Talking to God is easy. Asking God to do things is easy. Talking about God is difficult.

In both of the traditional Scripture readings for Christmas Eve – from the first Chapter of both Hebrews and the Gospel of John – the writers struggle with language to talk about God. In fact they stretch language almost to the breaking point. You have to concentrate even to get a little of their meaning.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.

These writers know that God is too big to be put in a box. They know that he is too big, too mysterious, and too holy adequately to be described. At the same time they are tasked with a job of doing just that. They describe how God came to be in a box – a box full of straw, a manger.

This does not come easily to them.

The story they tell is the most recent chapter in the story of the Jews, a people who knew better than ever to try to put God in a box. The Jews were both funny and rude about the religions of their neighbors who did just that by worshipping idols.

We can think, for example, about this mocking passage from the Prophet Isaiah who talks about a foreigner going out to chop down some trees:

Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
"Ah! I am warm; I see the fire."

From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
"Save me; you are my god." (Isaiah 44:15-17)

The Jews were the first monotheists – worshippers of one God only – and their experience of God was of a LORD so powerful and holy that you would never dare to say his name.

The LORD could be thought of as present in a pillar of fire and smoke, or as a voice speaking from a burning bush. The finger of the LORD could create the world or divide the Red Sea. He could slay horrible sea monsters and impose his will on the most powerful king in the world, Pharaoh of Egypt, by bullying him with a succession of natural disasters and plagues. God was Faithful, and slow to anger, but nonetheless Great and Terrible. Above all, he was never to be thought of as a creature of any sort. The idea of God as a helpless babe wrapped in swaddling clothes would have been regarded as blasphemous and absurd. 

And so we hear the New Testament writers struggle as they place God in the manger. So incredible, so outlandish, so outrageous is this claim that the infant Jesus is God, that they must hammer the point home so that their audience, who would find the idea preposterous, could take it in. The writers skip over the picturesque descriptions of the birth of Jesus we find in the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew, and cut straight to the meaning of the event: the birth of Jesus Christ is an act of God; it is the birth of the one who was fully God and fully man.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Heb. 1:1f ESV).

The writers establish, first, that Jesus is God himself, the Creator of the world; second, they assert that he came to purge our sins; and, third that he would give those who believe in his Name the power to become the children of God. It is, if you like, God’s rescue mission.

God took human nature from the Virgin Mary and placed himself in that box, that manger, to save us.

Of course the box he put himself into was not his own box but ours.

For we are boxed in, trapped by pride and selfishness. We are boxed in by the weight of some of the things we have done in the past and cannot undo, boxed in by the broken relationships that are their consequence. We are boxed in by some of the things we have left undone, and for which it is too late to make amends.

While this is true for each of us as individuals, is true for us also as part of the human family. We are today at war across the world, in wars the burden of which is most sharply borne by children. Over almost every major city hangs a pall of filthy air; every ocean is overfished and the life within it hangs in the balance; in many parts of the world unimaginably large tracts of jungle and forest are burned and cut without thought for the consequences to us all.

In our personal relationships, in politics, at sea and land and air, we are no closer to universal peace that we were a thousand years ago, and probably less at peace with one another than we were even ten years ago.

As St. Paul put it, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23).

Despite it all, we have solid grounds for hope. It was for sinners that Christ was born at Bethelehem. From the creation of the world God planned this great work of rescue. We celebrate this evening the fact that God loved us so much that he took human nature, from a peasant girl. He took all that it means to be human into himself, nailed it to a Cross, and raised it up to heaven to prepare a place for us.

This is much more than a promise for the future. We do not stand outside of this story like spectators in a theatre watching an inspirational movie or listening to a motivational speaker. The story we hear at Christmas is not only the truth being told about God. It is the truth being told about ourselves and what God is doing in our lives. It is the story of how he is recreating the world around us as a sign on earth of the world to come.

To state the obvious, Christ has been back many times since he ascended back into heaven nearly two thousand years ago. He came to earth again the day you were baptized and since then has been active in your life and mine whether we have recognized it or not. God’s cosmic rescue mission isn’t something that started two thousand years ago, stopped, and will be suddenly reactivated at some time in the future. It is going on all around us in our generation, here in Saskatchewan; it is taking place in us – in you and in me.

Christ redeems us every day, bit by bit, and fits our souls for the life of heaven. He does it in inspiring us to acts of kindness and generosity, of sacrifice, patience and prayer. For he does not so much call us out of the box in which we live as to help us see the box of our lives for what it can be – a manger into which Christ can again be received.

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' (Matt 35:25f)

‘Bethlehem’ means ‘House of Bread’. At Christmas we shall gather in our own churches, other Bethlehems, and there Christ will come to us again in Holy Communion.

For as many as received him, to them gives he power to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his Name.

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. (Isa. 9:6)

Anna, Caroline and Peter join me in wishing you a merry Christmas,

+Anthony Saskatchewan