One of my favorite Christmas Carols
is “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Christina Rossetti. Set to a haunting melody, this poem helps us
enter into the mystery of Christmas, the coming of God into the world in the
vulnerable child in the manger. Rossetti
puts it this way:
Our
God, heaven cannot hold him nor earth contain
Heaven
and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In
the bleak midwinter, a stable place sufficed.
The
Lord God incarnate, Jesus Christ.
In this
second verse of the hymn, Rossetti points us to the deepest meaning of this
holy season. While many of us love
thinking about the little baby in the manger, remembering Christmases at our
grandparents’ homes, and enjoy the yearly singing of carols and decorating the
tree, Christmas is primarily a time for us to reflect on one of our uniquely Christian
notions, that our God cares so much for this world that God came into it in the
person of Jesus Christ.
The idea
that God comes to us teaches us that our God hallows this earthly life and cares
about those who live here. The
incarnation points us to the truth that God cares about things in this world
and that as God’s children we should be attentive to the needs of other people
and the creation as a whole. The
incarnation also reminds us that God’s presence can be seen in this world. Whether the incarnate God in Jesus or the
Holy Spirit who continues to move us to faithfulness, God’s presence is here
even now.
The
incarnation, though, is also a challenge.
We will be exploring the challenge of the incarnation in our sermon
series this Advent titled “The God We Get.”
Each Sunday we will take a look at each of the four gospels and how they
introduce us to Jesus. The God we get in
Jesus was not the messiah anticipated by many of his Jewish family, and the God
we get each time we celebrate Christmas is a God who often surprises us. This God challenges us to push beyond our
fear and our prejudice to a life of vulnerability and radical love.
The
incarnation is an intimate understanding of God, and at Christmas we often feel
the closeness of the savior as we tell the story of his birth once again. We not only remember his coming into the
world but also his death and rising so that the whole world might be
saved. Christina Rossetti does not forget
the cross even in her Christmas carol, and realizes that the salvation story of
Jesus elicits a response from us much like it did the first shepherds and wise
men:
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring
a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my
part.
Yet what I can I give him, give my
heart.
This final
verse moves us toward our commitment to the incarnate God. Unfortunately, though, we often interpret
“giving our hearts” to God in ways that are purely sentimental and driven by
feelings alone instead of ways that are incarnational and affect our daily
living. In the middle of the Third
Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood that following Christ meant incarnational
living. In his Cost of Discipleship, he says, “The incarnate Son of God needs not
only ears or even hearts; he needs actual, living human beings who follow
him. That is why he called his disciples
into following him bodily.”
This Advent
season, let us look with fresh eyes, hear with fresh ears, and feel with
renewed hearts the God we get in Jesus Christ.
In the midst of parties and plays, shopping and
baking, let us remember that the Word has become enfleshed among us, and may we
look for ways the light of Christ can be see not only in a dark sanctuary full
of lit candles but the light embodied in our lives following the God we get.
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