THE HUMAN FACE OF GOD

December 20, 1987, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church,:. Chicago

Scripture
Luke 2:1-7

“And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling
cloths, and laid him in a manger,..." ~-Luke 2:7{RSV)

I would jike to introduce you to one of my favorite pieces of
Christmas literature. I took a chance last week by bringing Barbara
Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, into the pulpit. My only fear
was that you might wonder about the general level of ‘the literature: in the
Buchanan household, if not our taste.

This week, it's How The Grinch Stole Christmas, by Dr. Seuss.

Now, if you have ever had the privilege of reading a Dr. Seuss book
to a child, you already know about the delight. of hearing his.wonderful,
almost irresistible rhythms and. rhymes.

You may also have discovered the secret, which I- have discovered. and
which has made me into a devotee of Dr. Seuss, namely that the stories are
not only fun to read, they are about important ideas.

How The Grinch Stole Christmas is about a-grouchy creature who hates
Christmas. He lives up on a mountain overlooking Who-ville. The people
who live in Who-ville are called Whos.

The Grinch has endured Christmas. for decades -

“The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
-It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.

It could be perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.

But I think that the most likely reason of all

May have been that his heart was two sizes too smali."~

So he decided to do something about it:

In Who-ville, Christmas was celebrated with great enthusiasm...
~ with a mountain of toys: and treats in each house,

— with a great feast which all the Whos attended,

~ and, after the feast, by singing, in which all the Whos join,
holding hands.

The Grinch liked that least of all}.

So down he came on Christmas Eve, and climbed down every chimney, and
stole all the presents — toys — treat — decorations - trees, stuffed all of
it back up each chimney, and, at the end, reached down and took even the
Christmas log from each fireplace.

He took it up to his-mountain and just as he was about to dump it over
the other side, he heard a sound from the valley. It must be the Whos
discovering that Christmas had been stoien.

“'That's a noise,' grinned the Grinch,

'That- I simply must hear!!

So he paused. And the Grinch put his hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.

It started in low. Then it started to grow..."

It was singing.

"Every Whe down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming!
It came!

’ Somehow or other, -it.came just the same!

-And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: ‘How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
It came without packages, boxes or bags!'
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
‘Maybe Christmas,' he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"

So — he brought Christmas: back and everyone had a fine time,
including the Grinch.

What always occurs to me when I read that is that Dr. Seuss's Grinch
isn't the first. In fact,:one of the troubling enigmas of history is that,
in the name of religion, Christmas has been abolished on more than | one
occasion.

In the year 1659 the Magistrates of Massachusetts passed an ordinance
which abolished Christmas. The ordinance read:

“Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas, either
by fasting, forbearing labor, or any other way - every such person so
offending shall pay for each offense five shillings as a fine to the
country." [Conrad Hyers, And God Created Laughter, p. 53}

A century before the Massachusetts ordinance, celebrating Christmas
was an offense punishable by imprisonment in John Calvin's Geneva. In 1647
the British Parliament abolished Christmas as a public and religions
holiday and penalties were imposed for its observance. William Bradford,

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in his famous Pilgrim Journal, stated with pride that "on the day called
Christmas al] were summoned te labor as usual"; and also with pride, ‘that
he treated. with patience and forgiveness those who: had lapsed into paganism
by celebrating instead of working. And just a little more than a century
ago a New York school teacher "wrote that it was school as usual in New
York on December 25. When she asked if any knew what day it was, not a one
realized that it was Christmas Day." ["The Triumph of Christmas,” Clifford
Edwards, Virginia Commonwealth Magazine, Winter 1977)

Why, do you suppose John Calvin and William Bradford and the
Puritan preachers, and others, were so opposed to the celebration of
Christmas? :

The traditional answer is that from very early times Christmas has
had a shady relationship with paganism. It started out after all, in the
Roman Empire, as a kind of cultural alternative for the Christians. On
December 25 the Roman Empire celebrated the birthday of Mithras, the
Invincible Sun, a few days after the Winter Solstice. It was a real Roman
party. It was tempting to join in, so the Christians decided to
appropriate the date to celebrate the miracle of the incarnation and the
birth of Jesus. Because the Winter Solstice has always been an event of
enormous mystery and: therefore religious attention, the Christian "Christ-—
Mass" happening at the same time, often borrowed some of the symbols. ~The
wreath, the evergreen tree, mistletoe, are borrowed outright from an ancient
spirituality which focused.on life, fertility and the turning of. the sun
back toward the northern hemisphere. When we have thought about it,
Christians have always been nervous about the pagan: potential of our feast
~ a topic. anyone who lives on Michigan Avenue in December knows all about.

Now, it is not fashionable to defend Puritanism and poor John Calvin
has become almost. a euphemism for repressive, tight-lipped joyless piety.
May I suggest that the dismissal of this position:as a ‘product of joyless ©
religion is an oversimplification? .We-owe them more than that: ‘And while
in many ways they do seem joyless to us and probably were, their point in’
being suspicious of Christmas was that the claim of Christmas is so
radical, so unlikely, that it is actually quite fragile and susceptible to
being overwhelmed and lost: in the midst of the merry- making.

I'd-very much like to have it both ways: the ‘merry-making and the
theological integrity. In fact’ we need both. And the point of this
sermon is that the merry-making is even more merry when you preserve the
integrity-of the theology: but. I'd like also to concede the point: It-is a
little difficult to discern the point of -it-all-if.the only evidence you
have is the sidewalk quartet blaring "Jingle Bells" and "Winter
Wonderland," over and over again, without ceasing, without interruption -
until shoppers (and certainly people who live here) want to heg for mercy.

The point is - that the point gets lost.

In his wonderful. autobiography, David Read, pastor of Madison Avenue
Presbyterian Church in New York, tells about an incident: which happened to
him when, as a divinity student, he was traveling in the Near East, in
1935,

"One day I was walking alone on the Mount of Olives when a young Arab
walked past me. He was about thirty years old, and dressed in flowing
robes; he had flashing eyes and a dignified walk. Suddenly a thought
struck me, ‘Someone who looked like that walked-on this hillside, and we
claim. that he was no other than the unique Son of God, the Savior of the
Worid. Is it really possible?! In a moment I realized that all the
miracle stories of the Bible are really incidental and unimportant compared
to the stupendous assertion that God himself walked this earth as such a

man. TI thought how carelessly .we sing our Christmas carols — 'Veiled in
the flesh the Godhead see!'... If I really believed that, other doubts and

questions. mattered very little." [This Grace Given, p. 77,78]

The Christian claim of Christmas is enormous. What child is this?
This child is God among us.. This birth is the coming of God into the
world. . This nativity is.our salvation. And in defense of those crusty old
Puritans and John Calvin, they were sure that their claim would get lost in
all the hoopla about the sun returning and the fertility of the earth.. And
it would: seem to me, that. at the very least, we owe them a hearing.

But, I would submit, there is another reason. That basic, enormous
Christian claim, that the infant was God's Christ, is not only fragile but
discomforting, disturbing, maybe even offensive. There's a bit-of scandal
here.. If God is in that baby,.God is suddenly vulnerable, weak, humble.
If the life of that First Century Palestinian Jew represents: the eternity
and majesty and power of God - we've got some rethinking to do. If that

‘baby in a manger, that strange, young man, that crucified troublemaker, is
somebody's idea of a Supreme Being, all of. the traditional religious-
thinking in history is overturned.

It is the claim, after all, that got him in consistent trouble.
Because of that claim, King Herod went berserk and slaughtered the
innocents. Jesus the man wasn't hounded to his death by religious zealots
because he taught wrong doctrine. He was crucified because of this
blasphemous claim that he was God's Messiah, God's Anointed Son, the
enfleshing of God.

It is so very much simpler to think about God in traditional, classic
terms... Namely - a God up there somewhere, remote, awesome, ensconced in
the heavens ~ preferably on a throne - detached, like the gods of the
Greeks and Romans, cccupied with their own affairs, essentially unaffected
by the human conditions. A heavenly soap opera...

Or perhaps God as a judge, stern, angry... On a television talk show
a group of American teen-agers were asked about their ideas of God. This
is what they came up with:: an angry, vengeful judge... ;

Gr, for the intellectuals, - God as abstraction: the first cause,
the ground of all being, the spirit that animates the universe, It was
Kar] Barth who observed that “when we pronounce or hear the word 'God' we

think of the highest, the deepest, the absolute, the ultimate force... We
are in constant temptation to think of some abstraction." [Deliverance to

the Captives, p. 111]

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"The Force Be With You," Hollywood suggested to us, and we took it up
because it fits.

The basic Christian claim is that the word "God" is defined best not
by philosophic speculation, and not by sentimental piety and not even by
reflections on the poodness of nature... All those are important and good.
But the basic Christian claim is that the word “God" is defined by. the life
of the man Jesus. The enormous Christian claim is that the Bethlehem birth
is much more than a warm and wonderful human story... It is that, to be
sure. But it is also, we believe, much more. It is God entering time and
space and history. It is God becoming human.

In his recent buok, which compares Christianity with the great
religions of the world, Hans Kung writes -

“By ‘God' the Bible means an authentic partner. . Where others ‘only a
heard an endless silence, the Scriptures tell. of a people being addressed
and claimed by its God. Where others experienced unchanging space and the
void, this people was allowed to discover that the absolute can be heard
and spoken to." [Christianity And The World Religions, p. 398]

Our God, Kung writes, is “God with a human face." {On Being a
Christian, p. 308]

The trouble with that radical claim - that God has become one of us,
has entered humanity - besides its radicalness, is that we seem at times to
be embarrassed by and to despise our humanity. We seem to want to believe
that we need to be saved from our humanity - that we can't be human and
spiritual - that words like “sex" and pregnant" don't belong in church. A
recent survey discovered that 80% of the American people don't like their
own bodies. There is an industry built on that dislike. We are ;
obsessively running, pounding, exercising, rearranging our bodies and
always, always, losing weight. Certainly our culture encourages us to
resist the universal physical transition of life, to disguise the reality
of our aging... of our humanness. When the Christian Gospel affirms that the
“Word was made flesh," our first and basic theological problem is that.we
don't like our own flesh.

One of the great Christian thinkers of the last century, Adolph
Harnack, put it this way: "It is by self-conquest that a man is freed from
the tyranny of matter." ["What is Christianity?" cited by J.S. Mogabqab,
Weavings, Nov./Dec. 1987, p. 150]

Well, the Gospel of Christ asserts that matter, the world, the flesh,
our humanness - are what God loves so much he entered it. God was "pleased
with us te dwell." We are part of God's good creation. Our humanity, in
God's judgment —- is good enough te bear the Son.

The human face of God means that in the midst of our most human needs
~- when we are most human - we can count on God's presence. God is not
apathetic and detached. God knows what it feels like to be you, to put it
as personally as possible. God enters the interior of your life. God
knows and understands your deepest emotions. You don't have to hide them

12/20/87

from God. God knows them. And because God walked among us in the life of
Jesus, God has experienced those same emotions...

And that, I would propose to you, is the most staggering idea of all!
It is what we Christians do not wish to lose at Christmas. And I would
propose to you it is very good news, indeed.

Are you anxious, worried?
God knows about that.
Are you lonely?
God knows about ‘that.
Are you ambitious, dissatisfied with the status quo?
Do you love someone more. profoundly than you can describe?
Are you afraid of the future, afraid of dying?
God knows about all. of that.
What this birth story means and proclaims and celebrates is that
there is nothing you can feel: your deepest grief, your strongest love,
your joy... that God has not experienced. And there is nowhere you can go,

no aloneness, no "valley. of the shadow of death," ~ where God has not been
there. ahead of you.

Sometime ago the Christian Century ran a remarkable article by a
young woman who had lost -her husband. She wrote:

"Some say 'This first Christmas without your husband will be hard for
you.' Probabiy it will be, but without Christmas, life would be
impossible."

We have trouble with the humanity of Jesus and the vulnerability of
God. And it may be that it is because we are uncertain of our own
humanity. But think of what it says about our humanity. Ponder it from
another direction, Given an infinite variety of alternatives, God chose to
save the world by becoming one of us. Think of what that says about us.

Again, Professor Kung adds a very helpful insight. Comparing
Christianity with Buddhism, which he appreciates and from which we could
learn a lot, he writes: “In being addressed by this God 'Thou' human
beings can experience their own 'I' as raised to a dignity that is hardly
ever seen in the East, and that no Western secular humanism, no
‘technological progress, and no cosmic piety can guarantee." fop. cit.,
Kung, Christianity And The World Religions, p. 398} ~~

God has made us into a “fhou" by speaking to us: has made us
responsible by forcing the issues and requiring us to respond to him. In
the birth of Bethlehem, we have become more than we ever expected.

You and I have new dignity because of that baby's birth. When we
stand in awe before a manger, we stand a little taller.

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We really could do it...

We really could become peacemakers. At his manger bed, something
comes over us... We really could become the shapers and molders and
creators of a new world. We really could make justice. We really could
love this world passionately enough to preserve it and hand it on fresh,
clean, pure, safe to our children.

Standing there in silence before this child we know that we really
could change and become all that Ged has created us to be...

We really could step self-destructive behavior. We really could stop
self-deception, the addiction, the selfishness...

Standing at the manger, something comes over us and we know we have
it in us to become new creatures.

Gne of the treats of the season this year for me was to discover one
of the oldest existent Christian sermons ~— preached on Christmas morning by
John Chrysostom in the Fourth Century. St. John Chrysostom was perhaps the
greatest orator in the early church. He was the Patriarch of the Church in
Constantinople. He said:

“And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills
me with astonishment. The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He who

sits upon the sublime and heavenly throne, now lies in a manger.

“For this He has assumed my body, that I may become capable of His
word; taking my flesh, He gives me his spirit.

"Come, then, let us observe the Feast."

So, let us come to the feast.

It is a feast of life; life made holy because of the birth.

It is a feast of unspeakable joy, because God has shown a human face.

It is a feast of enormous hope because in the birth of Jesus, our
humanity is loved and blessed and made new. "What child is this, who

laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping? This, this, is Christ the King."
Amen.

an fan fnea