Think of the beautiful story that we just heard. Shepherds, attending to their flock, are suddenly confronted by an angel, and the glory of God surrounded them. And the angel tells them that the Messiah has been born, and that they would know it was the Messiah because the baby would be wrapped in rags and lying in a trough used to feed the animals. And then the heavens broke open, and the majesty of the choirs of angels began to sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
Try and imagine that scene. The glory, the majesty of angels, singing of God’s glory – and the light of God’s glory surrounding those shepherds with the Good news of the birth of this child who would be their savior.
Artists have, for years, attempted to capture that moment, when the heavens opened up, and the words from the Prophet Isaiah became manifest: “he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.” These images often depict the holy family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, with halos around their heads, angels above, possibly even donkeys or other animals bowing down to worship this child. They draw on the majestic, the glorious imagery of God as king. We see saints, doing holy things, and are enraptured by the glory that is the salvation of humanity, lying in a manger.
And while these images and paintings are beautiful, we can become distracted by the angels, by the halos and perpetual light. And we can forget that in just a day or two, that baby would have poopy diapers. And someone was going to have to clean up that mess.
The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, referred to Jesus as the one “in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily.”1 That is, the entire majesty and glory of God rested in the human nature, the flesh of Jesus. And in Hebrews we hear that Jesus was made “lower than the angels for a little while.”2 That he became like us in every respect, and “because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”3
Jesus became like us.
He grew tired from walking all day from place to place. He became hungry. He got thirsty. When he saw that those in charge of the temple had turned the temple of God, which was supposed to be a house of prayer, into a den of thieves, Jesus flipped over the tables in the temple, because he was angry with those who were preying on the people instead of praying for them. When his beloved friend Lazarus died, Jesus went to visit his sisters Mary and Martha, and was so moved by their grief that we get a verse in the bible that simply says, “Jesus wept.”4 But most importantly of all, Jesus was driven into the desert by Satan to be tempted, and though he felt all the same pressures that we do, he did not give in.5
He became like us. Human in every way. He wasn’t just a holy being, a distant God in the clouds, filled with rainbows and holy light in the distance. He was the fullness of all of God’s glory, wrapped up in human flesh.
He was one of us.
As I was preparing for this sermon this past week, a song kept going through my head. The version I heard was sung by Alanis Morisette, but for those of you from a slightly earlier generation probably heard Joan Osborne sing, “One of Us.” The lyrics were stuck in my head, and I couldn’t get them out. They go a little like this: “What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger, on the bus, trying to make his way home?”
And it was this song that reminded me of a story a friend of mine had written for his local newspaper a little over twenty years ago. Since he lived in a metro area, and he and his wife had only one car, he wrote about how every public transit he had ever used always had some odd people. But for sure, there was always one weird person who stood out, who would behave in such an odd fashion that everyone on the bus would be forced to stare at them in disbelief or sheer confusion. One day, his wife had been out of town for business, and during that time, my friend had reverted, he says, back to his bachelor days. One day, he woke up with an enormous fright, and realized he was late for work. Because he was working manual labor, and didn’t really need to look all the best all the time, he threw on whatever clothes he could find, whatever shoes he could find, grabbed whatever food was readily available, and ran to the bus stop, making it barely in time to catch his bus. Still only half-awake from waking up late, he kept nodding off. And at one moment, he noticed that the food he had grabbed, pizza or some other crusty bread substance was stuck in his unkempt beard, and he had been absent-mindedly picking the crumbs out of his beard and eating them. And people were staring. And then he noticed that he had on mismatched socks, one of his shoes was untied, his fleece coat was buttoned just slightly off, and he hadn’t shaved in three days. And here he was, eating crumbs from his beard, and people were staring – at him. And he had a moment of panic as the realization set in. “Oh my God! I’m the weird guy on the bus!” And in that article to the newspaper, he simply said, you know, we often look at these people on the bus, and we judge, and we snicker, or we stare. But we don’t know the back story, or what happened to bring a person to that place, but all it takes is a few things to go off the rails, and any one of us could be the weird person on the bus. So maybe, he said, we could all show these people a little mercy, and a little grace.
And that’s what tonight’s Gospel story is all about, isn’t it? Grace.
The grace of God, coming to us in the form of a child, of God made flesh, and God with us, so that we might look upon everyone we meet, and see in their faces the image of God.
The story begins here, at the birth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. It continues through Jesus’ presentation in the temple, to his baptism in the Jordan, to his temptation in the desert, through the villages and countryside where he proclaimed the Kingdom of God, and ultimately ending in his betrayal, crucifixion and death on the cross, “so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”6 He became one of us, and shared in all we had and were, so that “through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.”7
But it began here, with a family, staying in a barn because there was no room left for them in the inn, and a baby, wrapped in rags and laid in a feed trough. All the while overhead, choirs of angels sang out loud the mighty chorus of “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth!”
God was one of us, and it began here, where the angels sang, and the light of God shone down from heaven on the one who “humbled himself and became, for a time, a little lower than the angels.”8
I think I can safely speak for all of us when I say:
Glory to God in the highest!
- Colossians 2:9
- Hebrews 2:9
- Hebrews 2:18
- John 4:6, 11:35, 19:28; Matthew 4:2, 21:12-13; 27:32
- Luke 4
- Hebrews 2:9
- Hebrews 2:14-15
- Hebrews 2:9
[This sermon was delivered at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Wickenburg, AZ on December 24, 2024.]
