Theological Truth: The Incarnation connects earth to heaven, making the ordinary extraordinary.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Merry Christmas! Are you ready…excited…delighted…to celebrate Christmas?
In these unusually dark and extraordinarily difficult and divisive days, there’s a yearning for the joy and peace that Christmas brings. We need the tradition and comfort of the season more than ever. It’s true for both adults and children … even dogs! The Mutts cartoon this week showed Santa in a mall with a line of people waiting to tell him their Christmas wishes. The main character is sitting on Santa’s lap and has just answered the crucial question: “What do you want for Christmas?” Santa is so surprised that he repeats the odd request: “Normalcy?”
Doesn’t a little normalcy sound good right about now? There’s no shame in wanting to dial back the drama, or tamp down all the fury that’s continuously ramped up. Bring on the normalcy … the ordinary … because, sometimes, the ordinary leads to the extraordinary.
Shannon and I got a literal sign of that one summer. And I do mean a literal sign. We were driving through an undeveloped part of Ontario, Canada, when up popped a store whose sign read: “Radiance of the Ordinary.” The name captivated me. There was something about the terms “radiant” and “ordinary” being used together that seemed unusual yet profoundly true. That certainly was the case with the natural environment. The landscape lacked drama — no giant sequoias or majestic mountains — but made up for it with a consistent, steady, quiet beauty. The land, the sky, the water — normal
things — all merely stretching out gently, generously and endlessly, ordinary and extraordinary. The radiance of the ordinary.
That’s what God has done in the mystery of the Incarnation: connected heaven and earth, made the ordinary extraordinary. Everyday life shot through with grace. We need Christmas to remind us of the radiance of the ordinary. To remember once more the message of the angels: Unto us a child is born. O come let us adore Him.
But “ordinary” is not on most of our Christmas lists. It’s the exceptional, rather than the normal, that grabs our attention. Consider arrivals, for example. VIPs and celebrities step out of limousines onto red carpets and past the velvet ropes. Politicians have their own planes and a platoon of secret service agents. I remember a college classmate making a splash by chartering a helicopter to drop him off at homecoming. Nothing says, “you’ve arrived,” like how you arrive. Except in the case of the Word made flesh.
When the Infinite chose to enter the finite…when the Creator subjected himself to the created … when eternal Love became historically embodied … it’s as ordinary as a birth. Which is to say, amazing! The extraordinary becomes ordinary, and by doing so, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The medium is the message, and the angels proclaim this good news with tidings of great joy. The savior of the world has come. None of us are alone or left out. None of us are either so special as to be above needing a savior, nor too ordinary to deserve one. God is with us all. Right here in the ordinariness of life and the messiness of living. The mystery of Incarnation. “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing …. O come let us adore him.”
We need this reminder of the power of God’s love filling the all-too-ordinary struggles of our world. We need the might of Jesus’ presence to walk with us and remind us of a different way of living, a better way of loving. We need the inspiration of God the Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts to see the radiant ordinariness in each other and in all of Creation. We need God’s selfless love to transform our ordinariness into the glory God intends for us. We need someone who knows our pain and loves the world enough to get into the nitty gritty of saving it for us and with us. That’s what the mystery of the Incarnation is all about.
Rabbi Elliot Kukla (according to David Brooks in the New York Times) tells the story of a woman with a brain injury who would sometimes fall to the floor. When this happened, people around her would immediately rush to get her back on her feet, before she was ready. She told her rabbi, “I think people rush to help me up because they are so uncomfortable with seeing an adult lying on the floor. But what I really need is for someone to get down on the ground with me.” Extraordinary rescues and dramatic interventions make the news. But what God knows we need, what God in the birth of Jesus provides us, is something much more ordinary: getting down on the ground with us.
This generous, selfless act of Love reminds us every Christmas that small ordinary acts of kindness and compassion continue to change the world. It provides hope because while none of us can do everything, all of us can do something … even ordinary things like helping out a neighbor or checking on an elderly friend. And it kindles joy because we know that despite whatever challenges may exist in the moment, there’s an eternal Truth that God is with us, bringing radiance to the ordinary, peace on earth and good will to all.
“Who would not love Him, loving us so dearly? O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. Christ the Lord.”
Christmas 2024 sermon by Rev. AJ William Heine, preached at Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia.
