At the risk of putting you to sleep, I’d like to ask each one of you to close your eyes. Right now, for just a minute. Please close your eyes. And now imagine with me. Imagine that you are holding a newborn baby. Imagine how this baby feels — skin touching skin, curves touching curves — harmonious heartbeats as life surges between you. Imagine the smell — the earthy sweetness of breath and body perfuming the air. Imagine the sound — the silent melody of sighing, stretching, settling. Right now, for just a minute, let your imagination go. Feel the baby. Smell the baby. Hear the baby. And rejoice! This very night the baby you hold in your arms is God.
Now as you open your eyes, as you come back to this warm womb of worship, let us think for a minute about the utter absurdity of it all. God — as a baby. Mighty, majestic God, powerful, passionate God, omnipotent, omniscient God — as a baby. God — giving up all the grandeur — coming down — here — crawling inside our skin — vital but vulnerable — resting in our arms. How can this be? It is a mystery. But it is God’s mystery, and it is God’s startling choice.
I was fortunate enough to give birth to my babies in the good old days when mothers were allowed to stay in the hospital and recover. And since I had two cesareans, my stays were luxuriously long, five days in each case. The first birth was a bit traumatic, so I needed all that time to heal medically. But the second birth was much easier, and so I had five days to sleep, to eat, to ponder, and to hold my daughter — just to hold her in utter wonder and amazement. The touch and the smell — the satin skin and the greedy mouth and the tiny toes — it was moment after moment of miracle. I agree with Anne LaMott when she writes: “This is in fact what I think God may smell like — a young child’s slightly dirty neck.”1 My friends, holding a baby is the most human of activities, and yet it may be the holiest moment some of us ever get. Utterly ordinary — achingly awesome — how can such a paradox exist?
In her book For the Time Being, Annie Dillard weaves an utterly bizarre collage of images. One image she keeps coming back to is Nurse Eisberg, an obstetrical nurse in a large urban hospital. Reminding us that 10,000 American babies are born each day, Dillard describes the nurse’s work:
Here on the obstetrical ward, is a double sink in a little room ... This is where they wash the newborns like dishes ... Nurse Eisberg lifts them gently, swiftly, efficiently ... She wipes white lines of crumbled vernix from folds in his groin and under his arms. She holds one wormy arm and one wormy leg to turn him over; then she cleans his dorsal side, and ends with his anus. She diapers him ... and gives the bundle a push to slide it down the counter....2
A baby assembly line, day after day, week after week — babies processed like canned hams — clean, compact, utterly ordinary. I wonder, would Nurse Eisberg even recognize Jesus if he was born in her hospital and dunked in her sink? Probably not. When you’ve seen one baby you’ve seen them all. And so, my friends, either each baby is holy, or none of them are holy at all. I believe that the Christmas story proclaims loudly that every child is holy — that each one of us is holy.
The two ends of the Christian story are what sets our spiritual saga apart from all other world religions. God as a tiny, helpless baby — God as a crumpled, bleeding corpse, God as utterly vulnerable — God as utterly helpless, God as one who embraces the fullness of human experience in order to sanctify it all. My friends, if you want an ethereal, otherworldly, cosmic religion, then Christianity is not your bag. Because, if we don’t touch it, if we don’t smell it, if we don’t live it and experience it and become it, well, then, the Christian story is dead. God chooses to become like us so that we can become like God. The most amazing and distressing consequence of this whole crazy night is that God needs us. God cannot be God without us. Quite simply, without us, this newborn baby God cannot survive.
As any parent sitting in this sanctuary knows, vulnerable babies drastically change our lives. They disturb, they delight, and ultimately they demand. Sleep is disrupted forever, anxiety develops angles never before imagined, feelings of inadequacy become daily companions, and waves of sadness can, at times, overwhelm us. We become totally, completely enmeshed in the fabric of a baby’s life, and we are changed forever. Babies are gifts, but they are costly, exhausting gifts.
And so it is with the baby God of this night. Tonight God chooses — purposely chooses — to come in simplicity and vulnerability to disturb us, to delight us, and to make strong demands upon us. God comes to enmesh us in the sacred story. And if we choose to pick up this baby Jesus, our lives will never be the same. Self-absorbed ambition and success can never again be our main reason for being. The world is no longer just a backdrop for our own personal agenda. When this baby interrupts our lives, we must begin to think about someone, something, some purpose beyond our own.
And so, when all is said and done, what is being born this night is not only a new image of God, but also a new image of our own self — more mature, more responsible, more compassionate, more emotional, more physical, more ethical, more spiritual than any self we have ever known. Yes, this baby God has come to disturb us and to delight us, and to make demands upon our very souls. And if we fail to respond, well then we will be neglecting, even abusing, this God whose survival depends upon us.
The great writer Martin Buber believed that God gives each one of us a speck of the world to redeem — an infant spark of creation to nurture into fullness of life. My friends, the baby God who is being born this night within each one of us is a fragile burst of creation that is only ours to redeem. What is the particular spark in you? Is it a relationship that is ripe for commitment? Is it a vocational dream that is waiting to be realized? Is it a moral decision that is ready to be claimed? Is it a creative instinct waiting to be expressed? What is the holy in you — vital and vulnerable — yearning to be born? This infant holiness, gestating within your soul, will come when it is time to come, and then you, then I, then we must respond. This God spark within you will be totally dependent upon you to survive.
The writer Max DePree tells of an early experience with his granddaughter Zoe. She was born prematurely, weighing only one pound seven ounces. Zoe was so small a wedding ring could slide up her arm to her shoulder. Her doctor said she had a five to ten percent chance of living three days. When Max visited Zoe, she had two IVs in her navel, one in her foot, a monitor on each side of her chest, and a respirator tube and feeding tube in her mouth. Zoe’s biological father had left. Consequently, the nurse told Max that he must come to the hospital every day and rub her body, her legs, and her arms with the tip of his finger. While doing that, he was to say to her how much he loved her. It was essential that his voice be connected to his touch.3
Tonight God comes to us as a vital, vulnerable child — perhaps a bit premature for automatic survival in our secular world. With lusty voice we sing the carols, we read the story, we proclaim the joy and hope of this season. But, my friends, if our voice does not connect to our touch, if our singing does not connect to our service, well, then, this fresh presence of a fragile God may not survive the night.
The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is the traditional site of Jesus’ birth, and is, in good times, the destination of many faithful pilgrims. There is only one door into the church — only one way to get inside this holy spot. And this door is so low and so small that each visitor must bend low — in some cases, even crawl, in order to enter. Such is the story of this night. God bends low to come as one of us — a baby blessing us — calling us to be nurturers of life. If we have the courage to respond, the courage to stoop low and pick up the child, this baby will fit perfectly into our arms. And we can become participants in God’s maturing presence in the world.
Can you feel the baby? Can you smell the baby? Can you hear the baby? This is Emmanuel — God-With-Us.
May it be so — for you and for me. Amen.
1.Anne LaMott, Traveling Mercies (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 102.
2.Annie Dillard, For the Time Being (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), pp. 36-38.
3.Source unknown.