This Will Be a Sign for You.
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day, December 25th, 2021.
“This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” Luke 2: 1-20
These simple words are powerfully understated and deeply mysterious. “This will be a sign for you.” When the shepherds responded to these words and went to the manger, what did they see? A newborn child born to poor parents, just like so many others, or a holy child who held the hopes and dreams of years and years of prophesy and longing? What we see depends upon our capacity for wonder.
If you have ever had the the privilege of being in the room shortly after a child is born, you know that there is a particular kind of holiness that surrounds and infuses the space. There is a palpable sense of God’s presence. It is a tender time, a time when people are able to see in a much deeper way than they are normally able to see. Everyone present knows, whether they can articulate it or not, that they are in the presence of immense and unexplainable mystery.
After months and months of anticipation, followed by a painful and dangerous birthing process, a beautiful child is born, a child like no other child in the world. And the parents look into that child’s face and see that he is she is straight from God’s womb. Everyone in the circle of family and friends is in a heightened state of consciousness and knows, at least for a little while, that they cannot take life for granted. They are part of something that is both personal and cosmic, intimate and universal.
Mary and Joseph had the profound privilege of bringing Jesus into the world. They were part of something they didn’t understand. They had no idea what the future held. They partnered with God in a way that no other parents ever have. And yet, like most parents, Mary and Joseph were afraid, even though they had repeatedly been told, “Fear not “ because God was with them. And like most parents, Mary and Joseph were hopeful, hopeful that they would come to understand over time what God was doing through them and through this child.
Being present to mystery is what this day is all about. Receiving a gift that we cannot explain and giving thanks that we cannot explain it, for if we could, the gift would be diminished. We cannot quantify it, we cannot rationalize it. We can only be present to it.
God has done an astonishing and wonderous thing in bringing Christ into the world for us. God: all powerful, all knowing, limitless God, out of love for us, deciding to limit God’s self in the form of a helpless, vulnerable child. That is the sign for us. That is the gift of Christmas. The gift of sight. Recognizing what God did for us in sending Jesus in the most counter-intuitive way. When we look into the manger, we see Love that is boundless, Love that is tender and sweet and infinitely powerful.
Mary pondered these things in her heart. Joseph was present to the mystery. The shepherds recognized that they had been given a sign. And all of them were given the divine gift of seeing life in its fullness. May we too ponder and be present and recognize the gift of the holy child of God on this most blessed morning.
“This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”