EYES THAT SEE GOD

(Preached on Sunday, December 28, 2003)

...for my eyes have seen your salvation,...

-Luke 2:30

 

Christmas lights are a beautiful, amazing custom.

In the dark nights of December, they gleam brightly up and down the streets.  One family has a full set of reindeer and Santa’s sleigh — complete with Rudolf — ascending off their roof.  Another household “plants” artificial Christmas trees all throughout their front yard.

Then there is the house where white lights are strung around a large deciduous tree.  Because the tree has lost most of its leaves by this time, the lights on the far side show as well as the ones on the near side.  I think the owner strings the lights randomly, just going around and around.

But always, as I walk along the street, they seem to form a pattern.  One year, it made me think of a lobster, waving a predatory claw in the air.  Another year, I thought it looked like a rotund chef, complete with chef’s hat, holding aloft a platter of food.  This year, the lights remind me of a portly Santa, sack on his back, pirouetting like a ballerina on one pointed toe.  But I doubt if anyone else sees it the same way.

 

It’s a lot like the Christmas stories, that way.  The story may be the same — the message that each person gets from it is different.  Some hear about the angel Gabriel making the announcement to Mary, and look for angels speaking to them in real life.

Some see the visit of the “Wise Men” confirming their conviction in rational thought and scientific exploration.  And some find in the claim that the Magi came from the East a validation of eastern religions.

Not even the central event of Christmas is free from bias.  Tradition asserts that God chose to become human in Jesus of Nazareth.  Not just pretend-human, like someone wearing a disguise at a masquerade.  But really human, like one of us.

It’s called The Incarnation — from the Latin “carne” meaning flesh.  The divine took on flesh and blood, like us.

For some believers, the Incarnation confirms God’s otherness, God’s transcendence.

They point out that only God could make a choice about being human.  The rest of us have no choice.  And God only did it once.  Therefore it is an exception to the rule.

 

For me, the Incarnation suggests that God chooses to be embodied, as God’s way of being known to us.  God does not want to be an abstract concept or distant deity — God wants to be part of our daily lives.

It means to me that I should not look for God in supernatural events.  I should not try to talk to God up in the stars somewhere.  Rather, I should look for God in everyday things — in people around me, in the world of nature, and in my own inner nature.

God is not “out there” somewhere “beyond the blue.”

All that matters, all that we can know of God — given our human limitations — is right here, right now, among us.

That’s what the Incarnation means to me, anyway.

 

It seems that is what the Incarnation means to Luke as well.

Luke’s telling of the story is very earthy, very plain, very common, very human.  Mary and Joseph are plain people who journey to be counted in a census, come on the scene as transients, camping out in a place set aside for the homeless and their animals, settling down for the night.

In their makeshift lodgings they experience the birth of a child.  The shepherds, doing a job that few would choose and fewer would esteem, a job not unlike that of the street cleaners and garbage collectors of our day, were shocked to attention by the sound and light that surrounded them.

God’s presence and power appear on earth to minimum-wage laborers and a couple who camp out in a tent city because some emperor decided to count heads.

Then we have today’s gospel, with two very old people, who go to temple everyday, hoping to see something that most had given up looking for long ago.  And we hear that they had eyes to see God in this particular child of poor parents.

 

Where might we find God’s presence and power?

Who would Luke be writing about today to point out the contrast between the God of salvation, the God of soaring song and dazzling light, and humankind?

Sometimes familiar stories get too familiar.

We start thinking that’s how it has to be.

So let’s try one of those stories this way, as Jim Taylor has paraphrased it for us.

“It was Christmas Eve, see.  And these guys, they had to work the night shift at the warehouse, shipping thousands of leftover Christmas parcels.  All of a sudden, a guy at the loading dock called out, “Hey, come take a look at this!”

When they looked out at the night sky, it was like very molecule of air was dancing, leaving a fluorescent trail in its path.  And the guys all said, ‘Wow!’

Other people in town saw the same thing.  But they said, ‘Interesting phenomenon.  I must check the Internet to see if there’s a reasonable scientific explanation.’  And they went back inside.  But the warehouse guys kept watching.

Soon they started hearing white noise, like whispering too far away to make out the words.  Until they were sure they could hear some words.  And the words said something like, ‘Don’t be afraid.  A child is being born, right now, a child who can save the world.’  ‘Why should I believe you?’ one of the warehouse guys asked.  ‘No one has to believe me,’ the words in the sky seemed to say.  ‘But if you go to the motel in town, you’ll find that baby under the stairs to one of the units.  And when you see it, maybe you’ll believe.’

And then the cascade of voices seemed to swell into a great chorus, singing, ‘Glory to God, and peace on earth, for God cares about humans.’

Everyone could have heard the chorus.  But most of them were too busy to pay attention.  Some were making too much noise at their Christmas parties.  Others had the TV turned up loud.  And a lot just closed their windows to shut out sounds they didn’t want to hear.

But the guys abandoned the warehouse.  ‘The parcels can wait,’ they said.  They commandeered a company van, and roared off to the motel.  There they found a newborn baby.  Wrapped up in his daddy’s windbreaker.  With his mother.  Huddled under a porch, too keep out of the rain.

And then the warehouse guys believed.

So they gave the family some blankets from the truck.  And their own winter jackets.  And a Thermos of hot coffee.

But they couldn’t keep the good news to themselves.  So they drove back through town at 2:00 a.m. with their windows down, honking their horn, banging on the doors of the truck, yelling, ‘It’s a boy!’

And a lot more people slammed their windows shut.

A few even called the cops.”

 

There’s the story.

The good news was available to everyone.

God’s presence was right there.

But only the warehouse guys had the eyes to see God and did four things that made them different.

They paid attention.

They kept their minds open.

They risked acting on their intuitions.

And they couldn’t keep their discovery to themselves.

It’s so simple.

So why do so many of us still shut our windows?

 

Because we don’t get it.

Because we still want to hold to the idea of a distant God.