The Whole Why of Christmas

Luke 1:39-55

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

If you are looking for the genuine “Why” of Christmas, this Gospel lesson is it.  If you are looking for the “What” of Christmas that’s Christmas Eve, the incarnation… Emmanuel… God with us… Jesus being born into this world.  The “Why” of Christmas is what Mary sang about in today’s Gospel lesson.  God came to be with us in the person of Jesus in order to show the the world the power of God’s kind of strength, the strength of sacrificial and mutual love.  God came so that the proud would have their “way it’s always been”, shaken right down to their shoes and after that shaking, to make sure the ways of the world would settle back to the way God had created them to be.  

God came so that the powerful would be brought down and the lowly brought up… so that the hungry would be filled up and the rich sent away empty.  But not so that those who had been on the bottom could finally give those who had been on the top a taste of their own medicine.  Jesus didn’t come for retribution… to add a heavenly wrong to humanity’s wrong to try and make one big right!  

The “Why” of Christmas was to begin the great turning of creation… to shake the world like a snow globe, and let it all settle back into the place and the way God created it to be in the beginning.  The “Why” of Christmas was to sweep up all of creation, from the very, very bottom to the tippy, tippy, top... to scoop ALL of it… all of us… into the healing, loving, presence of God without missing even the tiniest molecule of creation along the way. 

This genuine “Why” of Christmas, however, seems to be very difficult for us humans to do as a whole.  We either just  declare “Peace on Earth” without doing the real shaking that genuine peace requires OR we hijack God’s version of revolution and make it look like one of ours, where the former winners are turned into the new losers, and the former losers triumphantly give the previous winners a whole lot of what for! 

But God was not born into this world as a child to play humanity’s zero sum game!  That’s not Good News!  Christmas is the moment when God reached down to the very bottom, down to the most backwater of backwater towns, into the most scandalous sort of family and scooped up the poor and the rich, winners and losers, women and men, Jews and Gentiles and all of creation… scooped it all right up with a mighty hand and outstretched arm.  Scooped it all right up into the Presence of God.  And it is there… in the glorious Presence of God… deeply nestled in the loving embrace of Christ, that all of creation finally experience what God intended from the beginning… that we really and truly are neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are now one in Christ Jesus!  THAT is the “Why” of Christmas!  

As Christians it is our goal to celebrate that WHOLE of Christmas all year long, never pretending there can be Peace on Earth without the Earth being first shaken loose from the way it is.  And if we are to celebrate the WHOLE of Christmas we must stop the never ending insanity of simply changing the current winners into losers and the historical losers into winners by trying to play humanity’s game of retribution.  But celebrating the whole of Christmas even on one day, let alone all year long, turns out to be very nearly impossible for us.    

And THAT is why God in person has come to shake the world for us, shake it in a mysterious and divine way that is filled with endless inclusion and completely free of anger and retribution.  God has come to shake the world in a way we don’t seem able to do ourselves.  God has come, in person, to do what needs to be done FOR us.  For the "us" at the very lowliest bottom right up to the "us" at the tippy top.  Then God stays with us, is still with us, making sure you and I and all of creation settles gently back into the place God created for us all to belong before even time began… back into our places as beloved children of God.  Amen.