One Christmas the partner was off at Midnight Mass whilst the other woman stayed at home. After a while it began to snow - they lived up in the countryside and the snow looked wonderful on the hills. A short while later, however, she heard a thudding sound, and then another. She went to investigate and found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the snow storm and in their desperate search for shelter, they had seen the light and flown into her window!
"I can't let these little creatures lie there and freeze to death" she thought. "But how can I help them?"
Then she remembered her barn. It would provide a nice warm shelter for them. She put on her coat and made her way through the snow to the barn. There she put on a light, but the birds wouldn't come.
"Food will bring them" she thought. So she scattered a trail of bread crumbs all the way to the barn. But the birds still wouldn't come. Then she tried to shoo them into the barn by walking around them and waving her arms at them. But they took alarm and scattered in all directions.
Then she said to herself, "they find me a strange and terrifying creature. If only there was some way I could get them to trust me."
Just at that moment the church bells began to ring. She stood silently as they rang out the glad tidings of Christmas: "The word made flesh and dwelt amongst us". Then she sank to her knees in snow and said, "Lord now I understand why you had to become one of us."
If you want to really understand and be in touch with ordinary people, you
have to go where nobody recognises you. You have to see what they see, hear
what they hear, live what they live. Understanding it in an abstract way is
different from feeling it with your whole being.
In Jesus, God drew near to us in person. He became one of us. He lived among us. Jesus is the gift of Christmas. This was no loving "from a distance". This was loving at close quarters.
God meets us where we are. He took our humanity on himself. This means we don't have to deny or reject our humanity in order to know God. He showed us how to live out the fullness of our humanity. Religion and holiness have become very real. They are not merely concerned with the spirit and heaven, but with the body and the earth.
By becoming a child, completely dependant on human care, God took away the distance between the divine and the human. We are not afraid of a little child.
Jesus has become a brother to us. What would we do without him? Abstract talk about God can leave us empty. We need God made flesh, human like us, walking in our street, even in our shoes, teaching us the way of God. And that is precisely what we are celebrating this night.
The Son of God comes to us not as a judge, but as a saviour. He comes to reveal our divine dignity as God's children, and the glory of our eternal destiny in heaven. This is the good news. This is the great joy which the angels announced to the shepherds, and which is announced to us tonight. Let us open our hearts to receive it.
Amen.
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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