God becomes human - the incarnation

Sermon for Midnight Mass – Christmas Eve 2011 - St Mary's Lapworth

I spent much of the summer of 1987(?) at the Diocese of Southwark’s retreat house. It is known as Wychcroft and is near to Blenchingly in Surrey. I knew the place well because I had worked there for a year between school and university, but in the summer of 1987(?) I was hardly fit for work. I feeling very delicate because I was still recovering from a serious personal crisis, which had really knocked me for six in the previous year. I was also feeling delicate at that time because I girl who I liked and wanted to get to know better had just made it quite clear that she did not want anything to do with me! So altogether I was in rather a sorry state and was feeling very unsure of myself.
Well, in the middle of that rather confused summer I received a visit from a university friend. He was indeed a really good friend. He set aside a whole day to come and see me from London. I collected him from the train station and on the way home we ran some errands for the House. He met the people I was staying with. He shared our meals with us. We went for a walk – it really is a beautiful place to walk round – and he saw all the places where I used to do my work. He listened to me as I bemoaned all my troubles, and he helped repair a broken shelf in my room. In the evening I drove him back to the station and he caught the train back to London.
And afterwards I was left with an extraordinary sensation of peace. I was so grateful that he had come to visit me where I was, and had really seen and shared in all the joys and sorrows of my life at that moment. I felt understood and supported, and much more able to really be myself. It wasn’t that my troubles had gone away or that anything had been fixed or solved, but somehow I definitely felt encouraged and supported and I felt more able to face the world and get on with my life. Above all, as I said, I felt at peace.
Well this is the action of a really good friend. Someone who is prepared to set aside his own agenda to spend time with you, who is prepared to share with you all the good things and the bad things about your life. Someone who is prepared to stand with you and suffer with you, when things are tough, who is not going to run away, embarrassed, because he just doesn’t know what to say or because he can’t fix your problems.
In some ways there is something very natural about this. Hopefully we all have friends who are like this. (Or at least we all have friends who can be a bit like this on a good day!) Hopefully we ourselves are good friends to other people and behave like this with other people too. But although it is something very natural, there is also something very spiritual going on here. There is something about this kind of friendship, this kind of behaviour, that teaches us about God’s love for us. Especially it teaches us about God’s love for us in sending us the baby Jesus at Christmas time.
God loves for us is not just the distant, well meaning love of a God who is far away and utterly transcendent. No, God in his great love for us, wants to come to us, to be like us, to spend time with us, to share with us the experience of a human life and a human death here on earth. At Christmas we remember that God was prepared to set aside his power and his glory and become a human being. God took on human flesh and becomes an ordinary man, with all the limitations and vulnerabilities that implies. Today we celebrate Jesus as a new born baby, and this is an extraordinary mystery. The great and mighty God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, came among us completely helpless and dependant, just like any other human baby. And of course Jesus grows up, just like any other child of his time. He learns his father’s trade, and becomes a carpenter. He really shares with us the human experience, with its joys and its sorrows, its highs and its lows. And although Jesus, as God, cannot go against God and so cannot sin, Jesus does share with us fully in experiencing the pain and separation that arises from sin, from our sin, from our going against God, our hiding from God, our rejection of God. Indeed it is this human condition of sin, of rejection of God, that ultimately causes us to reject Jesus, and have him killed on a cross. And God in Jesus did not shirk from this. Truly Jesus did experience all the suffering and pain that arises through sin, truly he shared the full measure of the human experience, not just the good bits, not just the pleasant bits.
We call this mystery the incarnation. God takes on flesh, becomes incarnate, so as to share completely in the human condition. It is truly a mystery; we will never completely get our heads around it. But if we ponder it well, if we seek to draw close to Jesus in prayer and if we seek to imitate him in our lives, then certainly, with time, we do come to understand this mystery better. We start to see its huge value and its huge implications. We start to understand our salvation, first of all personally, then for our communities, our nations and ultimately for the whole world; the whole of creation.
In particular we can start practising love, in the way that God loves us, when he becomes human. We can try to live for other people in this same way. We try to be ready to share experiences with them, to stand by them through good experiences and bad. We try to think about their legitimate needs and concerns, and we make them our needs and concerns. And this can be very costly. Just as God had to set aside his greatness and power to become human, so we often have to set things aside or let go of our own thoughts and feelings if we are properly to take on board the thoughts and feelings of others.
This way of loving is very characteristic of the New Testament. St Paul says “To the Jews I became a Jew, in order to win the Jews...to those outside the law I became as one outside the law ...so that I might win those outside the lew. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have becme all things to all people that I might by any means win some.” (1 Cor 9: 20-23)
I have heard this way of loving describing as “Making yourself one”, being “one” with the other person. It has the quality of empathy; walking in the shoes of the other. And certainly this way of loving has extraordinary effect. It creates an understanding and fellowship that leads to unity. It allows and helps people to be who they are, to be the people God created them to be. It therefore brings peace and harmony, and aligns things with God’s will. Of course it can be very costly; it cost Jesus his life. But such costs are generously repaid by God, by the God who raised Jesus from the dead.
So this Christmas let’s remember God’s love for us in becoming human and let’s try to love others by “making ourselves one” with them.