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A Few Words from Pastor Bryan
Christmas is about vulnerability...
The photo you see here of the Holy Family was posted by Rev. Otis Moss III on Facebook. He put the following caption next to it:
Joseph, Mary and Jesus were given asylum in Africa. What if Africa (Kemet, Egypt) had refused to give the savior shelter? What if ICE had separated the family? What if… Merry Christmas
I'm going to save my thoughts about the Holy Family seeking asylum and how that connects with our own current immigration crisis for Epiphany when we talk about Mary and Joseph and Jesus running for their lives from King Herod.
But what I'm feeling this year is the incredible vulnerability at the heart of the Christmas story. How fragile and tentative Jesus's beginning was. How vulnerable he was. And I'm feeling the deep truth that Love always requires that we become vulnerable.
Why is this vulnerability thing hitting me in a tender place this year? Well there are some reasons that are as plain as the headlines. The war in Israel/Palestine right now is a daily horror show of vulnerable people being heinously violated and literally bombed to death. Civilians. Children. On purpose. Please don't sugarcoat it or try to justify it with words like "collateral damage." There is no justification for what we are witnessing. And yes, I know, Israeli children were heinously and ruthlessly slaughtered on October 7th. I'm not going to get into it here. But I'm feeling all of it. Innocent people being bombed to death by the thousands because grown humans refuse to deal maturely with their/our own sin, greed, and brokenness. If there's anything that's become obvious to me at this point in my life it is that innocent kids always pay the greatest price for humankind's unwillingness to embrace truth and love and to grow the ______ up. It is infuriating. It is heartbreaking. It is exhausting.
Where is God is all this?
In the rubble. With the victims. Being bombed. And with us. In all of our feelings and emotions and every aspect of our human reality, including being stressed out by the Christmas presents we haven't bought or wrapped or mailed off yet. Feeling and experiencing it all with us, and trying, always, to lead us back to Love.
Part of the Christmas story is that God chose to become completely vulnerable when God entered the reality of humankind firsthand. God "took on flesh." "Emmanuel"--"God with us." God one of us. God became a baby. God became a baby in a family that was targeted by the violence and injustice and cruelty of a military superpower. God could have entered the human race in the most safe, lavish, and privileged way. But the Christmas story tells us otherwise. God entered our realm as one of the most vulnerable people on earth. God became a baby who had to be carried by his mother and father and on whom he was completely dependent. What kind of loving solidarity is this? It's mind-blowing to me that the Creator of the Universe chose to enter our human realm in this way.
So yeah. I'm just feeling how vulnerable we humans are, and I'm feeling the weight of what we humans choose to do to each other when we've lost our way. And I'm feeling overwhelmed that God chose to experience this vulnerability with us, rather than to punish us for being who we are at our worst. And that solidarity went all the way to the cross. I mean it really is an amazing story.
But back to Christmas and vulnerability. All of this is also making me more aware than ever of what a risk it is for any of us to choose to love and to allow ourselves to be loved. When we give our hearts to someone or something--children, grandchildren, a spouse, a partner, a true friend, a family, a church community--we give them the power to hurt us. And yet most of us do it anyway. We take the risk. Why?
Because we know that Love is at the heart of it All. That in the end, all that matters is Love. That life really isn't Life without Love, and choosing vulnerability, which literally means choosing to allow ourselves to be potentially wounded--is the price of the ticket to the experience of Love. God obviously designed it this way.
Words fail me here. It feels trite to try to put the risk of loving into words. All I know is that it is the price of everything we long for most. No vulnerability--no hope, peace, joy, healing, truth, justice, or deep and abiding relationship and all the beauty and fullness that goes with relationships.
So this Christmas I find myself wanting to pause for a moment and give thanks to those who have risked truly loving me in my life. I haven't always been easy on those who've loved me. My selfishness and brokenness and unresolved issues and blind spots have sometimes caused great pain for those who've loved me most. I get that. I see that. It saddens me at time. And I am grateful beyond words that some people have loved me anyway.
And how about you? Have you ever taken a moment to simply thank those who have loved you most for taking the risk of becoming that vulnerable to you? And sure, most of us could focus on the risks we ourselves have taken and the prices we've paid for being willing to be vulnerable to others. I hope you feel that those risks in your life have been worth taking, even if you've been hurt. As singer/songwriter Davil Wilcox once put it, "human hearts were meant to be broken. If you've suffered heartbreak, well done fellow human. You've showed up. Way to go. And for God's sake, as well as your own, do it again."
But most of all this Christmas I just want to thank God once again for coming to us as one of us, and for choosing to become completely vulnerable to us and with us. I want to thank God for sticking His/Her/Their Neck out for us, knowing full well that it was going to cost everything. And for taking the risk anyway.
I'll meet you at the manger once again this Sunday.
What a Story. What a Love.
Pastor Bryan
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