A Sermon for the First Sunday of Christmas
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18
Psalm 147 or 147:13-21

I've got a Christmas present here. I wonder whose gift it is.... Or maybe it's a birthday present? Whose birthday is it?

It's Jesus's birthday. The birthday of the baby who is also called "Emmanuel" – God-with-us. So this must be a present for God. What kind of present would God want? What do you think I've got in this package for God? Maybe, like in the hymn - "In the bleak midwinter" - I'm giving him my heart? My love or my life or .... what on earth could God possibly need from me ? God is the one who can do or have anything wants. Really, what do you get for someone who has everything? Here's a hint: I got it at a Holiday Superstore for Jesus. I think you could find it at K-Mart, too, and lots of other places.

Diapers? A birthday gift for Jesus? Did the Baby Jesus need diapers? God in diapers. How embarrassing. This messy baby in a barn is the one who is going to save us all?

Oh sure, I suppose the baby can grow up into someone who could save us. But then why didn't God just arrive as a grown-up superman? Certainly God could have done that.

But a baby is really helpless. A baby can't do much of anything for himself. Someone else has to feed the baby. Someone else has to dress the baby. Someone else has to change the baby's dirty diaper or smelly swaddling clothes. Really .... what kind of God is this, who asks us to change his diapers?

Most of us have some idea about all the things that a baby needs. But just what does God need? God, being God, does not need anything.

But then God, who can do or have anything that God wants, decides to become a little baby, who needs to have almost everything done for him. I think God must be crazy. It's like God wants to need us. God chooses to become dependent on regular human beings. But: What if Mary forgot to feed the baby? What if Joseph didn't provide a house and clothes for the baby? What if nobody remembered to change those diapers? Would the baby die? Would God have to be put in foster care?

It's a big risk for God to decide to need people as part of God's own life. Without other people, the Baby Jesus would die. God needed Mary and Joseph and probably lots of others to be able to live in this world.

Is the world really different here and now than it was all those years ago in Bethlehem? Perhaps God still needs people if God is going to remain alive in this world. Maybe God still needs a gift from you and me.

What kind of gift would you give to Baby Jesus? What does a baby need most of all? Love I think that's what God wants from us. I think that's what is needed for God to remain alive in our world.

Emmanuel, God with us, cannot live in this world without us. God comes into our world as a helpless little baby and that shows us how much God desires our love.

Oh, love makes a great gift, whether it's for a baby or for God. But it's not as easy to wrap up as diapers.

Most of us want gifts that we can see and touch, after all we're only human. Saying, "Here, I give you my love," can seem empty and meaningless.

God knows that. So God wrapped God's own love up in a package people can see and touch – a baby. It's a gift so real that someone had to change those smelly divine swaddling clothes.

God's Christmas gift to us is the Incarnation – God's own birthday. God puts God's whole self into one tiny, perfectly human baby, and gives himself to us. Little Jesus, as completely human as any one of us. And at the very same time, the one, all-powerful God. God so loved the world that God came to live with us as one of us. Emmanuel, God with us. How will we, in return, offer God a gift that shows our love? How can we "incarnate" – give substance to – our love? Diapers for Baby Jesus might show love. Or maybe the baby would like a teddy bear or a puppy. When Jesus grows up he might like a sturdy pair of Nikes to hike in the desert or a digital camera to try to capture pictures of angels. Or maybe a nice bag of shekels, coins of some sort like a grandmother might give him? Almost any gift can show our love.

But what do we do today with any birthday gift we might have for Jesus this Christmas? If you have a birthday present or a Christmas gift for God, what do you do with it on the Range in December 2004?

The shepherds went to Bethlehem, looking for a baby The wise men went there too with their gifts. I went to Bethlehem once but I didn't find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. So, what will I do with these diapers? Do I put them on the altar for God?

God knows what people want and need because God has really been here with us. Babies need diapers. Children need new shoes. Adults need work. And we all need love – we need each other. How many people today need that gift of love to be incarnated into something real – a job, a meal, a bag of diapers, a room at the inn, or a pair of shoes?

God came among us as a baby to teach us something about love. We all need that Christmas gift.

Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. And when we are baptized into Christ, he lives in us. Some days we are asked to reflect the divine image other days we are as needy as a baby in a barn. At Christmas we are both givers and receivers. Giving these diapers to a needy baby, or dropping off cans at the food shelf; unwrapping the hideous wool socks that Aunt Bertha sends every year or playing with a tiny Christmas puppy ....

Every Christmas gift is really a birthday gift for the Baby Jesus. A gift for the Christ found inside of every one of God's children.

In the giving and receiving, God's love for the world is born again.

That's good news of great joy for all the people !