Sermon December 22 2024 Word Made Flesh                  Rev. Betsy Hogan

So, do you love the snow? I mean, I do know it has to be shovelled. And it makes every movement treacherous, for feet and for wheels. And everything takes that much more time. And it lands on tree boughs and power wires, and they bend and sometimes they break. And it gets slushy or icy or slippery or messy – but do you love the snow?

Because I feel like sometimes it can be a bit relentless that way, the snow. Making us love it. Particularly early in the winter when we’re at our most vulnerable. 

Like it looks down from the heavens at the bleak brownish detritus of autumn, when nothing looks properly cared for and everything’s just sort of a miserable mess, and it says – “right. 

“I think maybe all of that ‘spiralling back into soil’ and ‘dwindling into death’ needs a bit of covering up. In a blanket of snowy smoothness, that hides ALL of it.

No rotting leaves, no muddy paths crushing the dead grass, no rusty fence posts or unfortunate piles or ugly garbage bins or overdue paint jobs – just absolutely clean and clear and pristine perfection.

It kind of gets me every year, that first real snow. And I doubt I’m alone in that. It gets us at our most vulnerable. When the bleakness is at its greyish brownish bleakish worst. Covering it all up with snowy perfection. Forcing us, however briefly, to love it. Because it’s just so restfully beautiful.

In a way, weirdly, it’s a bit like the Gospel of John’s version of the Christmas story, that Anne Marie read for us just now.

Because what she read IS basically the Gospel of John’s version of the Christmas story – it’s the closest John gives us to anything approaching the Christmas stories that are told in familiar detail in the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

But where theirs are truly messily deeply “of the earth, earthy”, with their unexpected pregnancies and broken engagements and changes of mind and ill-timed census taking, and birthing and mangers and random visits from shepherds –

John’s is instead like the peaceful perfect blanket quiet… of new fallen snow. Gently covering all of it in the peaceful perfect blanket quiet… of heavenly goodness. And kind of maybe possibly when we’re at our most vulnerable. When everything’s kind of the colour of blah, and December’s taking its toll, and really the most we’re up for in the chaotic and exhausting mess of the world, perhaps, is some choirs of angels and maybe some twinkling lights.

John’s gospel distills the Christmas story into that kind of clean crystal gift. Just Godness holding the universe, connected and embraced, in spirit. 

Because it’s all theological categories, John’s Christmas story. The Word that speaks creation into being. The Light emerging in Life. The Life embodied in Flesh. The Eternal, the Spirit, the Energy that can’t be lost, the Light and the Life and the Love – Godness from the beginning of time, and still. Now in flesh appearing.

John just lays it all out over the top of everything, exactly when we need it most.

Maybe if we’re feeling Grinchy or we’re feeling overwhelmed or disorganized or tired, or maybe if honestly? Everything “of the earth, earthy” is just really kind of a LOT this year. Again. 

When Mary busts into her Magnificat with the promise of the mighty being cast down from their thrones, and it’s just like “bring it”. And there’s no room in the inn and we’re all like “we know”. And Jesus was a refugee and no one’s safe in Bethlehem and the shepherds want a saviour but half of them apparently think it’s Herod – and do we want wise men to take contemplative walks in the snow or is that just going to make it all worse?

If the Christmas story and all its “of the earth, earthy” is just feeling a bit too on the nose right now – and it might be -- it isn’t the first time by a mile. And it probably won’t be the last. 

But John’s gospel speaks right into it. Right through it. Right over it. Riffing on Isaiah. Comfort, oh comfort, my people.

The Word, the Light, the Life, the Spirit of Godness, is made flesh and dwells among us. The light transcends all of it, and can’t be overcome. 

Can’t be overcome. Can’t be overcome. No matter how much ‘all of it’, of the earth, earthy, tries.

John lays out his Christmas story like a blanket of snow. When we’re at our most vulnerable, when enough with grey brown bleakness, when what we need most is the feeling of Godness and goodness and with-us to be uncomplicated and holy and perfect, however briefly. 

There’s a beautiful line in American poet WH Auden’s Christmas Oratorio -- in the portion For The Time Being that’s often read after Christmas. But it’s worth reading before Christmas, I think – just because of the reminder --

Of what Auden calls “the stable where for once in our lives, Everything became a You and nothing was an It.” The crystal clear perfection of that line.

When the miracle of incarnation – of Godness breaking into all of this – is the simple miracle of meeting each other and seeing each other and knowing each other as intimately as we know ourselves. Connected and related in spirit, each other’s well-being as necessary and essential as our own. 

And no one forgettable, because how? It’s impossible, when we are to each other as precious as our own selves. And NEVER an IT, a mere object easily sidelined, but only a YOU. Each of us, whole and beloved in our humanness, the subjects of our own lives and in relation to one another. Valued and cherished and perfectly beautiful in a hundred imperfect ways.

We get to need that transcendence. If everything in our Christmas story is of the earth, earthy – and it really totally is, from the domestic burdens of Mary and Joseph, to the unkempt shepherds and their wandering sheep, to pushy desperate crowds in Bethlehem and fearsome pathetic puppet kings – 

It’s not the only Christmas story we get. Not that there’s anything wrong with it! In fact there’s NOTHING wrong and there’s EVERYTHING right about a faithfulness grounded in God being with us that’s inescapably familiar --

That unfolds in the domestic struggles and power imbalances and social issues and political maneouverings that have always made up history and still make up the now. Because that’s the actual point of God’s incarnation into our life and it always will be.

But it’s not the only Christmas story we get. And maybe that’s because God knows… there are limits. Maybe it’s because sometimes God knows we need transcendence… and we get to.

Bishop John Shelby Spong was an American pastor and preacher and scholar, and he observed with good reason that there are times and there are Christmasses when we may well in fact need to separate history from just… mystery. 

And instead simply “enter into and enjoy the mystery of this season, its miracle and its promise and its transcendence. Dreaming of the promise of peace on earth and good will amongst all people [and leaning into that vision unfolding].”

I think that’s why we get John’s Christmas story too. Because sometimes we just need a blanket of new fallen snow to cover it all like a miracle and take our breath away.

For unto us, says John, is born… a Word. Just that. A Word that breaks the silence of despair with light and life and love. Here among us now. Amen.