“The Christmas story surprises us with what true power actually looks like. The almighty power of God depicted here is not of force, but of the Spirit, revealed in a baby born into utter dependence on the love and care of others. We human beings often seek power because we are afraid of weakness and of what might happen if we are vulnerable. But surprise, God often loves what we despise. Our God loves vulnerability!”
Homily by Sally Howard at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Christmas Eve, 5:30 p.m., December 24, 2019. Readings: Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-14.
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The birth of the Christ child tonight was the first great surprise of Christmas! Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “Love is the one surprise.”
Love surprises with the wonder of another’s touch, the beauty of their smile, the unfathomable depth of their being.
Love can surprise us in many ways.
When I was pregnant with my daughter Emma, my husband and I wondered what she would be like. Would she love music, books, soccer and art? Would she be tall like my husband (the answer is yes!) Or love bike riding like her mother? (The answer is no!)
But one thing we knew for sure was that she would be born without much hair. Both my husband and I were born as bald as billiard balls. We fully expected her to join the bald baby club.
Surprise! She emerged with a full head of copper colored curls!
It was the first of many times she’s reminded us that she was not born to reflect our image of her, but to be the sacred person she was born to be.
Love’s surprise can slip in, under and around our expectations, making room for the arrival of someone or something new, beyond what we can imagine.
The Christmas narrative in Luke is familiar to many of us—perhaps we’ve heard it many times. All sacred stories are told through a lens, and this one communicates Luke’s view of God and the world.
The Christmas story I grew up with was largely told through a white, western, cis-gendered male lens and there are important parts of the story I missed.
What if tonight we open ourselves to (additional) fresh perspectives, to images that might surprise us?
What new perceptions might sustain our love for God, for each other, and for ourselves and our world? Let’s explore together and feel the joy of opening ourselves to the ever unfolding presence of God.
As a woman who has given birth and witnessed the birthing process of others, I can fully attest that there are aspects of the Christmas story we know and love that do not – let’s say it mildly – quite line up with reality.
If women had been empowered to write, or had been recognized as disciples and priests, the beautiful creche scenes of Christmas might not be quite so immaculate. We wouldn’t sing songs of babies who don’t cry. And maybe we wouldn’t mistake quiet for peace. It is as though the truth of birth was too profane for Emmanuel. But birth in its real state, doesn’t look like our imagined concept of “holy”.
Jesus’ birth, a real birth through pain and a woman’s blood and sweat, the mess of it all, in fact manifests the holy. Women’s bodies in their entirety are holy. All bodies are holy-young and old, on the border and across all borders, gendered and non-binary, whether on our streets or in the heartland USA.
Matter is, and always has been, the hiding place for Spirit, Who is forever offering Herself to be discovered anew. There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments. It is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. This is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it. The Presence of God is everywhere, and it is to the presence that we are to bow.
Here is another surprise about Jesus birth, at least it surprised me and it altered one of my favorite parts of the story as it had been told to me. Jesus wasn’t born in a barn. Some of you may be relieved, but as a good midwestern girl, I always liked the barn part. Nor was Jesus born in an inn. I guess I’d always pictured a kind of bed and breakfast of Bethlehem.
Historically, Middle Eastern homes of that time did not have stables for animals separate from the space the family lived in. Instead, the home was usually made of two rooms: one for the family and the animals, and another one at the back or on the roof for the guests. Joseph wasn’t turned away from a hotel; he was told that the guest room was already taken.
So the story is actually one of hospitality – the home where Mary and Joseph stayed was not a guest room but an actual family room. They were welcomed into the family’s quarters.
Furthermore, Mary and Joseph were not alone traveling to Bethlehem as strangers. They were likely part of a caravan, a traveling community of family members all headed to their ancestral home, a place ready to welcome them during the census. It would have been unheard of for them to be alone on the road, let alone utterly friendless in Bethlehem. And Mary was unlikely to have been alone with Joseph at Jesus’ birth. Now birth is a thin place—always too much pain, waiting, joy or sorrow, too much love with too little control, but Mary was almost certainly attended by skilled and present women, likely community midwives.
Jesus was born into a communal culture where the roles and contributions of women while often invisible were vital to life. Sometimes to find God’s surprise, we have to recognize who isn’t mentioned and who we don’t see. We need to look for the lost coin and listen to those voices that have been silenced.
What I am going to point out now should not be a surprise, but it is an aspect of the story appallingly absent in so much of American Christianity. Jesus was not white and he was not a Christian. Not white. Not a Christian. Jesus was born a brown baby and he was a Jew. He was a faithful Jewish person who understood his ministry as a fulfillment of the rich tradition of Jewish prophets. Jesus did not come to introduce a new religion, but to live out his identity as the beloved of God, and to proclaim that God’s love recognized no false human boundaries, binaries, and divisions.
Jesus was a Jewish mystic, grounded in prayer and the experience of God’s power of love within him, and all around him in everyone and everything. That love filled him with passion for healing and care for the least of these.
Those closest to Jesus found him to be the promised one, Emmanuel, God with us. But it was years after his death and resurrection that Jesus was finally officially recognized as the Christ, the eternal amalgam of matter and spirit, fully revealed in the human being of Jesus. Jesus was not white, not Christian, and for God’s sake, he was not an American. To suggest otherwise makes an idol of our national identity.
Jesus birth into a despised group, a desperately poor family, an unwed mother of color tells us in bold relief that God chooses those on the margins to reveal Herself to us. I echo what many others have said, because some of my Christian brothers just don’t seem to get it: Jesus and his parents fled as immigrants the borders of their country to survive murderous empire powers breathing down their necks. Please open your hearts to hear the story tonight and know that Jesus and Mary and Joseph are on the borders still—children walking alone across the bridge, praying the threat of death lies behind them and not ahead. God help us, that’s where Jesus dwells today!
Whether they believe in God or not, many people still think that God is about power. The kind of power that one possesses for oneself or one’s own kin or own country.
It is power defined by being on top—-of someone else. There are winners and losers in this vision and a scarcity mentality that there is not enough to go around.
From this perspective, power means invulnerability, both literally and metaphorically. Some even proclaim that God’s power is male, and that Jesus’ physical birth as a male settles the gender hierarchy forever.
What a refreshing surprise to hear the Christmas story through the suppressed female imagery and divine power in the Bible! “El Shaddai,” one of the Hebrew names of God, is most often translated into English as “God Almighty.” But its linguistic roots suggest that it meant “breasted God”—God as “mother.” Picture that!
In Isaiah, God the mother cries out in terrible labor delivering the new creation of justice. She suckles the newly born, teaches toddlers to walk, bends down to feed them and carries them about, bearing them from birth even to old age.
In Hebrew scriptures, Sophia was the wisdom of God before creation, and the master worker through Whom God created all that exists. She was powerful, intelligent, holy, humane, steadfast, and free from anxiety. Jesus used female imagery to refer to his own longings, as like a hen to gather her chicks under wing. He used women’s everyday work like kneading bread to illustrate the action of the kindom of God. He touched and healed women and included them in his top leadership.
Of course, the mystery of God transcends all images and is properly understood as neither male nor female. God creates male and female and gender fluid people in the image of God and all can be used as metaphors that point to the whole of divine mystery. All are meant to help us understand each other, ourselves, and God.
The Christmas story surprises us with what true power actually looks like. The almighty power of God depicted here is not of force, but of the Spirit, revealed in a baby born into utter dependence on the love and care of others. We human beings often seek power because we are afraid of weakness and of what might happen if we are vulnerable.
But surprise, God often loves what we despise. Our God loves vulnerability!
Yes, love surprises us in many ways. In fact, it is our capacity to be open to surprise, which helps sustain our love. Love that keeps opening and opening and opening, onto and into each other, and to God, fills us with vitality and power. This is the love we celebrate and honor tonight. The almighty, transcendent power of God is outpouring, vulnerable love that can’t bear to stand apart from the pain of others. It is a power that no tyrant can even begin to imagine.
You were created by and for love. May God bless you this night, and may you always be open to love’s surprise.
