Theological Truth: The good news of the Incarnation is that God’s love is individual as well as universal.
“Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”
Merry Christmas! Or as one of my preschoolers used to say, “Come on All y’all faithful!”
We have come, once again, to hear the good news of God’s love for us and God’s love for the world. We have come once more to experience the wonderful mystery and mysterious wonder of God’s love, incarnate, enfleshed, embodied in Jesus. The birth of Jesus is a shocking thing for God to do—the Creator becoming the created; the Almighty as vulnerable as an infant; the Eternal constrained by time.
The idea of the Incarnation is shocking enough in the abstract, but it’s even more scandalous in the specifics. With so many periods of history, each with many socioeconomic classes, if Incarnation was God’s preferred way to save his creation, why not be born in the 21st century to a family of well-adjusted, highly connected, economically stable, and politically powerful entrepreneurs? Perhaps with the last name Gates or Bezos? Why not have the angels appear at a White House press conference? Or through a divinely viral Tiktok video? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Why does God’s already unusual plan have to be so extremely unusual?
Author and preacher David Lose says that through the Incarnation, God shocks us out of our deeply entrenched ideas about God and ourselves. He writes, “When God decided to get personally involved, God didn’t come to punish, or frighten, or scold, or threaten, or any of the other things that are often attributed to God…Instead, God came to tell us that we are loved, deeply, truly, and forever.” Depending on how we were disciplined as a child, or who taught us Sunday school, this kind of Divine Love may be very shocking indeed. This unconditional, universal, incarnational love gets our attention, but there are two other stubborn human misconceptions God must overcome.
The first is a presumption that God’s love is based on my self-earned gold medal in the holiness competition. Being so much more virtuous and prosperous than “those people,” of course God loves me more than (or instead of) “them.” You might call it a moral superiority complex. The second misconception is the opposite—a spiritual inferiority complex – a deep-seated image of myself as unlovable—something that the world bombards us with its messages and metrics. Given my lack of this or excess of that, surely God doesn’t love or care about me.
The surprising specifics of Jesus’ birth disintegrate these misconceptions like sound waves on a kidney stone. Think about it. The angels could have appeared to Ceasar Augustus or Governor Cyrenius, but instead they go to shepherds. The good news of the birth of the savior comes first to these smelly and suspicious outsiders, living in the fields, watching their flocks in the cold night, separated from more respectable society. In a weird way, it makes sense, because Love, like water—being indiscriminate—seeks out the lowest places and fills every nook and cranny. Love, like light—making no distinctions—penetrates wherever there is darkness.
The message is as clear as it is wonderful and shocking. “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” (Titus 2:11a) ALL. By coming first to the shepherds, by coming not through wealth but through poverty, by coming not through strength but through vulnerability, God makes clear that the world does not decide who is lovable. God determines that. God has demonstrated that. No one is so good that they don’t need God’s saving love. No one is so bad that they are beyond God’s saving love. No person, family, tribe, or nation is forgotten, left out, or left behind. Through both the peculiar and particular circumstances of the incarnation of Jesus, God proves that this good news of great joy is for all the peoples. All indeed means all, y’all!
Having been awakened by this good news of great joy for all the world, what will we do next? How will we live this new life of grace?
Poet Mary Oliver summarizes what the shepherds did and what, I hope, the Christ event inspires us to do:
Instructions for Life
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
The shepherds paid attention to the good news. They were open to the astonishment of the message. And then they told about it: “They made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.” Living this life of grace means paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it. This is how to live a life based on this good news of God’s love for all.
The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is living this kind work. In his November column “The Rescuers,” he paid attention to the heroic actions and more nuanced relationships in the events around the Israel/Gaza war. He was astonished by the Palestinian Arab teacher who rushed the Jewish children in her care to the school bomb shelter during a recent Hamas air raid. He’s telling the world about Alaa Amara, an Israeli Arab (not Jewish) shop owner from Taibe, who donated 50 bicycles to Jewish kids who survived the Hamas attack on their border communities on October 7. When his shop was torched, apparently by hardline nationalist Israeli Arab youth, a few days later, a crowdfunding campaign in Hebrew and English raised more than $200,000 to help him rebuild.
I know, I know. Some of you may trust first century shepherds more than New York Times columnists, but Friedman’s on to something. God’s radical love for the world is not only a past event. The Christ event is another step (a huge step to be sure!), but also another step in a series of promises that the grace of God is bringing salvation to all. This saving love of God embodied in Jesus continues to appear. Even now, and especially in dark places and through unlikely sources. Like the young woman who anonymously places her elderly neighbor’s paper on her front porch every morning before she leaves for work when she thinks no one will notice. Or the hurried dad who loads his toddler into their car seat and then walks back down the block to offer a homeless man a pair of gloves he just happened to find on the street.
The grace of God continues to appear bringing salvation for us all. No one is left out or left behind—too good or too far gone. In these 12 days of Christmas, with this renewed awareness of God’s love for us and the world: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
— Fr. AJ Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas, December 24 & 25, 2023
Readings: Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 97, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-20
