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Some of you will remember the definition of a theologian. A theologian is someone
who answers questions nobody is asking.
And even though I’m not a theologian -- I’m a parish priest, not a theologian; there’s a
difference -- even though I’m not a theologian, I like theology. As the word itself says, theology is
all about words about God, or about the study of God. Even though few are asking them, theology seeks to
answer questions about where we came from and where are we going and who made the world and how things
came to be the way they are and what it all means for our lives and stuff like that. And I like those
kinds of questions, so I like theology, even though I know, as we all know, that it’s a futile
undertaking, because, of course, we all know that as soon as you’ve said something about God you’ve
misspoken, because Augustine was right when he said that if you know something, then whatever it is you
know, it’s not God, because God is mystery. Because God is not something or someone we can capture with
our human words or ideas, or with our human agendas.
But I like theology anyway, because some of us seem destined to ask such questions and because,
along with science and philosophy and language and mathematics and music, theology is one of the best ways
we have to try to understand what this mystery we call life is all about.
And on this feast of the Incarnation, Christian theology has a lot to say as it tries to explain
how God himself became flesh, bone of our human bone and flesh of our human flesh, and how he was born as
a human child of a human mother in Bethlehem and lived a human life among us two thousand years ago.
But one of the sad things about theology is that theology is one of the things that divides us
human beings, separates us from each other and sometimes causes hostility among us, because one of the
things theology does is say things about what God can do and can’t do and what God has done and will do.
And when we say things like that we always find that there are others who don’t agree with us. So when
Christian theologians say that God can and did become a human being and that he lived a human life among
us, and that his name was Jesus, who was born of the Spirit of God and not of a human father, our Jewish
and Muslim brothers and sisters, and our brothers and sisters of other faiths who understand God
differently, say that we Christians must have got it wrong about God...
...because, they say, it doesn’t make sense to them that the Creator of the universe should
condescend to become like us sinful human beings and that they don’t understand how God would die on a
Cross like an ordinary criminal. So their theologians say that we Christians must have it wrong about
God, and ours say that they must have it wrong about God...
...and the first thing you know we’re all suspicious of each other and are all thinking that the
others are really strange, if not hostile.
And then the next thing you know, we’re shooting and bombing each other. And then all hell breaks
loose, which is why I agree with Diana Butler Bass when she says that while she loves theology, she has
begun to think that God might not love theology, as God and Bass and all of us have watched the children
of God beat each other up all these years over whose theology is right...
...which means, since God is God and we are not, that theology should be used very gently, because
when you get right down to it, our human theological words say more about us than they say about
God.
Our theologies say an awful lot about our human desire to know and to be right, and about our
human inclination to play God ourselves, as we use our human words to try to explain what God can do and
can’t do or what God will do or won’t do, when all the time we know very well that we don’t really know
what we’re talking about, because, as Augustine reminds us, whatever it is that we human beings know, it’s
not God, because God is mystery.
But fortunately this feast of the Incarnation is not really about theology. It’s about news.
About good news. The feast of the Incarnation is part of the Christian story, which conveys something we
Christians do believe about God, and which conveys something about what our belief -- this good news
-- means for our lives and for the life of the world.
Christmas, the feast of the Incarnation, proclaims something about what we believe God is like.
It is about something we believe happened once upon a time. It is something that happened on a cold
winter’s night when all heaven broke loose in a world in which all hell had broken loose. It’s not,
finally, about our knowing God, at least not about what we know about God with our minds, and not about
whether we’ve got everything right, and all that.
The feast of the Incarnation is about our ears and our hearts, about our love and our loyalty,
about our faith and our commitment, about what we want the meaning of our lives to be. It’s about what
we hear when we hear the story of Jesus, and about what we do when we hear it. It’s about what we hear
when we hear the angels break the news that God loves everybody...
...because that’s what the message of Christmas really is. Christmas is good news from the
heavens, the good news that God loves the world so much that he sends his Word and his Light, the very
meaning of reality and existence themselves which has been with God from the beginning, from before the
Creation itself, into the world to be born as God’s own Life in the world, so that all who love and
cherish him might also become children of God in the world. And Christmas is the good news that God sends
his Son, his Word and his Light, his Love and his Life, into the world, not to condemn the world, but that
through him the world might be saved. And the feast of the Incarnation is about what this good news means
for our lives, and about what we who believe and cherish it do with this news when we hear it.
It is stunning news, politically charged news, because, you see, when theology hears this news,
theology is quick to ask: “You mean, God loves everybody!? Does that mean tax collectors and prostitutes
and other notorious sinners? Does that include perverts and thieves and others who don’t live chaste and
honest lives? Does it mean that God loves even those who don’t know God the way we know God? Even Jews,
Muslims, Buddhists? Even non-believers, even atheists? Even those who don’t agree with me? Even Trent
Lott and Bill Clinton? Even those who haven’t been good for goodness sake? Even our enemies? Even
Iraqis and North Koreans? If God loves everybody, where in the world will it stop?” theology asks, “and
if we are children of a God who loves everybody, where can we stop?”
Good questions. Tough questions. But theology’s questions do not change the fact that the feast
of the Incarnation is the time when we hear that part of the Christian story about when all heaven broke
loose when the angels broke the news that God loves everybody. And theology’s questions do not change the
fact that we face some tough decisions about what this breaking news means for us when we hear it, here in
a world where all hell is breaking loose.
Theology, as much as I like it, is often about what divides us, because it says more about us than
it says about God. But Christmas, the feast of the Incarnation, is about the story of the One who would
draw us together, because it brings the stunning news that, contrary to what we have often imagined, God
loves everybody...
...just as St. John says when, in his part of the story, he says that God is love, and that
everyone who loves has been born of God, and that everyone who does not love does not know God, because
God is love, and that the child of Bethlehem, who was born to grow up to be the man of Galilee and
Jerusalem and the Cross, is how God showed his love among us.
So, according to the news we proclaim with the angels tonight, the little song we all learned as
children got it right: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow,
black and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. It makes
a wonderful Christmas carol, if a Christmas carol is what proclaims the news of what we believe about
Christmas.
Because this is the news of Christmas -- that we are children of God, that God loves us, that
God loves all the children of the world, even when they haven’t been good for goodness sake, and that we
can love, too, because God first loved us. Everybody. Even those who have bombed us, even those we’re
thinking of bombing, and even us, even us who have run away to that distant country and lived a life of
debauchery and squandered our inheritance. God loves even us when we haven’t been good for goodness
sake.
This was stunning news, highly charged news, politically charged news, in the days of Caesar
Augustus, when Quirinius was governor of Syria and when King Herod said it would be a cold day in hell
before some new prince of peace would change his way of doing things. And, to prove it, he ordered terror
and infanticide in an evil attempt to stifle the news and all the singing, and to kill the child of
Bethlehem, whom God had sent to grow up to be the man of Galilee and Jerusalem and the Cross.
And it’s politically charged news here tonight as well, politically charged personally, if nothing
more, here in the Year of Our Lord 2002. But there’s just no way around it, because Christmas is more
than reindeer and tinsel and chestnuts roasting on an open fire. When one king moves into another king’s
territory, there are bound to be some questions asked.
Peace on earth, goodwill toward all. God loves everybody, and he’s moving into the neighborhood
to show it. That’s the good news of Christmas.
And the questions of Christmas are like unto it: If Christmas is what the Scriptures say it is,
if God loves everyone, then what must become of the theology I love? When all heaven breaks loose with
the angels’ news of the birth of the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords, who loves all the children of the
world -- when, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight -- then if, at the same
time, all hell breaks loose in the world where I live, which will prevail for me?
What are we to do with theologies of hostility or indifference in the the face of tonight’s
news?
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Sometimes, for us...
It is as if infancy
were the whole of Incarnation.
One time of the year
the new-born child
is everywhere,
planted in madonnas' arms,
hay mows, stables,
in palaces or farms,
or quaintly, under snowed gables,
gothic angular or baroque plump,
naked or elaborately swathed,
encircled by Della Robbia wreaths,
garnished with whimsical
partridges and pears,
drummers and drums,
lit by oversize stars,
partnered with lambs,
peace doves, sugar plums,
bells, plastic camels in sets of three
as if these were what we need
for eternity.
But Jesus the Man is not to be seen.
We are too weary, these days,
of beards and sandalled feet.
Yet if we celebrate, let it be
that He
has invaded our lives with purpose,
striding over our picturesque traditions,
our shallow sentiment,
overturning our cash registers,
wielding His peace like a sword,
rescuing us into reality,
demanding much more
than the milk and the softness
and the mother warmth
of the baby in the storefront creche,
(only the Man would ask
all, each of us)
reaching out
always, urgently, with strong
effective love
(only the Man would give
His life and live
again for love of us).
O come, let us adore Him --
Christ -- THE LORD.
-- Luci Shaw
From Polishing the Petoskey Stone (1990)
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |