A Very Human God

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Philippians 2:1-11; Luke 2:1-14

“This will be a sign for you: You will find a child, wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

“This is a sign for you,” the angel said. “This is a sign. For you.” How will you know that the long-awaited Messiah has actually been born tonight in the little town of Bethlehem, how will you know that the Son of the living God has been born as a human being here, now, tonight, in the village right over there? How will we know that this is really happening, that it’s not one too many cups of eggnog talking? What is the sign that will tell us that this news is really true?

This is a sign, for you, the angel says. This is a sign that the almighty God, creator of the universe, the Most High himself has come among you – you will find a baby wrapped up tight in swaddling clothes, not able to move a muscle, lying in the animals’ feeding trough. His mother and her boyfriend will be there too. They’re not from around here, you know. But that’s the sign – that’s how you’ll know this is the presence of God, the Savior of the world. You’ll see a helpless baby lying where the cow food goes.

We’ve heard the Christmas story so many times, we know about the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, we know about there being no room at the inn, we know about the birth of Jesus in a barn or a cave among the farm animals, we know about the manger, we know that’s how the story is supposed to go – but the shepherds outside Bethlehem that night had never heard the Christmas story before. And it is not immediately obvious that seeing a baby born to some migrants in a borrowed stall, a baby whose swaddling clothes need to be changed and that’s not even the oddest smell in the air should be a sign of the presence of the almighty God. And yet the angel insists: This will be a sign for you. A baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

We have all grown up in a world that is very conscious of status. Of hierarchies of wealth and power, of who’s in and who’s out, who’s important and who’s disposable. Of the rich and famous, successful people that everyone is supposed to want to be like. And of pitiful wretches, people who’ve had bad luck, or even made bad choices, who people look down upon and consider worthy of contempt. And we imagine that God must be at the top of this hierarchy of beings.

So when we say God is all-powerful, we mean God is at the top of the food chain, God has the most power. When we say God is all-knowing, we mean God is the most knowing. When we say God is the Most Blessed One, we mean God has the most resources, the most freedom. And if there’s a scale for these things, there’s not just a top of the scale but also a bottom. And at the bottom are the poor, the different, the difficult, the uneducated, the powerless, the uncool, the unattractive, the people without resources or any kind of status at all. These are the least powerful, the least knowing, the least blessed – at the opposite end of the spectrum from where all normal people want to be, and where we imagine God must be.

But the Christmas story always sits uneasily with our assumptions about what’s better and most desirable, and about what’s most fitting for God. For Jesus was born at the bottom of the social scale, and the Christmas story is relentless about reminding us that in Jesus God comes into the world at the opposite end of the hierarchy of status from where we imagine God should be found. And the angel insists that the lowliness of this baby is actually the sign that shows this baby to be the presence of God.

We read tonight from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where Paul quotes from a hymn that was already known to the congregation in Philippi, barely 20 years after Easter. “For though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God – he did not deem the top spot in the status hierarchy of the world – something to be exploited. Instead, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave – taking the lowest spot on the ladder – being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself even to the point of death – death on a cross, of all things! And this is why he is exalted and has the name above every otherGod  name.

We think that becoming human must have been a humiliation for God, a coming down from the heights – and to have become the kind of human that Jesus was, poor, homeless, an outsider and friend of outsiders – that this must have been a real humiliation for God. In fact, the opposite is true. Being born as the lowest of human beings is in fact a revelation of who God is, not a humiliation. The glory of God consists in the fact that God is not to be found at the top of the food chain but at the bottom, because the status hierarchy we all take for granted in fact has nothing to do with God.

And God chooses to take flesh in the lowliest and most humble way precisely so that we will see and understand this – that there is no humiliation for God in becoming human. There is no humiliation for God in becoming this human – this baby, this child born in poverty and exclusion – because this is the way God can best show us who God is and who God wants to be for us. Not just at Christmas, but every day, all the time.

The great Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it like this: “God draws near to the lowly, loving the lost, the unnoticed, the unremarkable, the excluded, the powerless, the broken. What people say is lost, God says is found. What people say is condemned, God says is saved. Where people say no, God says yes. Where people turn their eyes away in indifference or arrogance, God gazes with a love that glows warmer there than anywhere else. Where people say something is despicable, God calls it blessed. When we come to a point where we are completely ashamed of ourselves and before God, when we believe God especially must now be ashamed of us, and when we feel as far away from God as ever in all our lives – that is the moment in which God is closer to us than ever, wanting to break into our lives, wanting us to feel the presence of the holy and to grasp the miracle of God’s love, God’s nearness and grace.”

This is why God chooses to be born in a stranger’s barn and laid in a manger – because if Jesus had been born somewhere more respectable we wouldn’t have understood it.  We’d have assumed that God wanted respect and comfort when the reality is the opposite – God comes into the world purely out of desire to be with us, to be for us.  This is the only way that is lowly enough for us to see the glory of God – for God to become a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, for God to become a man stripped of his clothes and nailed to a cross.

And if this is who God is for us, then we live most fully into our own identity as people created in the image and likeness of God when we embrace our own weakness and lowliness for the sake of someone else. This is why Paul quotes this ancient hymn to the congregation at Philippi – why Paul reminds them that they worship a very human God whose glory is not hidden by becoming the lowliest of the low but whose glory is revealed precisely in Christ’s humility. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”

These last two years, even the last few days, have been a time of great stress and anxiety for everyone. And in times of stress it’s normal to hold onto what we have – it’s so much harder to follow Paul’s advice and think about the interests of others when everything is so uncertain. We may know, in our heads, that it is more blessed to give than to receive, that God’s glory is found in God’s humility, that God’s humanity and our humanity are most alive when we reach out to others in love – but in times of stress and anxiety like we are all experiencing right now, it is hard to believe it, to trust that letting go in love is the most life-giving and life-sustaining thing we can do.

And if that’s where you are tonight, I will give you a sign. You will see a tiny baby, wrapped in bands of cloth, and lying in a manger. This is who God most truly is, this is who you most truly are. May the peace that comes from this child be yours this Christmas, and always.