Invited Home - Christmas Eve 2021

Invited Home

Luke 2: 1 – 20

 

The story of Jesus born to Mary and Joseph is old. It is told again and again. Many of us have heard it our whole lives.  Even if we are somewhat new to the story, chances are we’ve lived in a culture where it was something of a source story, a story whose lines are familiar to us somehow.

 

And yet, each time it is told, it is spoken into wherever we find ourselves on this life’s journey.

 

And this year…this year it is spoken into yet another variant surge, yet another set of changing plans, yet another set of anxieties about who might be sick, who might become sick, who should gather in what ways, where tests are available.

 

And we do the story disservice if we try to make all of that background noise silent. 

 

Because the background noise is not just noise - it is very much a part of the way God enters our world today.

 

Because throughout this story, it is plain that God is not about to wait on the perfect circumstance. In fact, God seems pretty committed to imperfection here. God shows up despite the clutter, the mess, the societal expectations, the laws, the political winds.

 

And God invites the powerless to open up. To meet God where God is or where God will be.

 

Zechariah is invited to parent the one who came to tell of the one who was to come despite his doubts.

Elizabeth is invited to bear John despite her infertility and age.

Mary is invited to birth God’s son despite her unwed virgin status.

Joseph is invited to receive a pregnant Mary as his wife despite the laws and societal expectations that surround him.

Somehow a humble home for livestock is invited to become a temporary home to the Messiah despite the animals chewing their cud alongside the birthing mother.

Shepherds are invited into Bethlehem to witness and honor a newborn king despite their simplicity, their lack of worth in the eyes of the locals.

Wise strangers (or Magi) are invited to follow signs that they see in the stars to a faraway place to honor a new power, despite their differing customs, nationality, faith. 

 

This is a story full of invitations despite the expected way of things. It is a story full of surprising “yeses”  despite the risks and disruptions. It is a story of invitations in spite of what the rest of the world expects.

 

I wonder, what unexpected but holy invitations have been placed before you? 

I wonder, how will you respond?

 

This week, navigating hard decisions about safety and wholeness, worship and celebration, I have been grappling with the differences between what I tend to think God wants or needs (mostly influenced by my own desire to meet the world’s expectation) verses what the story of God reveals about what it is God wants, needs or will do.  

 

I found myself journaling some simple formulas.

Holy is not equal to tidy.

Holy is not equal to expected.

Holy is not equal to perfect.

Holy is equal to received.

 

Hear that again.  Holy is equal to received.

 

Fr. Richard Rohr says this: “We are always the stable into which the Christ is born a new. All we can really do is keep our stable honest and humble, and the Christ will surely be born.”

 

How is it that we will receive what we are invited to bear or witness or nurture or praise? Not just this day or the next? But in the next and the next and the next? Especially when life in the moment feels crazy, turned upside down, imperfect?

 

Into that this week, the first verse of O Holy Night has rested in my heart.

 

Long lay the world 

in sin and error pining 

till he appeared 

and the soul felt it’s worth.

 

Do we really feel our worth because God invites us to bear, to witness, to nurture? 

Or do we spend time and energy seeking our worth elsewhere?

 

This story – this story about imperfection and radical yeses, this story that is told over and over into different seasons, different circumstances, wildly different life realities – this story calls us to remember and live into this:

 

God doesn’t need our perfection. 

God doesn’t need an elaborate meal or an extravagantly-set table. 

God doesn’t need a nursery appointed with all the things. 

God doesn’t need to come into the world through powerful people. 

And in fact, God comes into the world through the powerless and to the powerless, creating justice and joy and power by God’s very presence with us in flesh.

 

By joining us in the flesh God deems even the broken places, the weak places, the cluttered and dirty places, the worn places…. 

God deems them worthy, 

good,

even very good.

 

May it be so.

Amen.