Erin Warmbier teaches the homily at the 2022 Sojourn Women's Christmas Gift Exchange on Saturday, November 3, 2022
Erin Warmbier teaches the homily at the 2022 Sojourn Women's Christmas Gift Exchange on Saturday, November 3, 2022
Good morning and Merry Christmas! I hope my Christmas sweater isn’t too loud for you to hear me this morning. I feel that I may have missed my calling as a Kindergarten Teacher because I genuinely and unironically love loud Christmas clothing and accessories.
But I have to be honest with you today. Despite the Christmas spirit on full display, I feel like I’m in kind of a weird place to stand up here saying Merry Christmas. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had a hard, strange, sometimes tragic year. In fact, just this week, we buried my grandmother. One of my favorite people on this earth.
When we were planning the Women’s Christmas Gift Exchange (or I should say, when I offered a very lame amount of help as Amy DeHate planned and executed this entire event), we had a conversation about how The Gift Exchange is all about joy and happiness. This isn’t a moody Good Friday service. Well, Amy… I’m sorry, I’m about to say some really moody things, but I promise you we’ll bring it back around to that Christmas Joy eventually.
Matthew 1:22-23 “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means God with Us.”
To be honest, the more I read and reflect, the more I think that Christ’s arrival in this world… taking on human flesh… human weakness… human suffering… that’s a pretty moody thing. And is, actually, the hard reality we need in order to feel any comfort or joy at all this holiday season.
From the very beginning, the incarnation was a terrifying and tragic event. I want you to place yourself in Mary’s shoes for just a minute.
A virgin teenager, who is told she’s about to bear a child, making her not only the center of gossip, but also placing her in a situation that could cause her to lose her standing and her future security.
Forced to give birth (again, as a teenager!) in a foreign city, around strangers, and in a stable.
Learning to breastfeed on her own.
Woken from a fitful postpartum sleep and told to hop back on that donkey with her newborn child and begin the trek to Egypt because the king was looking to murder her baby.
Hearing that Herod did, in fact, leave a trail of death in their wake.
Learning to be a new mom, and a new wife in a foreign land before being uprooted again and moved back to the hometown where rumors about her pregnancy and flight to Egypt must have still been circulating.
The first Christmas is often represented as a Quiet, Holy Night, but I’m here to tell you that if I had been Mary, I would have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
To be sure: Mary was a faithful woman who looked back on all that God had done, remembered his faithfulness to his people, and trusted that He would be faithful to her. She seems to have dodged that nervous breakdown. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t also a scared teenager carrying more than she could handle on her own. The first Christmas was filled with angels rejoicing and shepherds worshiping and stars shining bright, but also with pain and sorrow.
In fact, pain and sorrow also characterized Jesus’s life on earth. Isaiah 53:4 tells us that Jesus was “a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.” His incarnation, his coming in to flesh, meant that he lived a life on this earth that was filled with all of the pain and sorrow that we experience. Jesus experienced the death of a close friend and a parent, the betrayal of friends, he experienced poverty, rejection, humiliation and mockery, frustration, disappointment… whatever hard things you’ve walked through this year… when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, what we’re celebrating is that in a stable in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, Jesus willingly chose to share in our sorrow and our pain.
As I reflect this year on what it means that Jesus is called “Immanuel” which means “God with us,” I am pondering what it means to be “with us.” God. With. Us. Not just “God who loves us” though he does. Not only “God who saves us” though he has. But every name of God communicates a different aspect of his nature. The name Immanuel tells us that God is “WITH” us. And I’m seeing with new eyes this year that God’s WITHNESS means that he sits with me in my suffering and sorrow and pain as someone who fully understands it. I used to think of “God with us” like it was a change of address. God was in heaven. And he came to be with us. But I’m thinking now that this word “with” is intended to convey much, much more than a change in physical location, but rather that God stands in solidarity with us. That he immerses himself in our world, in our daily struggles and average lives. Think of how many of Jesus’s days are not recorded in scripture: days where he ate breakfast and did chores and attended school and hung out with his friends and learned a trade and came home covered in sweat after a long day of labor to fall asleep and get up in the morning to do it all again. On Christmas, we celebrate that Jesus fully and completely participated in our humanity, on our behalf. Even the boring parts.
I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m Grinching it up right now. Does this all sound like a bit of a downer? Maybe I’m a weirdo, but this revelation of Jesus being really WITH me, fully understanding what it means to live this human existence is what gives me freedom to Celebrate Christmas with joy and gladness.
Why is this good news? Why is Christ entering in to our suffering a joyful occasion, punctuated with twinkling lights and glitter and perky Christmas carols? Because as Hebrews 4:15-16 reminds us: “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.”
After all, joy and pain are mixed all throughout life and scripture: Hebrews 12:2 tells us that “For the joy set before him he endured the cross.” He endured the pain and humiliation of the cross, but also the trials and tribulations of being born in to this world in human flesh because of the joy that was set before him. I can’t help but think of childbirth when I read this verse. I don’t need to tell most of you that childbirth is painful… and yet: people keep having children! Why would we ever choose that pain? Because of the joy of holding that tiny squawking newborn baby. The joy doesn’t erase the pain, but neither can the pain erase the joy. And it’s not just childbirth, is it? I think as women, we’re pretty good at living in that tension between joy and pain. In fact, most Christmases feel that way, don’t they? Maybe the pain is the loss of a loved one, or the financial strain. Maybe it’s loneliness or feeling like we’re holding the center together as things spin out of our control.. The Christmas season comes with many of our favorite moments of joy and celebration… family and tradition and beauty and worship… but also pain. We’re accustomed to it. And so was Jesus.
The joy set before Jesus was US. His creation, no longer separated from God in our sin and suffering, but united with him. Colossians 1:27 “The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, therefore you can look forward to sharing in God's glory.” Sharing in his glory. Able to approach God for mercy and help.
I hope that you, like me, find great comfort and joy in the fact that you have a God who was willing to enter the beauty and terror of creation and live a life just like yours, on your behalf, so that he could be WITH you, suffer FOR you, and give you MERCY and HELP.
Be comforted and encouraged by Christ’s “withness” and also allow Christ’s “withness” to pull you in to be with each other. God made himself vulnerable, he identified with us and shared our suffering. You can trust that it was messy. Christ’s life on earth, his relationship with his family, the droves of people he ministered to, his inner circle of disciples… these relationships were messy. But Christ walked on earth in flesh and blood surrounding himself with other humans and in doing so, set an example for us of how to be one with each other. We, as Christians, have the Holy Spirit in us. We are the living and breathing body of Christ, and let’s not take that lightly! Let’s fulfill the law of Christ by sharing each other’s burdens. That same vulnerability and solidarity that Christ showed, is what we owe each other as sisters in Christ. This room is full of women who are mourning: mourn with them. Women who are rejoicing, rejoice with them. Women who are lonely: embrace them as family. Women who are overwhelmed: show them grace and step in to their overwhelm. Just as Christ was authentically himself, I pray that this church is a place where we can welcome women to be who they are, and bring all of themselves to the table without fear. I pray that we can find in each other Christ’s presence.
The Gift of Christmas is that God himself, the maker of the universe and the author of our salvation, chose to lower himself to become one with us in all of our mess. He entered the world in a messy and terrifying way, lived a normal human life, and suffered more than any of us has in order to be a God who understands YOU, fully. In order to BE WITH YOU.
Resources:
Tim Keller’s “God Incarnate 1 & 2” sermon from his podcast “Gospel and Life.”
Tim Mackie’s “God With Us - Gospel of Matthew” lecture from his podcast “Exploring my Strange Bible”
Allison Sage’s “Whole Gospel: the Cross” address to the SNA Women’s School Oct 24th 2022.
Joanna Weaver’s 2017 blog post “9 Verses to Remind you - Jesus Understands.”