I love this service. In fact, don’t tell anybody, but it might be my favorite service of the entire year. Sure, I love the pageantry and excitement of Christmas Eve, and I love the pageantry and joy of Easter, but there is something special to me about Christmas Day. For one thing, it’s always quiet. Most folks are sitting at home under the tree opening presents right now or just rolling out of bed and looking forward to celebrating with family and friends later in the day. Yet here we are, we few, gathered together in the quiet to mark the most important event of all time. Now, the story we tell on this morning doesn’t include angels and shepherds and mangers and sheep. That was last night’s story. No, we gather together on Christmas Day each year to tell a different story, a Creation story. Not the one in Genesis that describes God creating the cosmos in six days and resting on the seventh, and not the other Creation story in Genesis which tells the very intimate story of the first man and the first woman and the first snake in the Garden. No, on this day and every Christmas Day we gather to hear a third Creation story, the one that John the Evangelist tells. “In the beginning,” he says. Sound familiar? That’s right. John begins his Creation story just like the first one in Genesis. “In the beginning.”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being…and the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son] full of grace and truth. John 1:1-2;14
And it’s this Creation story, the story of the Word made flesh, the Divine Logos, which is Greek for “Word”, giving birth to the World. God speaks the world into being. That is the decisive event in history. The twenty-five-cent word for this is “incarnation,” meaning to become material, to become alive. God doesn’t stand outside and apart from the world. God is in the World; God is in every nook and cranny of everything. That’s what we are here to mark and observe and celebrate in the quiet and peace of this Christmas morning. Everywhere we look, there is God.
There’s a modern translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson called The Message. Peterson uses contemporary, everyday language that makes the formal cadences of the Bible more user-friendly, shall we say. Here’s how The Message expresses John’s concept of the Word becoming flesh.
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
The Word made flesh, Jesus, moved into the neighborhood. Jesus showed up among us. “Neighborhood” reminds me of the place where I grew up and the people I grew up with. It was one of those new post-WWII neighborhoods, many of the dads veterans of that war, starting families, buying new homes, very modest new homes, I might add, a new school a couple of blocks away. While the houses were pretty small, the yards were pretty big, and no fences separated them. That meant the Saturday afternoon football game could stretch over three or four yards and a summer evening’s game of kick the can was played over the entire subdivision. Lots of driveways, including mine, had basketball goals, and I can hear the sounds of those bouncing balls even as we speak. Every house it seemed had at least one kid who lived there and we all looked out for each other and all the moms and dads looked out for all of us. And I do remember a girl, a particular girl, who lived just down the street. That’s what I think of when I hear “the Word was made flesh and moved into the neighborhood.” The Word was made flesh and moved into my little Beckley WV neighborhood.
How amazing is that? Jesus, the Word made flesh, moved into my neighborhood. The Divine, the Holy, the Sacred, moved into my neighborhood. And my neighborhood did feel like that to me. Sacred. Holy. Exploring the woods behind my house and the little stream that ran through them I had my first glimpse of the beauty and the wonder of the natural world. The cardinals and the blue jays, the red robins and the occasional Baltimore Oriole, each singing their distinctive songs, the chipmunks and squirrels jumping from branch to branch, it all made those woods feel alive. There were a couple of abandoned houses in a field beyond those woods and whenever we would dare to enter, we felt the spectral presence of those long-vanished occupants and gave ourselves chills imagining what kind of dark and mysterious secrets those old houses might hold. But at the end of the day, it was the people, my mom and dad, my friends and their moms and dads, that filled the neighborhood with a sense of belonging and connectedness and relationship. It was a place that felt solid.
Now, let me hasten to add that my neighborhood wasn’t affluent, and I know that behind some of those doors there were alcohol-fueled fights at night, there were unhappy marriages, there were kids who acted out their insecurities and fears by bullying the weaker ones. In other words, it was real life—and at the same time, it was a neighborhood that Jesus had moved into. Just like he’d moved into the neighborhood just down the road from us where unemployed coal miners’ families lived in tarpaper shacks and old cars stood rotting and rusting away in the yard and mothers fretted over how they were going to feed their kids each night and dads, if they were there at all, cursed their luck and drank too much to ease the pain. And I went to school with kids from that neighborhood who, I might add, were some of the kindest, brightest, kids I knew. It seems that Jesus had moved into that neighborhood too.
And Jesus is right here this morning, right here with you and me and with all the ones we love and, he’s also here with all the ones we might find hard to love right now. Please don’t forget that. Because they’re right here in the neighborhood too. In fact, the promise of our faith, the hope of our faith on this day of all days, is that Jesus has moved into every neighborhood everywhere. Jesus is present wherever we turn. Present in the midst of violence and war and hate. Present in the midst of hunger and sickness and pain. Present to those who desperately need care and present to those who offer it. Present in our sorrows as much as in our celebrations. Jesus is there. Because that’s what is so profound about the Word becoming human. God loves Creation so deeply that God has become part of it. God loves you and me and the ones we love and even the ones we don’t love so deeply that God wants to be our neighbor. Love and compassion and healing and grace have moved in right next door.
The other day, as I was thinking about what it means to be a neighbor and to have Jesus as my neighbor, I remembered Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers himself, who incarnated the kindness and compassion of our loveliest neighbor, the One whose birth we celebrate this morning. You remember how Mr. Rogers began each show?
It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood
A beautiful day for a neighbor
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
It’s a neighborly day in this beautywood
A neighborly day for a beauty
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you
I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you
So let’s make the most of this beautiful day
Since we’re together, we might as well say
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Won’t you please
Won’t you please
Please won’t you be my neighbor?
Can you hear Jesus singing that? I can. So take that home with you this morning, take God’s love and compassion and healing grace home with you and offer thanks for our neighbor, the One who is always welcoming us home. Jesus is inviting you and me to be his neighbor.