2025-12-22
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
The divorce of dear friends of mine became final earlier this year and I am still reeling from the news that this couple I have loved for their entire 23-year marriage are no longer husband and wife. But a recent conversation with my friend has haunted me and taken my sadness about the end of their marriage to a whole new level.
My friend did not want this outcome and fought hard to save the relationship, but when we spoke last month, he shared that he has been dating someone for a while and I was happy for him . . . Right up until he told me, “It’s not serious. I’m not interested in anything long-term. I’ll never get married again because I’m not willing to open myself up again to someone. I can’t deal with the thought of another end like this one.”
I was heart-broken at these words and told him so, adding that he had too much to offer to another person to choose to close himself off to the possibility of real love. But everything I said fell on deaf ears and our phone call ended with him thanking me for trying to change his mind but letting me know that I was wasting my time. His mind was made up. While he enjoyed having someone to spend time with, he would not allow his feelings to go beyond just a casual friendship.
While I realize that I am not in a real position to understand my friend’s point of view since I have never suffered through the painful end of a relationship like that, I am always devastated when people resist being vulnerable and shut down. In fact, I hear similar anecdotes often enough from congregants and others who share stories with me that I would suggest that resistance to vulnerability is endemic in our culture.
Researcher and storyteller Brene Brown writes extensively about vulnerability, defining it as including uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure, but also pointing out that it is not weakness. In fact, she claims it's our most accurate measure of courage, the birthplace of love, joy, belonging, and creativity, and the path to living a whole-hearted life. She argues that we often arm ourselves against being vulnerable, but by doing so, we miss out on meaningful connection, purpose, and positive emotions, instead hiding from the very thing that makes life rich and authentic. And yet, in our culture, we often respond to being vulnerable by numbing difficult emotions including fear, anger, worry and pain. The problem with this reaction is that closes us off to the possibility of transformation because it is when we are vulnerable that we open our hearts to the Holy Spirit.
One can argue that it is because of our human resistance to being vulnerable that we tend to focus on a photoshopped version of the story of Jesus’ birth. We love the image of idyllic parents cooing over their new son as cherubic angels, awed shepherds and calming animals watch over the scene. With daily news stories of mass shootings, natural disasters and turbulent political drama, we have enough realism in our own lives. We come to church seeking respite from the frenetic pace of everyday life, hoping instead to find something comforting, warm, cozy and inspiring. And so we devour the story Luke tells of Jesus’ birth like a bowl of comforting chicken soup for our beleaguered souls.
However, if we read Luke’s narrative carefully, noting only what is written rather than adding in our own interpretation, we realize that his account is not nearly as sanitized as we tend to make it.
In reality, the tale begins amid a first-century census that, rather than providing a demographic study, was the Roman Empire’s way to get an accurate count for their crushing, oppressive taxation system. The story is set in the back-water town of Bethlehem . . . a place at the fringes of society where we least expect to find God.
It’s as though God is whispering something to us that we don’t really want to hear. Instead of the precious, beautiful existence we have carefully curated in a world we work hard to hard to control, we realize that our lives are actually built on a house of cards, delicately balanced but also vulnerable, fragile and ultimately insufficient.
And so, when we hear Luke’s story each Christmas, we are witnesses to the simple yet terrifying fact that God came in Jesus not to make just a few adjustments to our lives, but rather to overturn tables, herald a new beginning and create a whole new system where we can be resurrected and redeemed, not just merely rehabilitated.
And our response to all of this? We are as terrified as the lowly shepherds out in their fields. We are frightened by what we don’t know and so, when the angel messengers come telling us not to be afraid, they are speaking to a part of us that, at our core, wants more than money, status and security. Because we know that the thing that will ultimately satisfy us for the long-term is a sense of meaning and purpose. We want to hold on to the hope that, despite our failures and shortcomings, we are worthy of love.
And so God comes to the edges of our lives, speaking quietly but firmly through the blood, sweat and tears of a young mother in labor and the cries of a tiny baby born in a smelly, dank stable. The angels come to announce that God is with us . . . no matter what! We are assured that God is present in all of our ups and downs, all our hopes and fears. God comes to give us not just more of the same, but to offer a completely new and abundant life. And when God comes in this innocent form rather than with power and might, we realize that we need only open ourselves to one another to experience deep and abiding love.
The shepherds, having heard and seen the angel choir and the newborn baby, become messengers themselves, sharing the good news of God’s love made manifest in the most surprising way. May each of us, in this time of anticipation, be messengers of love in the world, sharing the good news that, “Unto us this day is born a savior who is Christ the Lord.” Amen.