Bring Forth Your Jesus
I speak to you in the Name of the one, holy, and living God. Amen.
Merry Christmas, and welcome on this holy night, especially if you’re visiting with us for the first time, or have been away for a while. Welcome. I want to begin tonight with words from the poet Mary Oliver. The title of this poem is Of the Empire. She writes:
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
Of the Empire. Jesus, whose birth we celebrate today, Jesus was born under the crushing forces of Empire, and he would grow up to stand against those forces, and to be silenced and killed by them. Our Gospel reading tells us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his parents were there to participate in a census or a “registration.” This is something that the Empire of his day would make a regular practice in order to levy higher taxes on its subjects. Now don’t get me wrong here—taxes can be a great thing—taxes can give us roads and schools and healthcare for all. But a system like this can also be used to amass wealth and power for those few at the top.
A friend of mine, the Rev. Grey Maggiano, writes,
In Jesus’ time — The Empire was big business. Everything ran through the Emperor and his emissaries around the Kingdom. The Temple authorities, the tax collectors, the local viceroys, everyone was dependent on a system of government and economics that put the Emperor first.
Everyone waited with baited breath for ‘Good News’ from the Emperor (which was always bad news) about what industry, region, people would be targeted for enhanced profiteering on the part of Rome.
In our time — Big Business is big business. And everyone in government, economics and business puts [money] first. And the ‘Good News’ we await is which group of underserved, subjugated citizens will bear the brunt of ‘Big Business’ Innovation.
Whether we call it the forces of Big Business or of Empire or of economic injustice or capitalist greed, we are living right now in a season in which our government has given enormous tax cuts to these very forces, while also slashing funding for programs that support those most in need—Medicare, Medicaid, programs designed to help people climb out of poverty, programs that feed the hungry, programs that care for our children.
What we are watching yet again are the perennial forces of Empire. But these forces are the antithesis of what we gather here to celebrate tonight. Tonight we gather to celebrate the birth of a baby who will grow up to challenge these forces. And yes, to be silenced and killed by them. But we all know that that’s not the end of the story—because if it was, we wouldn’t be here tonight, remembering the story’s beginning.
We Christians say that in Jesus, Jesus who is born among us tonight, we say that in Jesus, God has been born among us, God has become incarnate, has taken flesh. And what we mean when we say that—that Jesus incarnates, enfleshes, embodies God—is that if you want to know what we believe God is like, what God cares about, then you look at Jesus. Jesus who stood with the poor and the oppressed and the marginalized and the outcast. Jesus who erased the boundaries that divide us. Jesus who refused to play by the rules of Empire, who modeled a different kind of power. The power of humility and solidarity and servanthood and dying for others in love. A power that places itself not at the top with those who have the most, but at the bottom with the least of these.
In living in that way, Jesus gave flesh to God, to the longings and passions of God—God who is love and justice and mercy. And if we take this Christian message and this Christmas story seriously, then we have to believe that we are called to give flesh to God in our lives too. That we are called to give flesh to God’s justice, and love, and mercy. If God’s love and justice are to be at work in the world, it will only be because we have taken Christmas seriously and given birth to God through our own acts of love and kindness and resistance.
Meister Eckhart, a Christian preacher way back in the 14th century, put it this way: “We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born”—not just Mary, but each of us. And he goes on, “What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us.”
Christmas is not simply a one-time event that happened two-thousand years ago. The work of enfleshing and birthing God in our world is ongoing. And maybe talk about the reordering of our tax code seems strange or out of place in a Christmas sermon. But a reordering like this that disproportionately benefits corporations and the super-rich while hurting those who are struggling is not so different from a first-century census designed to do the same to people like Mary and Joseph.
The conditions into which Jesus was born, the conditions in which his message was needed, the conditions that called forth his message, were not so different from the times we find ourselves in now. And we could use a little more Jesus right about now. The poet Rumi once said:
The body is like Mary. Each of us has a Jesus, but so long as no pain appears, our Jesus is not born. If pain never comes, our Jesus goes back to his place of origin on the same secret path he had come, and we remain behind, deprived and without a share of him.
If we stay comfortable while others are hurting, if we ignore the pain of the world, if we refuse to resist the forces of Empire, then our Jesus is not born, and we have no share of him. People of faith, people of goodwill, people, are being asked to step up in a big way right now. Are we going to give birth to a different world? It’s been two thousand years and we’re still stuck in the same story.
But it doesn’t have to stay this way. But it will take every one of us if we are going to shape a new world.
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
What will they say of our hearts? It doesn’t have to be this way. Jesus, and his revolution, isn’t over. It’s still possible for them to look back and say “In those days, their hearts grew; they were big, and fearless, and full of love. And they shaped a new world into being.” All it takes is us taking this Christmas story seriously. Us believing that God is still longing to be born. Us giving our flesh to God.
And so, rather than “Merry Christmas”: Resist. Love. Bring forth your Jesus—so that the one whose birth we celebrate tonight will never cease to be born in this world, and so that, through him, this world may become not the Kingdom of Caesar, of Empire, but the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Love. May it be so. May it be all of us. And may God be born—again and again, tonight and always.
Amen.
