Holding the Baby in Our Arms Luke 2:1-20 Christmas Eve Late Service, December 24, 2004 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi By now, most of you know my norm for preaching is to preach about Jesus' radicalness, his identification with the suffering and outcasts, his paying the price for doing so with his life and about his resurrection - to stress that we have to see Jesus as more than a sweet baby. But, tonight is different. Tonight is the night by which we measure all time - literally and figuratively. Everything that happened yesterday is before Christ and everything that happens tomorrow is after him. Tonight we are living in the eternal now of God's coming among us. Tonight the Gospel and our hymns focus on Jesus, the baby cradled in a manger, and along with shepherds we are invited to gather around to see this new born child. Tonight we are invited to gather around the manger the same as I invite children to come gather around whenever we celebrate a baptism: to come close, to see, to feel, to touch and be touched by the miracle that is taking place. Of all the sacraments I am privileged to celebrate as a priest, without a doubt, baptism is my favorite - particularly the baptism of an infant. I have to digress for a moment to tell you of my "simulation" baptism at seminary. In our senior liturgy class, we drew various liturgical events from a hat. Whatever liturgy we drew, we not only had to plan and officiate it, also line up persons to "receive the sacrament" and other liturgical participants. I drew the Easter Vigil, to include baptism of an infant. This meant I had to have classmates acting as parents and god-parents for the infant I was to simulate baptizing. Sense we had no spare infants around campus, someone loaned me a fairly life-like doll. I still deny I did it, but my professor swears that as the pretend mother handed me the doll baby I received her like this. Be that as it may, in Holy Baptism, in that instant in which a young mother hands me her infant in all its innocense, and I take that child and hold him or her in my arms, it is the same wonder I have felt the first time I held each of my sons and grandson. But, it is more, and words do not exist to describe the marvel, awe and sacredness of that instant in which that young mother entrusts that infant to me and we proclaim that child a child of God. And so my friends, my brothers and sisters in Christ, tonight you and I have the same invitation as the shepherds, to come gather around, to linger a little longer at the manger: to come close, to see, to feel, to touch and be touched by the miracle that is taking place. Because to do so reveals to us the truth, and only the truth can set us free. The truth is that this baby, like every baby I will ever baptize and every baby ever born, is born to die - but this baby, unlike every baby, is born to die for the sins of all. The death this baby is born for is the answer to the outrage of evil. The wound which will be opened in his side will be the inexhaustible source of healing for everything that evil has ruined. The wounds which will pierce his feet will reveal he walked the same paths as we and nothing lies before us where he has not already tread. The wounds which will pierce his hands will be the limitless, eternal embrace he extends to the world and in which there are not outcasts. If we linger long enough, we may come to understand that into this short, precarious life came the Son of God. Ultimate power poured itself into our powerlessness. The infinite Creator accepted the frustrating, finite life of the created. The source of life entered into a journey that would end in a death we all will face, each on our own particular cross. But, lingering at the manger is difficult for most of us. We're a hurry up people, a quick fix society. But the manger offers us no quick fix, the momentary relief of turning away "from the sorrow that makes today today, and tomorrow tomorrow." It offers us rather than hurried answers or quick fixes, this infant God coming into the world to keep us company in the worse that can befall us. This is love in crucified companionship coming to bear the world's pain in pierced hands. Tonight, some 2000+ years ago, a group of simple men - and probably some women and children, too, for just anybody could be a shepherd in those days, and in these as well - awoke on a hillside and stared, terrified, at a visitor from another world with a message about this infant and the invitation to go to the manger and see. Tonight we, too, are invited to go and see and to linger at the manger. Just as small children watch with awe as an infant is baptized, as we linger at the manger, we too are filled with awe. Tonight the young mother extends her infant towards you and invites you to hold him. Of course, many of us do not know whether we would like to hold him or not. Couldn't we just look? But, tonight invites us to let Christmas into our hearts and says to us, "This baby is yours also. Hold the baby for a while." It is not easy, after all, to take Jesus into our arms if Jesus is who they say he is. If Jesus is God with us, the very embodiment of God, then the baby in our arms puts us in a ridiculous position. We have God in our arms! We are holding God, and the worst that God can do there is wet us by accident or spit up on us! This is absurd - surely God is all-powerful and fearful. Holding God seems, if not impossible, at least terrifying. But, how can you be afraid of a baby? We cannot hold onto our dread of God and still hold baby Emmanuel in our arms. It's either one or the other. Yet, we are so attached to our fear of God. We are so convinced that God is menacing, though we say bravely that he is love. We are so sure that God's closeness would be invasive, overwhelming; so convinced that he is dangerous, that we must keep our distance to play it safe. Christmas, as we linger at the manger, brings all this into question, and the young mother extends to you the God you are so afraid of. Will you take him in your arms? To do so, we have to let go of our fear. But letting go of our fears, is never easy. Thus, we, too, need to hear the angelic message first spoken to Mary, "Fear not!"when she was told that she was to be the mother of God. We, too, need the angelic reassurance spoken to the shepherds, "Don't be afraid." It will take us a long time to believe them, and when we come round to Easter next year, the angels will still be saying to us what they said to the women at the tomb, "Don't be afraid." But we wouldn't need the angels if we truly pause at the manger, if when the young mother hands us our God, this new-born, we hold our God in our arms. God has made fear absurd. She says, "This is the one you were afraid of! Here, won't you hold him for a while?" Lingering at the manger, tonight tells us that as you approach this Altar, you are invited to hold the infant. Just as he came once as an infant born in the humblest of circumstance to relieve you of your fears, you can also hold him in the humble, harmless, homely form of bread. Once again, it really is him, still in a form that makes your fear absurd. Only love and gratitude and a broken pride overjoyed to be broken make sense here. There is room for all our feelings for God, but this night has made fear out of date. In the service of Holy Baptism, at the moment the infant is baptized, the infant is named. Tonight, as you hold the baby, you are invited to name him: Emanuel - the God who is with us, not the God who is up there somewhere who answers our prayers by lifting us out of our lives but the God who comes in the midst of our lives, no matter how broken or corrupt; Emmanuel - who is made of the same stuff we are made and who is made out of the same stuff God is and who will not let either of us go. Yes, if we linger long enough, we may begin to see what this baby sees: the pain and suffering of the world and to feel the love that gives oneself to alleviate that suffering. However, tonight, it is enough to just hold the baby.