I always have a little bit of trouble knowing what to say in my sermons at Christmas. After all, you all know this story already. And most of you have heard as many Christmas sermons as there were angels in the heavenly host! So this year, I enrolled in a Christmas Preaching Bootcamp. It seemed a good idea. I figured I would get some new ideas and y’all might get a better sermon. But there was one thing I didn’t take into account… how much time it would take. I kind of ignored, or simply didn’t believe the “two hours of sermon preparation and half an hour of prayer per day” statement.
Those of you who know me will know that I tend to run behind. By Wednesday I was still trying to find time for Monday’s prayer and study. I was so busy with little details and all the bits and pieces that go into running a small church, from bank accounts to bible readings, that I just couldn’t find time to pay attention to God or for God to speak to me about the sermon. Fortunately though, God finds a way through despite my being full up with details, just as she found a place to get born in Bethlehem even though the inn was full.
God is persistent but never pushy.
It’s amazing that given the vastness of the universe, and the many critters on this planet that God chose to incarnate among humans. God chose to become human, and God chose to be born to a teenager in a working class family in a poor country that was occupied by the soldiers of a powerful empire. Despite all the difficulties, God chose that time to become human.
We live at a time of great difficulty for millions of people. I wonder where God would chose to be incarnate today? Perhaps he would be born in Mexico to one of the families waiting hoping for asylum; perhaps he would be born to stateless person living in a displaced persons camp; or to a woman in what’s left of Syria or perhaps one facing starvation in Yemen. There are many, many places where God might choose to incarnate.
But the initial incarnation of God – the direct putting on of human flesh by the Creator God- happened in one time and one place because we humans only live in one time and one place.
After that, it is up to us.
God’s incarnation today comes through God’s people – the Body of Christ – the enfleshment of Christ – it is up to us to be God with flesh on in our world.
But most of us are like me, too busy with all the details to pay full attention to the incoming God.
Yet we know that God is persistent but never pushy.
I wonder if Mary was the first young woman that the angel Gabriel visited? Perhaps not. Perhaps he visited a Sarah or a Martha before Mary, and she said, “Well God that’s a great idea but it’s just not a good time, you see I have all this to do to get ready for my wedding, and my mother’s not been so well recently. Maybe next year.”
What if Mary had been too busy? Too full with her own plans? Not willing to pay attention to the inconvenient words of a shiny stranger?
What if the shepherds hadn’t listened to the angels? What if they had been too busy playing cards to notice the light in the sky?
In his persistence, God found a way through to humans who would listen; Mary, who immediately agreed, “Let it be with me according to your word” and the shepherds who “went with haste” to Bethlehem. Humans who not only would listen but would act on what they heard.
I wonder whether the innkeeper heard a voice or saw an angel telling him to keep a space open for a special guest? Perhaps he did but then it was late and there were people at the door with money in their hands… really the place was too busy to keep a space available just on a whim. But then, when he saw the pregnant woman, ready to give birth anytime now, he realized his mistake.
But there was a place, a corner, in the stable. It was hardly comfortable. Not a nice sanitary place to go into labor. We know nothing of the birth, whether Jesus came quickly or took hours, whether he was early or long past his expected day, whether it was a hard labor. Yet even in the busy-ness of Bethlehem during a census, God found a way. God found a place to be born as a human, born to a mother who had said yes.
That is our challenge tonight. Will we say yes? Will we say yes to the God who is persistent but never pushy?
Will I say yes to the God who requests my attention on Monday, and on Tuesday… not just on Sunday? Will you say yes, and find room in the inn of your heart and life to let God in?
When our lives and minds are filled with the worries and busy-ness of everyday life, it is hard for God to get through to us. There is literally no room in the inn. We get to make room for the Christ to be born and to grow in us. Will you find a way to empty yourself so like Mary you can say, “Let it be with me according to your word”? Will you listen to your intuition and make sure that there is room for the Christ to incarnate in your life and your business?
God is persistent but never pushy.
I don’t know exactly how God is speaking to you today. I don’t know where in your life she is asking for space. I don’t know whether the labor will be hard or whether he will come quickly. But I do know that your life will never be the same.
Every time we let go of ourselves and say yes to God, things change. The child is reborn in us and we become new. We become a little more like Mary, a little more the birthers of God in our world. But even more than that, we ourselves become, a little more, the ongoing incarnation of God.
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