Christmas 2011
Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland
The Very Rev. Tracey Lind, Dean

Listen to my entire sermon:


A number of years ago, I received Christmas greetings from an old friend. Attached to her letter was a button of a baby crawling on all fours. She wrote that God appeared on earth as the “most vulnerable and appealing creature imaginable” so that we would take him into our hearts and spread his message of peace and justice around the world.

For almost a decade, I’ve kept that button on my own little altar next to a simple wooden cross, a tiny painted icon of the face of Jesus, and a rock in the shape of a battered heart. Together, they remind me that the heart of God poured into the world through the birth of a helpless and vulnerable baby, who grew up to be a courageous and faithful adult. He proclaimed the reign of God, was executed by those who were threatened by his message, rose again in the broken hearts of his followers, and lives on in the witness of the church around the world.

The real symbol of Christmas is not the Christmas tree, Santa Claus, an angel, or even a star; no, the real symbol of Christmas is a newborn baby. Writing from a Nazi prison during World War II, Dietrich Bonhoeffer articulated this radical truth about Christmas. “We are talking about the birth of a child, not the revolutionary act of a strong man, not the breathtaking discovery of a sage, not the pious act of a saint.”

Bonhoeffer, a young Lutheran pastor, was charged with treason because he dared to act prophetically and politically in the name of Christ. Sitting in a lonely prison cell, waiting for his own execution, Bonhoeffer was confident that God poured the divine essence into the baby Jesus to redeem humanity and restore creation. But, he insisted this grace of God ultimately would come at great cost to those who received it.

The paradox of Christmas is that God chose to enter the world in the very form to which human beings are drawn, and yet in circumstances from which we tend to turn away. Jesus – Emmanuel – God with us was born as a homeless baby on a bed of straw in a cold and dirty stable, amid barn animals. His parents were poor and unwed, a teenage mother and her fiancé who were forced to travel far from home to register for taxes with an oppressive government. Then, after a brief but powerful ministry of preaching, teaching, and healing, at the age of thirty-three, he was condemned of treason and heresy, and executed as a criminal on a cross of wood. Our God’s coming into the world was like that of thousands of children born in similar circumstances every day; his ministry has been both an inspiration and a threat to people, institutions, governments, and yes, even churches throughout the ages; and his death has been repeated all too often in virtually every country on earth.

The Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, tells us that in the life of Jesus, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The English word “to dwell” is derived from a Greek word that literally means to “pitch a tent.” Though not particularly poetic, the Gospel of John actually reads, “The Word became flesh and pitched a tent among us.”

I can’t seem to get out of my mind’s eye the image of the great “I Am” pitching a pup tent, or perhaps a tarp, to be one of us, to stand with us, to sleep next to us, and to literally occupy our human realm. I think that by pitching a tent with us, God wanted to be up close and personal, deeply engaged in our complicated and messy daily lives and in the increasingly complex and often chaotic life of the world.

If you come into town and build a fort, a mansion, or an office building with a fence, a wall or a moat around it, it says that you don’t want to have a lot to do with the community around you. But if you pitch a tent in my yard, my parking lot, or on my sidewalk, you will probably want to knock on my door, use my bathroom, eat at my table, and maybe even have some meaningful conversation with me and my family. This is why God became human. God came to pitch a tent among us, to occupy our space, so that God could engage fully in our humanity, allowing the soul to feel its worth, and we could really encounter the divine word and hear what God has to say.

As I stand among you tonight, I am mindful of those who, because of war, economic hardship or natural disaster, are forced to sleep in tents and under tarps around the world, and I know that the Risen Christ is dwelling among them. But I’m also aware of those are intentionally pitching tents on public squares, sidewalks, parks, parking lots, and even church steps as part of what-has-come-to be- known-as the Occupy Movement; and I keep seeing the face of Jesus in that crowd.

In the midst of what might seem to many of us to be chaos, conflict and confusion, the Risen Christ is there. He is teaching and preaching, comforting a crying child, and helping and elder carry water. He can be seen picking up the garbage, serving soup and coffee, taking a nap, and sorting through donated clothes and books. He’s been observed meeting with organizers, talking to the media, and sorting through government paper work. He is praying with the sick or weary and visiting folks in jail. And maybe, just maybe, he has climbed over a fence and gotten himself arrested. Tenting among us and occupying human reality, our Lord is once again crying out for justice and peace.

As the prophets remind us, we have to acknowledge bad news before we can receive good news. So here’s some bad news on this Christmas Eve. Right now, in this country: 25 million people can’t find a full-time job; 50 million individuals live without health insurance; 47 million need government help in order to feed themselves; 15 million homeowners owe more on their mortgages than the value of their houses; more than 8 million people lost their homes in the foreclosure crisis; about 1.5 million men, women and children are in need of shelter; and the
top 20% of Americans control 93% of our nation’s total financial wealth. Some of you sitting in this cathedral tonight know are living the painful reality of these statistics.

But here’s the good news. Jesus came into the world not just for the top 1% or the 99%; Christ came for the 100%. Jesus came to show all of us a better way. As clearly demonstrated throughout the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and teaching, God’s love made known to us in Christ commands us to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, care for the sick and infirmed, create jobs to those who want to work, and welcome the stranger and sojourner in our midst.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for all of us, but tent camping with Jesus is not a cheap holiday, and maybe this is what the Occupy Movement is teaching the church.

Reflecting on the Occupy tent city in front of Exeter Cathedral, Dr Siobhán Garrigan, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter, writes: “The image of the tents, the sincerity of the organizers, the theological soundness of their challenging message: could it not be that these serve as an unusually literal reminder of what it is like when God’s Word is made flesh?”

Yes, it’s chaotic, and for some, it’s downright threatening, but might not the Occupy Movement be God at work in the world? Everybody knows that demolishing and renovating a falling-down structure can be dirty and messy work. In today’s global economy, there’s so much wrong, there are so many possibilities for what could be right, and there are so many people that want to be part of the rebuilding. No wonder it’s a muddled, messy, sometimes disorganized, and even conflicted movement.

As I reflect on the emerging, developing and I daresay, growing Occupy Movement, I am reminded of Jesus’ first disciples who were earnest but frequently incompetent in their effort to follow our Lord and spread his message of justice and love. As much as Jesus tried to teach them his ways, they constantly missed the mark, stumbled over their words, tripped over their feet, and fumbled the ball down the field. And the church has been doing the same ever since.

This fumbling, stumbling and sometimes bumbling coalition of young people, many of whom are graduating from college with enormous debt and limited job prospects, joining forces with the out-of-work middle-aged and out-of-luck elders, are doing their best to speak and act prophetically about the transformation they see as essential in today’s world.

As Dr. Garrigan suggests: The Church might not like the form the Occupy message takes – all that mess and inconsistency and newness, but… far from saying “we stand against you” the protesters are saying to the church: “we sleep beside you”.

You see, when God wants an important thing done in this world or a wrong righted, God comes and sleeps beside us, sometimes as a new born child and sometimes as homeless adult. And then God waits to see how we respond.

Yes, the people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. To us was born a child and yet a savior who came to sleep and stand beside us. He didn’t own home, didn’t drive a car, didn’t possess a credit card or even a savings account, and didn’t have health insurance. No, our savior was born into poverty, lived simply, and died a poor man’s death. He was a shepherd seeking lost sheep and a leader who washed the feet of his followers. He was a sower of seeds, a baker of bread, a maker of wine, a breaker of laws, a lover of children, a friend to many, and finally a humble and obedient servant of God, destined to die on a cross for the sake of love.

The good news of Christmas is that God, first as a newborn infant and then as a young adult, decided to pitch a tent among us. The challenge of Christmas is that Christ calls us to join in making a better and safer tent for all of creation. The hope of Christmas is that we will receive in our battered hearts this “most vulnerable and appealing creature imaginable” and spread his message of justice and peace throughout the world.