December 18, 2005 - 4th Sunday of Advent

A Little Dirt for Christmas

(John: place pail of dirt in the middle of the isle.)

In every Christmas celebration I think there ought to be a pail of dirt. Real dirty dirt. Not even the kind of loamy soil in which to pot a plant. But gravely, filthy, ashy dirt. And if the celebration is in the church, perhaps that dirt ought to be in the chancel, right where everyone could see it, maybe right in the aisle, so folks would have to walk around it, certainly to notice it.

Or I would suggest that one room in your house stay dirty. And celebrate the dirty-ness in it. Don’t close the door on it. When the relatives come over to visit, or when you have friends in to be happy together at Christmas time, let it be an important room......say, the living room. And when they wonder about it, and walk through the room on tip toes, curling up, and wonder why the room wasn’t cleaned up for Christmas, tell them it was on purpose. Tell them you meant for there to be a dirty room. Tell them it was necessary to more properly remember and to understand what it was that God was doing in the birth of Jesus.

Or, I don’t think this is wrong either: that somewhere in the remembrance of Christmas there is pain, physical pain, someone in pain in the hospital, and from that pain, maybe some groaning, and maybe some fears, because that pain itself might be a proper remembrance of what it was God was doing in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. Perhaps a more proper remembrance than this Christmas tree that stands in isolated glory and lights. Or maybe some emotional pain, some severe isolation of someone. Let there be a poor person, or poverty; yes, let poverty be remembered at Christmas.

Let there be remembered the things we strive so hard in life to ignore. Let the pail of dirt be there; let the dirty room be there; let the emotional and physical pain be there, and what I want to say is this: they are not apart from Christmas: they are very much a part of Christmas, and not to be ignored, but to be understood as much as possible. And I will say it as cleanly as possible, because that is what God chose to be a part of. That is what the Incarnation is.

It is exactly the opposite of God standing high on the edge of the universe and distant from all the grittiness and the pain and the fear and the tears, the hurts of life – the incarnation is not an exaltation of God, it was not a glorious thing; it was not a celebration of showing God’s holiness. It was the exact opposite; it was God’s humiliation.

It was God’s participation in the wholeness of human life which makes Christmas, or the Incarnation, such a wonder. If we forget that, we forget the very kernel of this Christmas event.

Think of God’s righteousness. When Adam and Eve and human beings were in a good relationship with God, and that good relationship was that they obeyed God, and they found it good and blessed to be obedient to God, then it was ok for the power and authority and righteousness of God to come close to them. We have that wonderful picture of God walking in the Garden or Eden in the cool of the day. Adam and Eve, the creations of God’s hand, would walk with God and there would be a kind of peaceful relationship with God, taking pleasure in the wonder of the Garden and of all creation.

But they sinned. That’s an absolutely important thing to remember, because their sin transfigured their relationship between them and God and changed what would happen. So that, now that they sinned, when God came walking in the Garden, they very first feeling they have before this God is FEAR. They are afraid. They should be, because all of a sudden God is not just a loving and careful and watchful Creator. All of a sudden God is an enemy, and an enemy much more powerful than they are.

And so what do they do? Remember? They hide. And it is in the hiding that shows God that something terrible has happened. That sin has destroyed the goodness of the relationship. From that point on, whenever God comes to the people, it is a terrible thing. God seems to us, tiny, unrighteous, unable, weak people, to be terrible. That we see throughout the whole Old Testament. When God makes God’s presence known, in what we call a theophany, the people are terrified and afraid they will die. Throughout the whole OT, they expect to die after an encounter with the terrible God.

That’s the terribleness. When God comes near, God’s otherliness leads to two reactions: First, "Oh my God, how great you are!" And then immediately I am aware of myself and say, "My God, how small I am, how weak I am, how sinful I am. Get away from me."

Throughout the whole OT, "Get away from me! I hate what I seem to be when I am in front of you, and I am terrified of what you may do to me." By God’s simple presence. Am I making sense? That holiness of God. God comes, and that terrifies!

Remember when God comes to the children of Israel on the mountain. God’s holiness is there, and they expect to die if they touch that mountain. Remember? Smoke rises up from the top of the mountain, and that does not seem unusual to the people, because when God comes, almighty, terrible, supernatural, things happen, and fire crackles around that mountain at night, and God says, "You build a fence around the mountain so that every ignorant thing stays away, because even if a goat touches it, it will die from the touch, coming too close to my holiness."

And then Moses, given an extraordinary right to go up to the mountain and see God, and then to come down again, when Moses comes down from the mountain, in front of the people. Moses is not God, but he had been with God; Moses’ face blazes so bright that the people cover their eyes and say, "Moses, we can’t look on you." And so he had to hang a veil over his face. This is what it is like when God comes close!

But this is the wonder: that God who is holy, God who is different than us, God who created and sustains the whole universe, God who possesses a power beyond our imagining, God who has the authority to use the power however God will, God had to find another way to come to us.

Christmas is the other way. Christmas made it possible for God to come near to us so that we did not see God as enemy, and we did not have to get down on our knees in terror and shake for fear.

How did God do that? Shout with all his voice? No, it would deafen us. Shine out of the brightness of God’s light? No, it would blind us. Blow high winds across mountain tops? No, that would kill us.

What God did, God didn’t just come among us, God became one of us. God chose what was the most extraordinary trick of all time. One way God could come into Mary’s house without scaring Mary to death, was not by entering through the front door, or by coming in dreams and visions, but that God should enter the house through Mary. She would become the very door of the presence of God. And that God would take time in that coming (9 months), so that she would be more slowly aware of that coming.

The door was Mary’s own womb.... Mary’s own being. The wonder: God entered this universe through the womb of a woman, and so when God enters this universe, God did it in a most familiar, gentle, touchable way.

To do that, the mighty God for a while lays aside power, lays aside authority, lays aside bright righteousness. The only thing this God is, after all, is love.

This is God’s humiliation. At this point this is not a holy thing, not holy in that essence of God that shines and kills us. But it is, (remember that pail of dirt somewhere here?) that from God’s point of view, this was a dirty thing! This was a mighty coming down. In every sense of the word, it was a falling off, a loss of reputation, it was a losing of power, it was a giving up.

Remember St. Paul’s words: "Have this mind among yourselves which you have in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but God emptied himself, and being found in human form, he humbled" (now that is humbling to death, beginning at birth), –that’s a dirty thing. It is not a glorious thing from God’s perspective; He humbled himself.

Jesus, God’s son, taking on human flesh, entering the only way he could not to terrify us, but work among us. Had to give up more than we comprehend. It is a humbling message, but that’s the Christmas message. That’s what we celebrate; what we drop our jaws at on the 24^th and 25^th of December. That God should love us so much.

Joseph and Mary, traveling from Nazareth, a very uncomfortable trip. If she walks, I don’t know how she would do it; if she rides, you can imagine what it would do, riding on a donkey. And up and down, up and down. It was not a cheerful trip. Then to Bethlehem, very, very tiny

Bethlehem, looking for room, not even a room, just room. Sleeping on the floor, and not in the inn, for there was no room, but with the animals.

And the animals, you know what: they eat; they drool, and then stink. They don’t go to the bathroom somewhere else. They go just there. Well, Luke is telling us the birth of Jesus was a humbling affair. No midwives, no hospital, not even the usual cleanliness that attends the birth of a child. But dirtiness. So that the birth itself proclaimed what God was doing. God, coming down, getting dirty, really coming among us. This is the Incarnation. The holiness of God hidden, so that the love of God might be seen.

Now I say that is a wonder, because that means that Christ participates now, still, in the times we cry. And I don’t mean tears that are sweet and good. I mean the tears of honest vindictive pain, because that is a part of the flesh. And it is the flesh that the Word came into. It means God participates when you walk in the cold and your toes get numb, and you feel filthy. And participates when you participate in human relationships which seem to hang on you in a clawing, clinging way, and sometimes you weep for ignorance, for just not knowing your children, or your spouse, or your parents or people around you; or the way this sad, lousy world is spinning, and in your ignorance you weep. You ought to know that God participates with you.

We think weakness separates us from God. Yet, what the holy God was to become was weak. The incarnation means that Jesus chose to participate in every facet of this human existence, good and bad, clean or dirty, blessed or cursed, even unto death. That is the wonder.

So if you feel all messed up coming to Christmas, remember it isn’t just the laughter, but the tears as well that ought to be a part of Christmas.

For Jesus found one extraordinary way to enter quietly, humbly in the world, to participate in all of the births of children, in all of the groanings of human beings, in all the breakdowns of human relationships, and all the bruisings of the flesh. That’s the wonder.