John 1:1-5, 10-16

What a Mess
Sermon preached Christmas Eve 2014
Opening
Christmas is fun and joyful and beautiful - but its also kind of a mess.
Theres no mess quite like the mess Christmas makes - if you have children at Christmas,
youre going to have scattered all over the house wrapping paper and shredded boxes that
were torn open with glee to get at the presents, and theres toys all over the place, and if
you give them Legos or other little toys you end up stepping on one in your bare feet and
letting out a not-very-Christmasy bad word...
If you have a big Christmas dinner youre going to have a greasy roasting pan in the sink
and a casserole dish with crusty stuff that doesnt want to come off and a big pile of
dishes;
If you have guests over you cleaned the house like fury but after they leave youve got to
wash the sheets in the guest bedroom and clean the guest bathroom and then you have to
take down all the decorations and vacuum up the pine needles that get
everywhere...Christmas is fun and joyful and beautiful, but its also kind of a mess.
Christmas a mess for the Son of God
This evening we read all the Christmas stories but ended with John - John starts his story
of Christs birth in heaven, but Matthew and Luke show us the length of his journey Christ comes down from the heights of heaven and on Christmas emerges into the world
through the messy trauma of birth.
Seeing human births
Old days, fathers pacing in waiting room, smoking Camels, drinking bad coffee,
until the doctor or nurse comes out and says you have a baby boy.
Today, we fathers see the trauma and mess of birth. Youre supposed to be strong
and helpful to your wife, but when the baby starts emerging, some men pass out
and hit the floor and the doctor now has two patients to take care of.
And newborn babies - pretty messy. Smeared with goop and blood, squinting and
squalling and sometimes not very nice looking. I was nearly 10 pounds at birth and was a
breech baby, the doctor had to use forceps to deliver me and I came out all bruised with
my face and head misshapen and my grandmother took one look at me and burst into
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tears.
We have about 27 million paintings of the nativity that show Mary and Joseph looking
adoringly at the Christ-child who is kind of glowing with divinity and there are angels up
in the top of the frame and shepherds looking on - all is calm, all is bright - those pictures
are wonderful and beautiful but can make us forget that the Son of God entered our world
through the messy trauma of human birth.
And the same theme played on during Christs life. The Son of God - becomes flesh and
blood. Hes a teenager with pimples. He has the same bodily functions that we do. If he
eats onions, his breath reeks just like ours. He gets tired and cranky and needs sleep. He
wakes up in the morning with crust in his eyes like we do. From the purity of the heights
of heaven - to the bag of flesh and bones that we all are.
Why did he do it?
Because our world is a mess. Because were a mess. And the way God chose to heal and
save us, was to enter right into the mess of our world and our lives.
Now I dont mean to insult any of you fine people here tonight - but if youre truthful, you
know youre something of a mess. I sure can be. I could tell you stories to illustrate, I
could ask you to quietly inventory your own messed-upness, but lets not ruin the mood
here tonight. Lets just hear this from C.S. Lewis and see if it applies:
For the first time I examined myself...And there I found what appalled me: a zoo
of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds.
I am reminded of an exchange between Kirk and Spock in one of the Star Trek
movies Kirk says to Spock the Vulcan, Everybodys human. And Spock says, I
find that...insulting.
Why did Jesus become one of us humans? Because we are so messed up and lost that
only God coming near as one of us can save us
Otberg - Hes way up there, and Im way down here, trapped in my mortality and my
finitude and my fallenness and my brokenness and my darkness. I could spend the rest of
my life trying to climb up the stairs and doing good deeds and I could never make it to
where God is. I mess up even the good deeds I do. Thats the human condition: God is
way up on the one-millionth floor of holiness and perfection, and Im down here in the
basement of junk and sin and fear.
Then one day one day some angels come to a few shepherds in the field and say,
Heres the Good News. I want to tell you what it is. The Good News is that in Jesus God
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has come downstairs. In Jesus, God has come ALL THE WAY DOWN HERE into the
basement with you and me. And the Good News is, Lew said, He didnt just come for
a visit. He brought his toothbrush and his razor and His pajamas, and He came to stay.
He came to stay!
Jesus came to us - and went around doing things like walking right up to the most
messed-up people of his day - like the scrawny little Roman collaborator Zaccheus the tax
collector - and goes to the mans house for supper and stays with him in a gesture of
friendship - when everyone else thought that a Messiah-type like Jesus should pound the
little weasel into the dust...Jesus came near to us, comes near to us, not in our best
moments but in our worst, not to praise whats good about us but to save what is rotten
about us.
An illustration
And hes still at it.
I read an article by a woman named Rosaria Butterfield. University professor, atheist,
bitter and angry towards Christianity and Christians. Of them she said, Stupid.
Pointless. Menacing. Thats what I thought of Christians and their god Jesus, who in
paintings looked as powerful as a Breck Shampoo commercial model.
She wrote a critical article about the Christian mens movement Promise Keepers and got
a bunch of mail about it, and one letter stuck out, from a pastor in nearby Syracuse. He
prodded her about her conclusions, about how she arrived at her moral convictions. She
threw it out but later retrieved it from the trash can. The questions it raised wouldnt let
her go.
Eventually she accepted the pastors invitation to dinner and over the next two years
became friends with him and his wife. Butterfield said of them, They entered my world.
They met my friends. We did book exchanges. We talked openly about sexuality and
politics. They did not act as if such conversations were polluting them. They did not
treat me as a blank slate.
Meanwhile Butterfield starting reading the Bible and was transfixed by Jesus. One day
she found herself in this pastors church. And this is what she says happened:
Then, one ordinary day, I came to Jesus, openhanded and naked. (In my journey)...Ken
was there, Flo was there. The church that had been praying for me was there. Jesus
triumphed. And I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to
lose (my old life)...But the voice of God sang a (healing and hopeful) love song in the
rubble of my world.

And our world, too

But the good news of Christmas doesnt stop with us.
Think back to our Luke reading, where he mentions how the Roman Emperor Caesar
Augustus decided to call a census. Not one like we take, where you fill out a form and
mail it in. This was a census so Rome could know how many subjects it had and how
much taxation it could squeeze out of them for their armies and building projects. There
were mass riots when Rome would announce a census because people knew it meant
more oppression.
Luke tells us this in part to let us know that Jesus was born into a world ruled by a cruel
and violent empire. Not only did Jesus enter the mess of human life, he entered the mess
and violence of human history. And he bids people to do something subversive and
dangerous - to defy the emperors of our world, the people with the power and guns and
money - and follow him to build a new kingdom.
What difference does it make, you ask? Consider the story of Jesus-follower William
Wilberforce who fought against human slavery his whole adult life. He began fighting
the slave trade in 1787, and for twenty years he fought against it, bringing bill after bill to
the British Parliament to outlaw it, every one voted down and Wilberforce viciously
attacked by those who made fortunes off the backs of slaves suffering in the sugar
plantations of the Empire. But he kept at it, when public opinion was against him, when
the powers that be were against him, and finally in 1807 he succeeded and the slave trade
was outlawed.
But Wilberforce didnt stop there - for another twenty-six years he fought to outlaw
slavery itself, arguing that women and men in slavery were Gods children too, and
finally, when Wilberforce was on his deathbed in 1833, Parliament passed the bill
outlawing slavery.
Thats the promise of Christmas
The angels said to the shepherds, Peace on the earth and goodwill to men. For us,
personally, but not just personally, but for the whole world. Because Jesus Christ came
into the mess of human life and human history, never, ever to leave us. If you want the
peace and joy of finding Christ standing right next to you in your mess as you are; if you
want to be part of what he is doing to save our whole world, you just say to him, Thank
you for coming to me as I am. Take me, heal me, mold me, use me. And he does. And
never, ever lets us go.

Closing
We did a lot of planning and rehearsing and practicing so this service would be beautiful
and smooth, and thats good, but I wonder if the best way to tell the messy story of
Christmas is instead with a messy Christmas pageant.
Robert Fulghum writes about a particular Christmas pageant held in his church. It had
been several years since they had done it, because the last time coincided with an out
break of the German measles, chicken pox, and the Hong Kong flu. Also, on the night of
the pageant there was a sleet storm, a partial power failure, and one of the sheep hired for
the occasion got violently sick. Joseph and two of the Wise Men had the flu and had to
run to the mens room during the performance, and the angel choir walked around with
lighted candles in a way that created more a fear of fire and the wrath of God that peace
on earth. It was a disaster.
But, as Fulghum writes, nostalgia is strong, and after a while people wanted to try it
again. They decided to leave out the live sheep this time, but someone did manage to
borrow two goats, which got lose in the parking lot and had to be rounded up by the
shepherds. Other than that, he said it went pretty well at least early on. The angel choir
got through the first big number almost on key and in unison. The Star of Bethlehem was
lit over the manger, and it came time for the entrance of Joseph and Mary. By the way,
the real coup that year was getting a real donkey for Mary to ride in on. And so here they
came, down the center aisle of the church.
Unfortunately, the donkey got spooked by all the music and the crowd, and just stopped
dead after a couple of steps. Joseph jerking on the halter and some vigorous prodding by
the Virgin Mary did nothing to move that donkey. So, the president of the Board of
Trustees got up and went behind the animal, and another man pulled on the halter; and
since the floor was polished cement, the two of them managed to slide the rigid donkey
along. However, just as the music stopped and there was a moment of silence, the
Trustees president was heard to shout behind the donkey. Well, some things you just
cant say in church, you can use your imagination. And then the donkey brayed. And the
congregation just lost it laughing.
Yes, were a mess. But the Son of God entered our mess to heal us and save us and the
whole world. Hell never, ever leave us. Amen.