God risks everything – being wounded, even killed – to be able to bring healing and life to you and the whole creation.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord
Text: Luke 2:1-20

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

When you have been wounded, you can bring healing.

I’ve been in a spiritual direction group with three other pastors for 26 years now. We meet monthly with our spiritual director, have shared our lives with each other, helped each other heal.

Once I was sharing something painful that I was going through. I worried that maybe it was too much, even in that group.  But I looked at my friend – one I admire and respect so much – and I saw tears in his eyes. And I knew without words that he absolutely had known the same pain, and I was going to be OK.

When you have been wounded, you can bring healing. This is the heart of love. And it’s the heart of God’s coming as one of us.

The beautiful writer and theologian Madeline L’Engle wrote a poem ^[1] wondering about risking bringing a child into this world.

“This is no time for a child to be born,” she writes, “With the earth betrayed by war & hate.” So many young people today ask that, if they should even consider children. And God faced the same question 2,000 years ago, L’Engle says in the second stanza: “That was no time for a child to be born, / In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; / Honor & truth were trampled by scorn.”

But her final stanza asks the true question: “When is the time for a child to be born?” There’s always hatred and oppression and violence and threat. But then there’s her final line: “Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.”

That’s God’s answer to the question. It’s never a good time. But God’s Love will risk birth anyway.

And that’s what brings us together tonight.

God risked being born as a helpless child in the midst of a violent, hateful world. God’s Love decided to risk birth, not in spite of the dangers and threats. But because of them. Because when you’ve been wounded, you can bring healing. God can’t stay distant if God is hoping to bring healing to you and me and all people, to this frightened and broken creation. God has to come here and risk.

God needs to experience human pain and suffering, know it intimately, be scarred by it, bleed of it. Even die for it. Because then we can look into God’s eyes in our pain and suffering and see tears that know what we’re facing. Tears that have already been shed before. Only by entering our pain can the God who made all and loves all, becoming vulnerable, able to be wounded, open a path to healing and hope.

And it’s how you and I will bring healing to others.

Once we’ve gone through pain and found God with us, now we can be healing hope to others. If we risk that. If we are willing to be vulnerable with each other and with those we meet. It’s a huge risk. But love risks, because it’s the only way to healing.

You have shed tears, you’ve bled, had a broken heart, you’ve known fear and grief and dread. When you fully embody that truth, your heart, your woundedness, your sadness, your fear, and risk sharing that with others, you are God’s healing.

You see, love risks on both sides. Even if you’re the Triune God.

God’s Love risked coming to us here. But God also trusted that our love would take risks for this child. Love goes both ways.

It’s time to let go of the legend of Mary and Joseph turned away at the door and wandering to find house room in a stable. It’s one we love, especially when remembering the many who are driven away from doors in our world, but it didn’t happen. Luke says there was no room for them in the “guest room.” “Inn” has never been a good translation. Luke knows the difference because in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, he takes the wounded man to an inn. It’s a different word.

And that matters, because God’s risk of love was greeted by a welcome of open arms, by people who were suffering themselves under oppression and poverty. No one would refuse hospitality then, let alone to a couple ready to bring a child into the world. Certainly relatives wouldn’t, which Joseph certainly would have come to.

No, Aunt Betty and her brood were already in the guest room, so Mary and Joseph were welcomed into the main room of the house where everyone slept, where the family’s few animals were brought in for the night. Jesus was in a manger off the floor so he wouldn’t be rolled on.

And Mary was surrounded by women who knew what to do, who made sure this child arrived safely and was washed and warm and welcome. They even had swaddling cloths ready, Luke says.

This is how God always hopes it will work – love risks in both directions, is wounded in both directions, and can heal in both directions.

So let’s risk love.

Let’s risk it all. Open up and trust that through our shared pain and joy and fear and hope we will find healing and life together.

When you’ve been wounded, you are able to bring healing. Even if you’re the Triune God. That’s God’s gift to you and the creation, and God’s invitation to all, so that in our shared risk, our shared love, our shared vulnerability, hope and healing might finally come to this world and bring life.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

[1] Madeline L’Engle, “The Risk of Birth,” from The Ordering of Love: New and Collected Poems (Harmony/Rodale/Convergent © 2005)

Incarnation is God in you and me, everyday human people whose only call is to be everyday human people who love and care for the world.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, year C
Text: Luke 1:39-45

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

There was a knock at the door.

The elderly woman who looked like a grandmother, except for the very prominent bulge at her midsection pulled herself out of her seat and went to open it. She saw a young girl there, tired and dusty from a weeklong journey.

“Oh, honey,” Elizabeth said, drawing Mary into her arms, “I’m so glad you’re here. Come in and rest. I’ll get you something to eat.” And so began a long time of peace for both women, taking walks, resting, eating, talking, listening. Two women facing pregnancy and the mysteries of their changing bodies, one too old to be doing such a thing, one too young to know what it was going to be like.

At lunch one day, Elizabeth chuckled. “It’s funny how the minute I opened the door my baby jumped. I wonder if he knew who was there.” A little later she added, “I don’t get how its possible I’m sitting here with the mother of my Lord? Never expected that.”

With all due respect to Luke, this feels truer to what this visitation was. Two women, one too old to be doing such a thing, one too young to know what it was going to be like, sharing the experience together. But Luke is so focused on the divine beginnings of these two boys, he coats the story in a gloss of mystery and wonder, polishes up their plain words into lofty poetry. So we see these two women more for the boys growing inside than for what they’re actually doing.

The boys will have their day. But today let these women speak for themselves.

Because they show the heart of this visitation: ordinary human need.

When we think only of Mary’s child, we forget the ordinariness of it all. We get all theological and mystical and wonder, “what was it like to have God’s child growing in you?” For Mary, the identity of her baby is certainly a piece of the puzzle. But what she’s got to face first is simply human: pregnancy.

Her mother must have suggested she visit Elizabeth. She could have coached her daughter through the early days of pregnancy, as she did the last two thirds of it. But Mary goes on a 90 mile journey to Judea to Elizabeth almost as soon as she’s pregnant. Elizabeth must be something like Mary’s great-aunt, and likely the wise one Mary’s mother trusted most in the world. “Go see Aunty Elizabeth,” she must have said. “She’ll help you start sorting this, and then you can come back and face what’s ahead.”

Again, with all due respect to the writer of our Hymn of the Day today, I don’t think Mary ran “to greet the woman who would recognize her boy.” Mary ran to find the woman who would hold her and give her wisdom and space and guidance and love.

This is true incarnation: God is with us in each other in our ordinary lives.

These two spent three months together so they could do what was ahead of them. Mary left just before Elizabeth went into labor. She was ready to face what she needed to do back home. And Elizabeth was ready to face what was likely to be hard at her age.

God’s life is lived in and through you and me. But we need ordinary human care to help us live that life. People with experience who can walk with us and help us see the road ahead, people who can listen to our fears and concerns. Embrace us and invite us in for food and drink and peace.

That’s why so many of us need to be part of a community of faith. Like Mary, we need to be with people who understand, who help and support and love us, ordinary, regular people who know what it is to bear God in the world and to be human.

Today’s story’s not about the divine children. It’s about two human mothers.

Mary doesn’t need to learn to be the mother of the Messiah yet. She needs to learn to be a mother. She needs to learn to care for her body for nine months, to prepare for childbirth, to get ready for rearing an infant and then a toddler and then a child and then a teenager. She needs help with all that anxiety and fear. She’s got plenty of time to ponder the divine implications in her heart, and Luke says she takes that time. Certainly some of her conversations with Elizabeth were about God’s child. But mostly now she needs to face the very human things God needs her to do.

Like you. Whatever God needs of you, whatever love you are asked carry into your life, it’s not a mystery surrounded by angelic light and song. It will be normal, ordinary, human things you do. Loving, reaching out, being kind. Sharing your abundance with others, as Elizabeth’s boy will one day tell people by the banks of the river. Praying for those who do evil, loving even those who persecute and hate, as Mary’s boy will one day tell you.

Amidst all the pain and suffering of the world, the things none of us know how to fix, the oppression and evil that seems to be rising where more often than not we feel helpless, in all of that, God says “I just need you to be a loving human. And that will make a difference.” And so we help each other.

It starts with a knock at the door.

So let’s be good to each other and open up and help each other be loving humans.

God has chosen to work in you, in me, in all people for the life of the world. Just ordinary, living, breathing humans whose love and grace and generosity and courage and risk-taking and kindness can change the world.

Have a seat next to Elizabeth and Mary and they’ll help you figure why that’s such a joy.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen