Year B

Luke 2:(1-7), 8-20

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Real Identity of God

Yes, the blessing of Christmas is that God put a baby in a manger. But as we heard the young people proclaim! The greater blessing is that the baby didn’t stay there. Jesus is Emmanuel. God with us! And it’s because the baby grew up and lived out God’s rescue plan, it’s because the manger is empty that we are able to have God with us even tonight. In the mystery and beauty of the manger scene we answer the question, “Who is God?” Tonight we discover the meaning of our Christian faith.

Yet, the answer we discover in Luke’s nativity story tonight is a bit surprising, unexpected, and more than a bit indecent. What we discover tonight has implications for how we live our lives and serve God in our homes, churches, and communities. You see, our understanding of God has always struggled against the tendency to imagine God in our image and expect God to be like a decent, hardworking, successful member of our own society. We do have a tendency to want to ignore the details of the ways in which God chose to reveal God’s real identity to the world.

But we can’t ignore the details, because the nativity and all that occurred in the wonder and splendor of that night gives us the details through which God chose to reveal Godself to the world. God chose to come as a baby to a poor, unwed, homeless couple powerless to resist their temporary forced emigration from Nazareth to Bethlehem by the imperial powers. This is not exactly the way we would expect God to choose to reveal God’s identity. For a God whom we would presume could choose any identity, chose an identity that is not only surprising but socially indecent…poor, homeless, unwed couple!

God’s identity in the baby Jesus stands in sharp contrast to the first person we encounter in Luke’s nativity story, that of the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus who was also identified as Lord and as the Son of God. The threat that this infant God presented to the imperial structures of power shortly forced Jesus’ parents to flee Herod—the local imperial authority—and ultimately led to the execution of Jesus on the cross by the empire because Jesus’ ministry on behalf of all the little people threatened that imperial social order.

There is no surprise then that, when the shepherds tell people that this infant, born in a stall laid in a manger, is Lord, the people are “amazed”—the nativity of God is not only unexpected but scandalous. Declaring that this infant is Lord was not only hard to believe because surely God would not come in a powerless baby, it was a direct challenge to the authority of Caesar as Lord and to the social, political, and economic order that believed privilege, power and wealth was the ideal. Calling this baby Lord means that God identifies God’s self with those with no social, political and economic power. Understanding the miracle of the incarnation is overwhelming.

Being overwhelmed is nothing new. The people in Isaiah’s day were overwhelmed. They longed for a powerful sign that God would redeem them from oppression. Isaiah prophesy’s a world where justice and righteousness will reign; a King to come who will lift the yoke of burden from his people’s shoulders. His beautiful words end with a sense of expectancy that God will act to establish the community and cause it to prosper. Identifying with the marginalized is not a powerless action by God but a shocking challenge to the unjust social structures that benefit some to the exclusion and exploitation of others. The God whose incarnation we celebrate this Christmas Eve is an infant whose later scandalous teachings and acts will turn the social order upside down in God’s ongoing work on behalf of the oppressed.

And, we cannot forget that the identity of God revealed in the nativity, is still shocking and scandalous to us today. The understanding of God is no more obvious or expected today than it was over two thousand years ago. God is not like those at the top of the economic ladder, or the sought after image of the dominant social norms of our culture. God is not like those who represent the wealthy elite and the powerful. God is where people are starving and hungry—where people are powerless and homeless—where people are fighting or dying—where people struggle for freedom and justice and human dignity.

It is when we look beyond our immediate world that we hear Jesus saying to us: “As you did it for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you have done it for me.” Christmas is a mystery which occurs over and over again each time we respond to Christ’s command to reach out to the lowliest of society—especially those whom society would ignore. The lessons for today call the church to stand up for the marginalized, for those who are victims of power. In short, Christmas is an encounter with the Holy One that continues to happen when we look around and look beyond.

“Who is God?” Who is this one whose birthday we celebrate this eve? It is none other than “God with us,” Emmanuel, the living creator of all the galaxies; that One who created this earth and all that is in it; it is Christ Jesus who is from everlasting to everlasting. The Alpha and Omega whose birth tells us that God is not above or beyond our need or reach. It is a God whose birth in Jesus, chose to identify with the lowly, the powerless, the victims of society and who calls all to take on this identity.