraph, expresses an eagerness to explain Christmas from a scientific point of view, as he writes, "from the Aerodynamics of Reindeer to the Thermodynamics of Turkey."  He reminds us, for instance, that  "chemists are already hard at work in their Christmas kitchens.  Experts on thermodynamics have drafted equations to help us cook turkeys to perfection; scanners have scrutinized steaming plum puddings; and pharmacologists have traced the baroque metabolic pathways of the brain to explain why chocolates can be so addictive."    

Of course, Highfield devotes a carefully researched chapter to the Bethlehem Star.  He tells us  "many and various ideas have been put forward to explain the heavenly apparition that heralded the birth of Christ: a comet, a star birth, a star death, a conjunction of the planets, an apparent hesitation of a planetary orbit, even a sighting of the then unknown planet Uranus.  Two thousand years after it was first seen by the Wise Men," he says,  "astronomers are still in hot pursuit of this heavenly body."  

And so on it goes,  Dr. Highfield remarks, as he explores a broad range of fields from  biotechnology and fractals to neuropharmacology and nanotechnology, attempting to raise,  like Charles Dickens in his preface to "A Christmas Carol,"  to raise a Ghost of an idea.

Well, surely Dr. Highfield presents  one way to approach Christmas—intriguing, enlightening—but ultimately missing the  point, really an exercise in trivial pursuit. I believe something tremendous, mysterious, powerful, decisive  surrounds our Christmas joy and hope; and this morning I would offer just a glimpse of it to you.

I

Where does the Christmas story start?  Where do we begin our thinking about the meaning of Christmas?  Do we begin in Bethlehem?  Do we hear first the voice of the angels?  Is the beginning, as Matthew would have it,  with Mary's womb and  Joseph's  shame?  No. None of the above. We will get to them in just a minute.  You see, the Christmas story begins at Easter.    

Look at it this way.  Do you see this wonderful window behind me?  It is an Annunciation window. It includes some of  the elements of the Christmas story as recorded by Luke and  Matthew.  See the angels, the shepherds, Bethlehem peeking through  in the background?  Now look above this wonderful Annunciation  window.  In the center of the circle of stained glass windows near the top of our chancel wall  you see the creche: Mary, Joseph, the child.  Christmas confronts us vividly, beautifully, day after day, Sunday after Sunday.                  

But, different from most biographies, the story of Jesus does not begin with his birth.  It begins with his death and with his conquering of death.   In this church—in this room—we see this Annunciation-Christmas window and we see above it the creche.  We see the birth announcements and we encounter the birth stories through the powerful symbol hanging here before us all: this stunning and iridescent empty cross. The Christmas story begins here at the Cross.  The Christian Church down the ages, the writers of the Gospels—indeed the whole of the New Testament —begin by rejoicing, testifying and surrendering their lives to the One who on Easter day turns the world upside down by saying "No" to the crimes we commit against one another;  "No" to the continual stream of street violence, political cynicism, family abuse, chronic illness;  "No" to the worst things life can do to us and we can do to one another;  "No" to death.      

The Christmas message—nay, the Easter message—speaks directly to us this weekend, today!  Look ,for instance,  at just the split screen headlines we witness  this very morning.  On the one hand,  whatever this current impeachment proceeding  suggests, many of us find ourselves shaken by what one congressman called on Friday, "the politics of smear and slash and burn."  After watching the impeachment debate in the house President Reagan's Chief of Staff, Kenneth Duberstein observes "our politics is meaner than ever. There's live ammunition," he says. "You now shoot to destroy one side or the other. The Washington I grew up in, you always left somebody a side door or a back door.  Now it's search and destroy."   

And on the other of our split screens this weekend?  This terrible conundrum of cruise missiles, smart bombs,   civilian casualties, words rolling off our tongues like "weapons of mass destruction."  This  the consequence of serious but failed diplomacy finally resulting in military assault.  Terrible! Terrible!  But now hear this:  The near violent rancor we see on the floor of our Congress; the explosions we witnessed  on the horizon in Baghdad only 24 hours ago,  the children bleeding in Iraqi hospitals, the reservoir of Saddam's toxic weapons, all of this signals as a fact of our existence  the ugly and obscene  political blindness and cynicism sending the likes of Jesus to torture, execution, and bloody demise on the Cross.  It is cut from the same cloth.  Rancor and violence, vengeance and the will to snuff out human life designed, produced and raised the cross of Christ.   But thank God—thank God!—the story does not end there.  On Easter day, through an event we cannot explain but to which we testify, we discover the things tearing us apart, threatening our existence, dividing us against one another do not coincide with the ultimate purpose of our creation and destiny.  On Easter day we discover the Power behind our universe throbs not as death, but as life; not in lies, but as trust;  not as vengeance, but as reconciliation;  not as cynicism, but as hope; not as  cholera and typhoid, cancer and AIDS, but as healing and wholeness; not as partisan vitriol and the "politics of mutual destruction," but as a dynamic of mutual respect and personal dignity; not as cruise missiles and  biological arsenals, but as  just and generous  peace.  On Easter a new realm breaks in upon us, a new creation becomes evident; we see and begin to live in a new domain ruled by love issuing in magnanimity and hope among peoples,  peace deriving from cooperating  servanthood—a world we finally can only describe as Christlike. This empty cross, originally a sign of the cruelest of death penalties assigned by the worst of motives to the most innocent of our kind, now through Power—Power that will not prevent such atrocities, but can transform them—represents the beginning, the source, the root,  of everything we want to believe and hope at Christmas.  Easter provides the lens for Christmas.  No Easter?   No Christmas!

II

And thus these fabulous Christmas narratives: a virginal conception, a stupefied,  shamed but,  yes, faithful husband, the Holy Spirit as an agent of conception, the promise of a prophet operating 700 years before himself witnessing a national military catastrophe announcing  a child named  "God with us,"   the father naming a baby boy Yeshua—"Salvation"—claiming a king's bloodline a thousand years old—a chronological distance equivalent to yours  and mine from William The Conqueror. . . Come on!  What is all this weirdness?    Is it science fiction,  biological fantasy,  historical revisionism?    Can we believe it? Is it true?     

Yes! Yes! It is true. Not as biography. No way.  Not as academic history. Hardly.  No researcher going after a birth certificate, a census record, a news account, a sworn witness—none of these elements necessary to support  birth announcements  will turn up.  But more importantly: none of these credentials  bear any relevance to Matthew's narrative.   

Oh, let's make no mistake, the historical fact of Jesus birth is important. His life in Galilee and Israel vitally important, his arrest, conviction, crucifixion absolutely central  elements to the core of faith. They are incontrovertible facts of a life lived and ended under political tyranny, national sellout, religious hypocrisy, fierce opposition, mistrust and resistance, ending finally  in betrayal, humiliation and defeat. They are facts.     

But the birth narratives?  Facts?  Not really.  But true?  Yes, believe it! True!  Matthew,  living in light of the Easter power, knows only God can take a bloody cross and turn it from an instrument of human cruelty, religious cowardice, political cynicism and social terror into a radiant symbol of hope and love. Matthew knows God is at work at the very point God seems absent; he confesses Love evident where hate seems in charge, he  recognizes hope where hope fizzles out.  And just as he finds  God amid  the events of the Cross,  Easter and the end,  so he knows and must testify to God's being present and active at the birth, Christmas, and the beginning. You see, Matthew asks himself how he can  tell us the truth about the meaning—the meaning—of Jesus'  wonderful life.  How can  he draw an image of Divine presence alive and work from the very beginning in this peculiarly redemptive, gracious life of Jesus?—a life showing us the human face of God, bearing finally the revelation of what God wants for us in our treatment of one another, representing our Divine  future of racial, gender, creedal, cultural, national,  religious, ethnic  and bitter partisan  barriers dissolved  by grace and peace grounded in love and justice.    

You see, to tell us of such a life transparent to God, Matthew offers the narrative we read this morning testifying to a messianic age encapsulated in that prophetic vision 700 years old, promising a child who will turn a corrupt and atheistic imperial regime around.  To introduce us to a human life in tune with the will of God from beginning to end, Matthew tells of a human conception by a recreative, transformative Spirit of  Love and Hope, he confirms the name, Yeshua,  "Jesus,  One Who Saves."   He offers an angelic, heavenly  messenger resolving  an awkward family circumstance. Matthew celebrates Christmas  with—what can we call them?—poetic images mediating Truth facts can never capture, Truth we do not record in an almanac or database but Truth we can only sing, Truth we transmit in metaphors, analogies, figurative narratives   pointing far beyond themselves into the deepest reaches—indeed into the creative and redemptive Heart undergirding, surrounding and breaking open  a new future for all of us.  Matthew seeks to tell us the God who saves, who loves, who forgives, who recreates, who ushers in a new creation lies at the core of what we call Christmas.  In his luminous Christmas story Matthew answers our plea, "Is God really with us  in this troubled and tortured world?"   He answers  with  a resounding,  glorious,   "You bet! With us,  right in the middle of it all!"

And so friends in this troubled, melancholy, chaotic, threatening  time,    I bid you celebrate Christmas.  Indeed,  I ask, "What better time to celebrate Christmas?"   Remember our celebration begins with this Cross. And because we begin there we read backward to our Lord's birth and confess with Ann Weems:  

The Christmas Spirit
           is that hope
               which tenaciously clings
                   to the hearts of the faithful
  and announces
         in the face
            of any Herod the world can produce
             and all the inn doors slammed in our faces
             and all the dark nights  of our souls
       that with God
          all things still are possible,
         that even now
             unto us
                  a child is born.