A year and a half ago, I saw the Christ Child in Bethlehem. I was with a group from our diocese on pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Of all the places we visited, there is probably none more well-known in culture than Bethlehem – known well through the famous Christmas story that we celebrate today. And while I don’t know exactly what I expected of Bethlehem, I know that I was quite overwhelmed and confused by what I did see.

Bethlehem today is in the Palestinian territories, though only a short 8 miles from Jerusalem. Shortly after we arrived, we went to the Church of the Nativity, built on the place where Jesus was born according to tradition. We made our way through scaffolding that consumed much of the place, to the entrance to the crypt. We were required to be quiet while inside, but there was a lot going on. Multiple churches share access to this holy place, usually tolerating each other’s presence, but occasionally fighting over it, as when many priests famously got into a physical brawl at Christmas 7 years ago. 

When we finally made our way down, I found myself in small, low-ceilinged, rather claustrophobic space that was filled with people and hundreds of censors hanging from the ceiling and anywhere else one could be hung. 

Everyone was taking turns going up to a small carved out space, and reaching in and touching a large star in the marble ground, where tradition has it was the exact spot that Jesus was born. I knew that I should be awed by this place that has been considered one of the holiest by Christians for hundreds of years, but the truth was, I quickly felt the need to get out of that small space because it was suffocating and far from peaceful.

The following day in Bethlehem, we visited an orphanage run by Catholic nuns.  They cared for many children who for various reasons had no family to care for them, many of whom were born to unwed mothers who would have suffered shame if anyone knew they existed. The nuns cared for the children until they were 7 years old, showering them with love while they could, but due to government regulations that strictly limited their ability to have citizenship papers and jobs, their future was bleak. 

We were able to visit one room of toddlers, which consisted of both children who were part of a low-income daycare that the orphanage ran and the children who actually lived there. We were told that we would know which children were which because those that lived there would be so eager for someone to hold them and give them attention that they would come to any of us, while the daycare children were wary of strangers in the way most toddlers are. 

They were right. The children were beautiful and adorable. And it was gut-wrenching to know the longing in them for love, heart-breaking to know the difficult lives that lay ahead of them. And yet, somehow in that place, I knew for sure that I had encountered the Christ-Child, far more certain than I had in the church where he was supposedly born two thousand years ago. 

There in the orphanage, I felt much closer to the truth of the Incarnation because the truth of this story is that God was not born among large, expensive, fancy buildings encased in marble and mosaics. God was not born where the rich and powerful congregated, nor was God born in a holy place fought over by religious people. God was born to an unknown peasant woman in dishonorable circumstances among a conquered people of a small nation. At the time, he was forgotten, and his future was bleak. 

And while I knew I had encountered the holy there, it seemed like two thousand years later, not much had changed. I left Bethlehem wondering if the Incarnation, this belief that is at the core of our faith, truly matters. If this is what the birthplace of Jesus is like today, has the birth of Christ really made any difference in our world? At the same time, I also left with those children’s faces seared in my mind, longing desperately for God to be among us.

And honestly, my feelings that day leaving Bethlehem were similar to what I feel today about the state of our world. Was what happened in Bethlehem two thousand years ago really ‘good news of great joy for all the people’? Because it seems that we are no less desperate for a Savior today. We have entered Christmas in the middle of a government shutdown because of the impasse among people in government, which is fairly representative of our nation and our world right now. 

It is easy to despair and wonder what any of us can really do to change what is happening now, if there is any hope for our world, any way heal the wounds that divide us.

So I have been thinking about what has changed my mind in my life, what has helped me to see the world differently and to stop fearing those who I did not know, those about whom I had been taught to assume the worst in the past. And there is always the same answer – when I truly came to see people in a different way, it was always because of one thing: I got to know someone.

My ideas about racism and how people of color are treated in our country were changed when I moved in with two African-American friends and their families welcomed me in while I was away at college. My beliefs about gay and lesbian people changed when I got to know men and women who loved each other deeply and well, people who made each other better by their love,people who reflected all that I knew love could be. My assumptions about people who were not Christians were changed when I got to know Jews, Muslims, and atheists who were thoughtful and loving and kind, whose generosity of spirit enriched my life and made me more of who I was created to be. Over and over, I was changed by coming to know the exact people I had been taught to fear. Great chasms in my heart that separated me from other people were bridged because they took the risk of knowing and loving me.

At Christmas, I have come to wonder if that is the deep truth of what we celebrate tonight. God knew that the only way to bridge the eternal chasm that we had created between God and humanity, the only way to heal the divides that we have made between ourselves, was to become a person who we could know, a person who could know us. God entered our world, God took on flesh so that we could be changed the only way we have ever been changed – by knowing and loving someone.

God becomes one of us, and we are changed. We come to know that divinity is not only held in the perfect. God’s presence is not marked by what is immaculate. God’s glory is not shown in power and prestige. God does not come among us in dominance to be feared but in a tiny hand grasping a finger to hold. God is not as we would think, as we would imagine. God is not the other we convinced ourselves to fear. God is not the ideas we argue about, that we try so hard to control. 

God has come for us to know.

And when God came to be known in that baby, our very humanity was healed. In Jesus, we were shown all that we were made to be – the very fullness of love lived out to the end. Because God became flesh, we now know that every child that is born, every one of us and every person we encounter, is connected to the divine, the Creator of the universe. Our own flesh and the flesh we encounter is infused with the image of God. We are all worthy to know and be known, to love and be loved. It is the essence of who we are, and it goes far deeper than anything that divides us.

But I believe that the greater mystery that gathers us here tonight is not that we are changed by God becoming one of us. The great mystery of this evening is that God has to be willing to be changed as well. In coming to know us, the Creator of the Universe chooses to be affected by us.

John’s telling of the Incarnation, which we’ll read at the end of the service, tells us that the Word became flesh and dwelled among us. The Word was a Greek concept that described the ordering power of the universe. It is the energy that keeps our world turning, the law and order of our lives by which we know that day follows night and spring follows winter, that elephants give birth to baby elephants and giraffes give birth to baby giraffes. Some would describe it as a greater power or energy that holds us all together, that connects all life. John says that this source of life, this life-ordering power of the universe was born as the baby in Bethlehem that night.

It is what we celebrate at Christmas. In coming to know us, the Creator of the Universe chooses to be changed by us. How many people does God partner with that night? Jesus depends on a young girl to carry him, a conquered peasant man to guard him, uneducated shepherds to announce his birth. 

God becomes a helpless, dependent baby. When God entered our world, if you had asked about facts or ideas or policies, if you had asked for certainties, this God would have responded with inarticulate crying or contagious giggles. Or perhaps he would have slept straight through it. 

I find this rather disconcerting – really rather scandalous. I don’t know about you, but I need some certainty, some truth, someone to sort out all that is warring in my heart and in my world. We long for the pure, the certain, the immaculate – immaculate conception, immaculate view of Scripture, immaculate church where everyone gets along.

But it’s not an immaculate world that God is born into. God is born into the messy, amazing world that we live in, a world created full of wonder and plagued by pain and struggle, a world as broken and beautiful today as at was then. This is the world God chose to be born in, to be affected by, to be dependent on.

God chose to come into the world as a baby crying for food, with a hand reaching to grab a finger because God chose to heal this world, not in one great act of power, but in an invitation to love and care and get to know someone as different from us as the Creator of the Universe wrapped in someone just like us. 

God asks us to be part of reconciling this world, of bridging the gaps and divisions that pull us apart, of being willing to take the time and risk to know someone who we aren’t sure about, to trust that all flesh has been redeemed by God taking it on, believe and proclaim the good news of great joy, of making it true for all the people.

Because if God made flesh is good news for any of us, it must be good news for all of us. The Creator of the Universe came among us to draw the whole world back together, to heal all that is broken in us and that can only be done by healing all that is broken between us. We cannot be healed and whole alone. We only can be all that we were created to be, at one with God and each other, together. And that is the work God is doing here, among us, inviting us to take part. 

Perhaps when we wonder if anything has changed, we must remember that Christmas was not the ending of God’s work in our world, but rather a new beginning. 

As Howard Thurman says in his poem, ‘The Work of Christmas,”

When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

Perhaps the question we are left with is not what has changed in the last two thousand years but rather, what will change this Christmas? Will we reach out and join God in healing our world? Will we join with God who is born among us tonight?