My little great-nephew Owen is three years old. A baby brother arrived this summer. When Owen met him in the hospital he said, “We’re not taking THAT home with us!” Owen feels the same as many older brothers and sisters, and yet he has thankfully adjusted well to this new person who will surely be a key person in his life from now on.
Now matter how expected or planned or longed-for a birth is, it is disruptive. There’s no doubt about it, a baby changes everything. A baby is messy, a baby is noisy, a baby is vulnerable, a baby is needy. A baby is who shows up for us at Christmas.
This Advent leading up to Christmas we heard the scripture about God coming like a thief in the night, catching us off guard, and breaking into our lives. We found this to be a mixed message, because a thief is bad news, but God is good news. We considered the possibility that God comes to us like a thief because we have our house locked up tight against life-changing good news, against disruption, against challenge. So God comes as a thief to steal away our self-absorption, our tight grip of control over our lives. God comes as a thief, a little baby thief.
I think my great-nephew had a sense that his little brother was a thief. He would be a thief of his parents’ time and energy, a thief of his toys, competition for resources. But he would also be a thief of his loneliness, of his isolation, of his self-centeredness. Not all thieving is bad, it depends on what you steal. Jesus, too steals our isolation, our self-centeredness, our self-righteousness, he steals our despair.
Jesus came to us a little baby to steal our hearts, to sneak in. He came to us innocent and needing help. He came to us vulnerable and small. So we opened the door. But he didn’t just come to be cute and snuggly. A baby doesn’t stay the same. The minute you think you have this little person figured out, they change and need something else. They are constantly growing and changing. They grow up and they have a different view of the world and their own way of approaching things.
We all change and grow up. I remember how heart-breaking it was when my nieces entered their teenage years because they started to see the cruelty of this world and how it could be different. It’s heart-breaking to be so aware of the world’s pain. So it is with our children and so it is with Jesus. He grew up with his own vision, his own view of how the world oppresses people, how war maims and destroys and how our taxes go to purchase weapons to shape this world into one friendly toward the rich.
Many of us have now grown weary and apathetic, inundated with images and news stories from around the world that keep us feeling helpless. We are aware of injustice everywhere, so much evil in our midst and even that we participate in: workers not paid fair wages, a health care system that regularly bankrupts families, a housing market developed only to make money not keep people safe and warm and dry, poison in our food, clothing, and soil. These are days when we really feel like locking up the doors against all the pain and struggle and hunker down to cling to what we know and what makes us comfortable.
That’s why Jesus comes to us as a baby. We let our guard down for a baby. And with a baby we see beyond the pain and fear of these times and we see possibility. When Jesus comes as a baby, he brings hope and possibility with him. Into this chaotic world, hope is born. Here is someone whose life is not yet all laid out, who has gifts to develop, joys to experience. Here is someone who will take us back to our own innocence, our own delight, our own hope for what could be. With Jesus, it is this and more. It isn’t what could be, it is what will be, what God promises, what God is powerfully enacting. Jesus not only breaks in like a thief, but he breaks through all our barriers to give us gifts. Jesus gives us gift of community, others who carry the light of hope and do the hard work together to bring it into reality—feeding the hungry, welcoming those who have been rejected, sharing with others, and living the Pentecost story as we worship in multiple languages. Jesus gives us the gift of new life—life is not easy following Jesus to the cross and losing everything: family, possessions, social status. And yet even death does not have the last word because love never ends and Jesus’ resurrection promise is for us all. We may not see the fullness of the Kingdom of God in this life, yet we work toward a more just world, for moments of love coming through, for connection. Jesus gives us the gift of forgiveness—to be able to try again when we get off course, to be human and make mistakes and not have that define us. Jesus gives us the gift of love—as we welcome this child, he welcomes us and adopts us into his family. Now we are part of something, have obligations to each other, have the benefits of belonging. We have love from God overflowing through all the changes in our world, a revealing light, warmth and hope, a vision that is worth working toward, and a family to work together with that keeps it interesting.
Jesus is born in Bethlehem. We know his life will be full of pain and difficulty. We know he will face challenges from every direction and even that he will die a painful death. Yet we know that his dream and vision continues to be worth fighting for, worth working for. We hold that spark of hope in these troubled times and we vow to find the joy like a small child, to name the injustice like a teenager, and to find our house broken into this season with hope and determination to make life better for another person, to forgive, to share, to speak the truth, and to act until God’s dream is fully realized.
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