Right now, there are babies laughing and crying in our world, and there are parents listening for those wordless cries and understanding them. After a few days or weeks of listening intently, caring for the newborn, simply being with the baby, parents learn to distinguish between the cry that means \u201cI\u2019m hungry \u2014 feed me NOW!\u201d and the one that says, \u201cPick me up and hold me; I need to know I\u2019m safe and warm.\u201d Parents learn to tell the difference between the cry that means the baby is simply bored and restless and fretful and the cry that means they\u2019re in real pain. And parents learn \u2014 and sometimes learn to dread \u2014 the sound of a baby with a diaper in serious need of changing! Later on, after parents have mastered the rudiments of crying language, the baby begins to laugh \u2014 and parents soon learn to know just what is causing the baby\u2019s mirth, as well as what causes the cries. This is a language without words, but a language nonetheless!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLong ago, God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,\u201d says the letter to the Hebrews. God speaks to us through His son, a son born into this world like any of us, a son who is entrusted to parents and to the world like any of us born into the world, a son who cries and laughs like any other newborn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus enters the world like each one of us, dependent upon others for survival. He is vulnerable to hunger and thirst, to cold and stress, to infection and accident and mishap. In fact, if not for the protective love of his parents, Herod\u2019s armies would have found him after his birth and killed him. \u201cThe Word became flesh and lived among us,\u201d says the Gospel of John. In fact, the divine Word became a child, newborn, fragile, and vulnerable, and as dependent as we all are upon the love of others for survival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the birth of Jesus, God reveals Himself and His plan for salvation \u2014 and it turns out to depend on human beings! This God, who is all-powerful, who could simply destroy the world and start over again, will not. This God, who could demand our obedience, does not. This God loves us so much that He uses His power to make us \u2014 fragile, willful human beings \u2014 His partners in our own salvation. God sends His Son, born as an infant who is dependent upon Mary and Joseph for his very survival. God sends His Son to be cared for, protected, listened to \u2014 by us. Mary and Joseph are entrusted with this precious baby\u2019s life, and through his laughs and cries, they begin a lifetime relationship with Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It goes against all our worldly logic to imagine God as dependent upon us, human beings \u2014 or anything else, for that matter. Isn\u2019t it supposed to be the very definition of God that God is all- powerful, needs nobody else, is totally self-sufficient? How could God depend on us? But how else do we explain this child given to the world? The gospels don\u2019t claim any special, extraordinary power for the infant Jesus: he gives no blessing from the creche, performs no miracles, does not speak words the world can understand. He is simply a baby like any other baby, who cries and is dependent upon others to be fed and cared for and held and loved \u2014 dependent upon others for his very life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet, the Gospel continues: \u201cWe have beheld his glory\u2026\u201d The glory in the infant Jesus is that he is the Word, the message brought from God to humanity through his birth into our world. The glory in Jesus is God\u2019s love for the world He has created, a love so great that God Himself would experience life in the world through His son. The glory is being invited to share in God\u2019s hope for us. The glory is sharing the work of creation with God, so that God\u2019s hope for us might become a reality in our world, and God\u2019s kingdom may come in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many and Joseph accepted God\u2019s hope by accepting the responsibility of being earthly parents for baby sent from God. They held him and cared for him, listened to his cries, and learned to understand what was in his mind and his heart. They cared for this child and raised him in love. They gave the child a home, and found new life in their relationship with Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The glory of God lives among us; the story of Christmas is told and retold day after day as God invites us to share in the kingdom he has prepared for us through His son. The story of Christmas is the story of how God\u2019s Kingdom enters our lives. We tell the story not only in words, but in the language that is beyond words: by how we live. In our baptismal promises we covenant to \u201cproclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.\u201d And our \u201cexample,\u201d how we live is part of telling the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are called to tell the story all the time, but it is most urgent not in times of comfort and power, but in times of need; not in moments of glory, but rather in calls for help. And we can experience Christmas around the year as we learn to hear and understand the cries of children and adults who live in need, who ask for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The world associates Christmas with children, and not just because of the birth of the baby Jesus. I think one reason we associate Christmas with children is that children are quick to identify what they want and ask for it \u2014 sometimes loudly and insistently! And children are just as quick to show their joy when they get what they need, and their dismay when they don\u2019t get what they asked for specially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both the world and the church associate Christmas with the poor and the outcast \u2014 and not just because the story tells us of the traveling family forced to bed down in a stable. People who are poor and outcast openly display their needs \u2014 they haven\u2019t the means to hide them. We can tell what they need, because we see so clearly what they don\u2019t have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The truth is that all of us have things we want desperately, though we may conceal our deepest desires under gruff exteriors or the mask of self-sufficiency. We all have things we need, but are so afraid to show our neediness, to show the ways we feel lonely or left out \u2014 outcast. Many of us have lived with this self- sufficient face so long that we can\u2019t even recognize our own needs, or learn to ask, as children do, for what we want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christmas is a story about all of us receiving that which we most want and need: love \u2014 deep, strong, unconditional love. The gift at Christmas isn\u2019t just the gift of a baby to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the Wise Men. It isn\u2019t just a story about Joseph and Mary being entrusted by God with the awesome responsibility of caring for God\u2019s son. The Christmas story is about how God so loved \u2014 and loves \u2014 us that he asks us to be partners in loving the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God asks us, like Joseph and Mary, to learn to hear and understand the cries of infants and children, of people in need. We are called to listen and learn to understand the unspoken cries of all who need to be cared for: children, families, older people, people who are sick and poor and needy \u2014 and each other. And once we listen and understand, learn to distinguish among the cries, we are called to respond in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Gospel proclaims that \u201cThe Word became flesh and lived among us.\u201d Mary and Joseph made a loving home for the Word, for Jesus. Will we? Will we invite the person of Jesus into our lives? Will we care for that presence, listen to him crying, love him as our brother? He is in our world now, today, and will be tomorrow, and in the New Year and beyond. He is with us even in the middle of summer, when Christmas day seems forever away. And you can hear him: He will be in the laughter and cries of children; he will be in the cries of families who have been broken apart by poverty and despair and violence; he will be in the cries of the elderly who are alone and frightened; he will be in our own cries of pain; he will be in the laughter of people coming together in love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Word became flesh and lives among us. May each day be Christmas, and may we tell the story by our lives each day: the story of how we cared for the presence of Christ entrusted to us, by caring for each other and for ourselves, as we listen to the cries and laughter, and love as we have been loved. May Christmas not be identified only with the children, or the poor, or the outcast, but with all of us, as we risk ourselves to love and be loved, even as God does in this blessed Son, born to bring us love in the world this day and always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sermon was written by David Klutterman<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Right now, there are babies laughing and crying in our world, and there are parents listening for those wordless cries and understanding them. After a few days or weeks of listening intently, caring for the newborn, simply being with the baby, parents learn to distinguish between the cry that means \u201cI\u2019m hungry \u2014 feed me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":201212,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,43,52,3],"tags":[190],"class_list":["post-511700","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas","category-sermons","category-sermons-that-work","category-worship-and-prayer-menu","tag-christmas-day-iii"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":16,"label":"Christmas"},{"value":43,"label":"Sermons"},{"value":52,"label":"Sermons That Work"},{"value":3,"label":"worship_and_prayer_menu"}],"post_tag":[{"value":190,"label":"Christmas Day III"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermon"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3475330,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/511700\/revisions\/3475330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}