Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Texts:  Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-4, John 1:1–14

Dear Friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you. Amen.

I love looking at the crèche scenes people put up this time of year.  I imagine many of you have one in your home. Here’s a favorite from our house. I purchased it when I was still in seminary on a mission trip in El Salvador. I love the bright colors.

I was given this one in my first congregation. It’s relatively easy to set up, but the little donkey never stays upright, so I have to lean him up against the shed.

Lately I’ve looked for one that has more ethnically diverse characters, or at least ones that suggest people who could have lived in Palestine at the time of the Roman Empire. (See photo credits at the end of the endnotes).

But this year, I’ve been especially drawn to the ones that just hint at the shapes of the characters, without making anything too specific. We’re familiar enough with the scene, that we can translate almost any objects if they’re in the right position.

A simple stable, something that looks like a taller figure, a shorter figure, and between them, a small object that could hold the outline of an infant, wrapped in bands of cloth.

In fact, there’s a whole trend of what are being called Minimalist Nativity sets It’s been around a while; you’ve probably seen some. (https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/minimalist-nativity-sets-reaction-b258810.html).  All kinds of objects, arranged to suggest the holy family. People can get pretty creative with common household items. A Yankee Candle store submitted their own version for a “best Christmas photo” competition. They did not win, but you have to applaud their effort.

This could be your Christmas assignment. You have twelve days. Make a nativity scene with things you have near you — maybe things in your medicine cabinet, or the drawer where you keep your batteries. Or maybe you just happen to have some colored wooden spheres squirreled away. I particularly appreciate that Mary is a blue sphere.

 

 

 

 

Gertrud Mueller Nelson, the liturgical author and artist who shared her insights with us during the pandemic, created this lovely scene with rocks she found on the beach near San Diego. The stones looked just like this when she found them, stained by the sand and the surf.

I don’t know if this is what John the evangelist has in mind when he describes the Word becoming flesh, full of grace and truth[i]. John seems to have a more cosmic vision than a bunch of batteries or candles. The Word, the Word that was with God, and the Word that was God, comes into the world, and lives among us.

Not really that minimal—more maximal over-the-top in scope: the entire power or message of the God of the universe, very God from very God, true light from true light which the darkness does not overcome, becomes flesh – human – bone and blood and sweat and guts.

This is the gift of the Incarnation. The God of all, who was from the beginning, and in whom all things were created, enters our story, takes on our life, joins this creation, to make us whole.

The beginning of John’s gospel makes it clear who Jesus is and what he is here to do. Jesus comes to enlighten all of us, and to claim us all as children of God.

I’m especially fascinated with this line:  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

Not one thing. Could this mean that it is not just humanity that the Word is reclaiming as children of the light, but in fact, all creation, all things that came into being through him? Is Christ here to reconcile not just people with flesh like that which he assumes, but all that has come into being in him – the mountains and seas? the winds? the snow? the jackals and wolves, beetles, mushrooms and dandelions? Do the fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy because they too are caught up in the good news?

Just how far can it go? To the batteries and toiletries stuffed into the back of the bathroom closet? Could we trust that not one thing that was created will be forgotten?

Because it’s not just the empty toothpaste tubes and wooden figures that we want to be caught up in all of this. It’s those sad, forgotten pieces of ourselves we’ve squirreled away in the crannies of our consciousness – the heartache, the regrets, the painful losses, the unresolved arguments, the distressing reminders that another year has passed and we once again have missed chances to experience a life full of grace and truth.

Could God make a nativity scene out of our broken hearts? A Holy Family out of our shattered dreams?

Outside of artistic or silly minimalist expressions, we normally think of the Holy Family as appearing in tranquil sweetness, sleeping in heavenly peace, the child “no crying he makes.”

But of course, we know that wasn’t the case. The Word became flesh in a world that knows turmoil and violence, loss and grief, anger and emptiness. I suspect that the baby did cry. The mother screamed in pain, while the father stood by, feeling helpless and afraid. The word was born, as God’s word had so often come, to lives in ruins[ii]. The Word was present among those who did not know or accept its truth. And yet, that never seemed to stop it.

Maybe our loss and grief and rejection are the point. Maybe God sees our minimalist hopes, or even our maximal over-the-top longings and says, I’m here.

In a beautiful reflection posted on his Unfolding Light website, Pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes writes about the Incarnation. I’ll link to the entire post, so you can read it all, but here’s just a part of it.

Yes, I who stir the star-whirls with a finger
have considered, I have pondered well
what it might be to plunge into not just
the human form but substance, single life:

risk being lost, alone, abandoned (me!)
feel loss or guilt, or suffer being wrong….
To weep. To love so hard it wounds…. To die.

I know this. Yet a life removed from life
I will renounce to feel the touch of you,
and wonder, and the miracle of love[iii].

In the incarnation, God risks rejection and loneliness, loss and sorrow. God enters this creation, in one particular life, and will experience in it the pain and struggle that every newborn is destined for. The Word risks it all so that God could be Immanuel, One With Us.

I think God must see all of this – the beauty and sweetness of a mother’s love for a newborn,but also the mundane reality of junk drawers full of old batteries, and sorry reminders of loss.

God claims every bit of it, the sweetness of every twinkling light and ginger cookie, every animal shed and bloody birth. God claims each tender Christmas carol sung in the glow of candlelight, and every single tear of those who grieve their first Christmas without a loved one.

God who created each one of us from the dust of the stars, must want to share all of it with us—the least bit of sand-polished stones, the lost pieces of abandoned plans and expectations, the hurt, the fear, the minimalist nothingness,

and the miraculous moments of over-the-top joy. God chooses to be born within each speck of it, no matter how mundane, how broken, how fragile.

The whole Word of God, the truth, the life, the light, the grace, is born into this world, is born into your life, mine, making even the most ordinary, forgotten piece of stardust a Holy Child, full of grace and truth.

Thanks be to God.

Merry Christmas.

 

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[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/minimalist-nativity-sets-reaction-b258810.html

[i] John 1:1-14

[ii] Isaiah 52:7-10

[iii] Garnaas-Holmes, Steven.  Incarnation, posted 12/19/2022.  Unfailing Light, https://unfoldinglight.net/2022/12/

Yes, I who stir the star-whirls with a finger
have considered, I have pondered well
what it might be to plunge into not just
the human form but substance, single life:

risk being lost, alone, abandoned (me!)
feel loss or guilt, or suffer being wrong,
betray and be betrayed, with shame and grief,
to hurt, to doubt, and not to know—not know!—

to try and fail to understand myself,
to feel and sometimes fear it, and to find
myself undone, unable to go on.
To weep. To love so hard it wounds…. To die.

I know this. Yet a life removed from life
I will renounce to feel the touch of you,
and wonder, and the miracle of love
unearned but given and received in joy.

I forfeit my defense, surrender all,
and fragile now, as if a newborn child,
stripped bare and swaddled only in my love,
I seek you.
I am coming.
I am here.

 

——–

Photo credits:

Photo 1 Bright colors; Lois Pallmeyer

Photo 2 Humble stable; Lois Pallmeyer

Photo 3 Iron Nativity; Danya B. handcrafted nativity sculpture set of the Holy Family. Made in iron using the sand-casing method. On www.Amazon.com

Photo 4 plain pine; Lois Pallmeyer

Photo 5 Lego; Mark Channing/Twitter @channer3; replying to @kbjones, Dec. 6, 2020.

Photo 6 Bottle caps; Minimalist Nativity Scene (by Paulo Biacchi), https://i.imgur.com/uTMvhEj.jpg

Photo 7 Yankee Candle Store; https://twitter.com/elsaonthebus/status/1335569734746730501/photo/1

Photo 8 Medicine Cabinet; Dr. Komali Yenneti (she/her) @Komaliy/Twitter replying to @kbjones, Dec. 6, 2020

Photo 9 Batteries; Rachel Chilton @Rachel Chilton/Twitter, pictured on “Minimalist Nativity Sets Have Taken Over the Internet,” By Luke O’Reilly, December11, 2020, Evening Standard. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/minimalist-nativity-sets-reaction-b258810.html

Photo 10 Spheres; Chris Gardner, “How to: Make a DIY Modern and Minimalist Nativity Set” on Curbly. https://www.curbly.com/14540-how-to-make-a-diy-modern-and-minimalist-nativity-set . Dec 16, 2020

Photo 11 Stones; Gertrud Nelson/Facebook, used by permission, December 19, 2019. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=936271830106694&set=pcb.936272430106634