Luke 2:1-20         “Merry Incarnation!”

     One Sunday at lunch a mother asked her 8 year old boy, who had a pretty active imagination, “What did you learn in Sunday School today?”

     “Oh, mom, it was really neat,” he said.  “We studied about Moses and the Israelites as they escaped from Pharaoh’s army.”

     “Well, tell me the story,” the proud mother insisted.

     “Well, you see, Moses was getting along just fine in his escape from Egypt when all of a sudden Pharaoh changed his mind and tried to stop Moses and the people of Israel.  Pharaoh’s army chased the Israelites into the desert and had them completely surrounded at the Red Sea.  But Moses radioed higher headquarters and called in a battalion of tanks to attack from the north.  He then requested a squadron of fighter jets to fly over from the south to provide close air support, and while the infantry and artillery provided cover fire, Moses and the people of Israel boarded amphibious assault boats and escaped across the Red Sea.”

     “Now wait a minute, son,” interrupted the surprised mother.  “You don’t expect me to believe a story like that, do you?”
     The son innocently responded, “No.  But if I told you what my Sunday School teacher really said, you wouldn’t believe that either!”

     Just as incredible, and seemingly just as unbelievable, is the birth of Jesus as recorded in Luke’s Gospel.  Who would believe that the Son of the most powerful God would be born to two powerless people?  Who would believe that the Creator of the universe would choose to be born in such an uncreative, normal way with such little fanfare?  Such a little town, Bethlehem.  Such little stir, why, hardly anyone even noticed.  The only visitors were a bunch of poor shepherds.  But that’s the real story, a story filled with mystery and wonder and awe.

     Tonight we once again celebrate the quiet arrival of God’s Son, the Word that became flesh and lived among us.  Tonight we hail the incarnate deity.

     The Incarnation shows us ever so clearly what kind of God it is that we worship.  For God came not as a conquering warrior, but as a courageous lover.  God came not as a mighty king, but as a suffering servant, one would give his life for the salvation of the world by dying on the cross and rising again.

     There was a woman who once went out to do some Christmas shopping with her two young children.  After hours of looking at row after row of toys and everything else imaginable, and after hours of hearing her children ask for everything they saw on the shelves, she couldn’t take it anymore.  She gathered up the bags of gifts and her two small children and steered them toward the elevator.

     She was feeling what so many of us feel during each holiday season – the pressure and hurriedness of this season that can oftentimes get the better of us.  When the elevator doors opened, there was already a crowd in the car.  But she managed to push her way onto the car, dragging her two kids and the bags of stuff in with her.  When the doors closed she had finally had it, and she said in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “Whoever started this whole Christmas thing ought to be strung up and shot.”  From the back of the crowd, a calm, quiet voice responded, “Don’t worry, madam, we already crucified him.”

     God was born in human form and likeness and died for our sins to show once and for all his deep and abiding love for all his people, a love so wondrous that we can hardly conceive of it.  The God we worship isn’t a God who is far away, but a God who came to us in the person of Jesus and even now enters into our everyday moments of existence.

     The gift of love incarnate, that’s what Christmas is all about and no matter how commercial society becomes in its celebration of the birth of Jesus, no one can ever take God’s love out of Christmas.  We can carry God’s love in our hearts and take it with us wherever we go, a love that gives us hope, a love that fills our deepest needs.  For God incarnate is with us and he knows our hurts, he has experienced our pains, and he suffered and died that we might have eternal salvation.

     As you give and receive your Christmas gifts this year, may you discover anew that the real gift of Christmas is “wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”  The real gift of Christmas is not something we find under a tree, but rather nailed to one, for Jesus came to live among us and give his life for us to free us from our sins.  “Merry Incarnation!”

                                                AMEN