This sermon was preached for Christmas Eve on Saturday, December 24, 2022 for St. Mark's Episcopal Church. The texts for this sermon were: Isaiah 9:2-7, Luke 2:1-20, and Psalm 96.
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| Madonna, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1300 |
Have you ever looked at a Madonna and Child painting from the Medieval or Renaissance era and thought that baby Jesus looked a little…odd. Like an infant with old man jowls and wise eyes…looking closer to newly retired than newly born. In one depiction by the Italian artist Duccio from 1300, Jesus has the full-on proportions and clothing of a miniature adult man plopped on Mary’s lap. Author John Greene poked fun of this Christian art quirk with his art rating game, “Has this artist ever even seen a baby?”
Turns out this was a thing though, what art historians call “Homunculus” - Latin for tiny man. Rather than bad art, these artists were making the theological statement that baby Jesus was always 100% God - all-knowing and wise from the start - both a baby and God all at once. Even in Islam, where Jesus is considered to be a prophet and the Messiah but not the incarnation of the divine, Jesus is portrayed as an exceptionally mature infant. One story from the Qur’an recounts the infant Jesus speaking in full sentences out of his cradle in defense of his mother’s chastity.
This story and art pieces underscore how unsettling it can be for us to think of Jesus as a newborn, the way we know newborns to be. Infants are the weakest, most vulnerable form a human being can take, needier and more helpless at birth than pretty much every other creature in the animal kingdom.
Caring for my own newborn these past three months has reminded me how scary it must be to be a baby. Things just happen to you. One minute you’re in your mother’s arms, and the next you’re strapped into some carseat contraption. You can’t even control your own limbs and you have no idea why you're upset. Babies are completely dependent on those around them. No wonder they cry so much.
For me, the incarnation, God-in-the-flesh, is all the more miraculous, all the more powerful when we consider that God deliberately chose to enter the world as a baby. Rather than descend with the full powers of a human adult, God elected to start from the beginning of every human’s experience, with all the fear and helplessness and confusion that involves. God agreed to be loved by Mary and Joseph, by all of us, the way a newborn is loved. What a profound act of trust in humankind.
When the angels proclaim that this baby is here to save the world, it's often interpreted to be a prophecy referring to the salvific power of Jesus’ death. After all, the predominant strain of generations of Western Christian theology has emphasized that it is Christ’s final act on the cross that brings us salvation.
But another perfectly valid school of Christian school emphasizes the salvific power of the incarnation instead. That is to say, God saves humankind by entering into and sanctifying every aspect of the human experience from birth until death. The suffering Jesus takes on for us includes the cross, but also the everyday struggles of being alive. In this view, the cross is the inevitable consequence of living a life wholly and fully for love. Jesus takes on and lives out all the scariest parts of loving and being loved, of needing and being needed from day one.
Jesus himself will say to his followers, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Our greatest heroes sacrifice their lives for their country, their children, a stranger in need.
Choosing to die for another can be a great act of love and courage, but so can choosing to live. So can taking on a life that asks an incredible amount of your heart and mind and body for the sake of another. Whether that's working a demanding job in order to provide for one’s family, or going without proper sleep for years to care for one’s children, or spending your free time at drop-in centers and soup kitchens and parish halls and prison to feed, clothe, and heal one’s neighbor.
The flip side of this, of course, is what I learned again and again during my time as a hospital chaplain: It can also be an act of great courage to be loved and cared for by others. I'd frequently be called to the bedside of a patient who had gone through a major surgery or some debilitating health event. It’d take a while but once they felt brave enough, the patient would lean in toward me and quietly admit how terrified they were of becoming a burden on others. They'd hesitantly reveal how distressed their new weakness and helplessness had made them. Illness, injury and old age were forcibly returning them in some small part to the experience of the newborn, with its powerlessness and dependence, with that total lack of control. It took courage, so much courage for my patients to ask for help and to accept it from others - especially from the very people they had raised as newborns so many decades ago.
The incarnation declares that it is an act of salvific love to live for others. It is an act of courage to accept and trust another’s love as well. This is why it is so important for us to speak of the incarnation just as much as we talk about the crucifixion and the resurrection. Why it is so powerful to know that God did this, too. God did not skip any part of the human experience of weakness and vulnerability. God sanctified it, lifted it up, made it holy.
Baby Jesus - in some ways all babies - remind us today that at our weakest and at our most vulnerable, we are still profoundly worthy of love…perhaps even adoration. This next year might ask you to live for others in challenging ways; it also might ask you to trust others’ love and care for you. My prayer is that you find in yourself the courage you need to embrace both acts of love with grace. Throughout this year, I hope you'll remember the promise and joy of Christmas: God is with you, right here in all of it.
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