The beautiful Christmas story that we have just heard, such a familiar story, so simple and yet so profound, contains within it the deepest truth of God’s love for each and every one of us, God’s willingness to take a chance on us.
When it comes to love, God is the ultimate gambler.
And this story also contains within it the deepest truth about how we are to love one another.
When it comes to love, God wants us to gamble too.
What do you see when you look into a mirror?
When I look into a mirror, at first I see only myself. I see more gray hairs, that pesky double chin, deepening wrinkles.
And if I look into it long enough, the mirror also shows me my inner self, those feelings of unworthiness and failure and dejection that I try to keep hidden from the world, those feelings about myself that keep me fractured and incomplete. I like to keep these deeper truths about myself hidden.
Looking into the Christmas story is similar to looking into a mirror.
At first, we see the familiar scene, but if we dwell in the story for long enough, we see beneath the familiar to the deeper truths in the story.
So now, let’s enter into the story and go behind the familiar scene that we all know so well.
We find ourselves in the dark and deserted streets of Bethlehem.
We come to the entrance of a cave where the animals stay, and hearing a woman cry out in pain, we pause, listening.
Concerned, we enter in, quietly, wandering if we can help this person who is obviously in pain.
A woman is lying on the floor of the cave, giving birth. No wonder she is crying out.
Her husband is hovering and helping her as best he can. He bends over her and blocks our view.
We stand there, mesmerized by the squalor of the scene. Can’t someone go get help? At least get some blankets for the woman to lie on?
And then, at that instant, we hear three great cries—one from the mother, who cries out in relief, a shout of joy from the father, and then a cry from a newborn, a wispy cry that turns into a great wail as the cold air rushes into the baby’s lungs.
The father turns. He is clutching a tiny infant boy, red and wet with his mother’s blood. This father’s face is full of wonder and puzzlement.
What now?
And before we can do anything to help, the mother manages to get to her knees , to crawl over to the watering trough. She calls her husband to her, and he brings the baby, and they carefully wash that baby as best they can, hurrying because the night air is cold.
And then as the father holds the baby against him, the mother grabs up her head cloth, tears it into broad bands of cloth, and then she and the father carefully wrap the baby so that he is warm again, held within these swaddling clothes, wrapped in the protective, welcoming love of his parents.
After the baby goes to sleep, his mother lays him in the feeding trough, and she and her husband keep watch, waiting for daybreak.
These three human beings are not alone there in a stable on a cold night in Bethlehem. God is present there too.
God has chosen to take a huge risk, to send this baby, Jesus, into a world where he might, or might not, be loved and cared for.
Already, God has gambled on Mary and Joseph.
First of all, God had sent an angel to Mary. “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son—the Son of God.”
And Mary said, “Let it be with me according to your word.”
And then God had taken an even bigger risk with Joseph.
Joseph had intended to quietly end his engagement to Mary when he found out that she was pregnant, and God sent an angel to tell him,
“Do not be afraid!” “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
And Joseph took a risk, and adopted this Son of God as his own son.
These two people, in spite of their fears, decided to accept this challenge, a newborn infant in their arms, a gift for the world.
And God’s greatest risk is the rest of the world.
And so far the signs aren’t good.
There was no room in the inn. No one was willing to make room for a pregnant woman in a strange town with no place to lay her head.
And two thousand years after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, our world is still full of violence and hatred and intolerance.
Now, let’s we return to our mirrors and look at ourselves. We realize that we are not alone either.
God is with us in spite of our unworthiness, and we know, with fear, and also with great joy, that God wants to risk everything with us—to entrust this infant child to us.
And we are afraid, and inadequate, and all of those feelings of worthlessness rise up in us, and we think to ourselves,
“No, I can’t even get my own life in order here. Why on earth would you risk giving me anything to do? I’m probably going to screw it up, be less than perfect, why try at all? There is no room in the inn of my heart for anything else at all!”
But God says to each one of us, “Be not afraid!”
Because, you see, every second of our lives, we are born again into our lives.
And God is telling us, “Be not afraid.” “Take a risk, and enter into the next moment of your life with me.”
“Let me wash you, hold you in my warmth.”
“Let me wrap you in the swaddling clothes of my love for you.”
“Make space for me in the inn of your heart.”
In my time here at St Peter’s, I have seen how you have done exactly that, made room in the inn of your heart for God—
And as a result, have made room for one another.
I want to share a few examples with you of what I mean.
A man has an elderly relative who needs round the clock care. After the relative’s caregiver dies, this man takes a risk and decides to bring his relative home to live with him. This man wraps his relative in God’s swaddling clothes of love every day.
Families and individuals, strapped financially themselves, adopt other families for Christmas. They wrap these other families in swaddling clothes of love with the money they could have used for their own needs.
A grandmother travels hours to stay with her dying granddaughter, to share her granddaughter’s suffering, to give her courage, to wrap her granddaughter in God’s swaddling bands of love.
Two grandparents stand by their grandson through the most horrible of injuries, giving him love, stability, familiarity, hope.
They wrap him in God’s swaddling bands of love.
A man invites a two people who frequently aggravate him home for lunch, and prepares special food for them, in spite of the fact that he has a lot to do that afternoon. He wraps them in the swaddling bands of God’s love.
Women gather together every month to cook and to provide a break for others by fixing a meal. They wrap the recipients of these meals in God’s swaddling bands of love.
A couple entertains two strangers who are just passing through one summer afternoon. Unexpectedly, six months later, the couple receives a beautiful out of print book, sent by the strangers as a way of saying thank you for that couple’s hospitality so many months ago. The kindnesses that these couples offered to one another are swaddling bands of love.
In a phone conversation, one friend helps a discouraged friend find the courage he forgot he had, the hope he’d misplaced, so that he could get up and face the next day. One friend wraps the other in the swaddling bands of God’s love.
This list could go on and on, but you get the idea—
Every time we do these things, wrap others in the swaddling bands of love, we open our hearts to God’s deepest truth,
That as imperfect as each one of us is, God wants to take the risk with each and every one of us,
The risk that we will choose, like Mary and Joseph, to give birth to Jesus in this world,
To give birth to the mystery of God’s love,
And to release the power of God’s healing, restoring and redeeming love into our midst by wrapping one another in God’s swaddling clothes of love.
We can do our tiny part to bless the world through our love for one another.
Because that is what God has done, is doing and will continue to do for each and every one of us.
“And she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.”
So tonight, when you look in the mirror, remember—God is gambling.
God is gambling on you.
Be not afraid.
Make room for God in your heart, let God wrap you in the swaddling clothes of love,
so that you can go out and do likewise.
Amen.