Tomorrow will be Christmas. This is the day that we celebrate the Incarnation: God entering into the human condition, revealing the dignity and beauty that lies hidden in our beings. Jesus comes to earth to reveal God’s love for us. This is not a severe holiness that cannot stand to be in the presence of sin. This is a humble and compassionate presence that makes its home amid the darkness, despair, and dysfunction of our misguided lives and our unjust society. This is not an angry deity demanding retribution with blood, but a gentle shepherd here to feed the harassed and anxious sheep who have no one to care for them. God takes on flesh and reveals Himself to be God with Us, the Human One, who derives his power from weakness and vulnerability, who comes not to be served but to serve. Jesus is born into the human race, and through his example, he invites us into the fullness of our humanity. He teaches us not to wait for heaven after death, but to concern ourselves with life before death by living in the reality of the Kingdom right now. Jesus shows the way for us to fully embrace this suffering world that God has made His home, and to be at home within ourselves despite our imperfections and our shadows. Being at home amid darkness does not mean that we do not work towards the transformation of our own hearts and of the world, but it means that we do so from the starting place of knowing that we are loved, that this love has filled every dark corner already, and that God is with us.

I have often attended Christmas Eve services that seemed to skip ahead from the birth of Jesus to his death and resurrection; services that finished with an altar call, as though Jesus’ birth and life were merely the back story to set up for the “the main reason” He came to earth. As though Jesus was simply born to die.

We sometimes want to condense the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus into some cosmic formula instead of recognizing the significance of the entire story, and without entering into the story ourselves to learn what the incarnation means for us as we seek to grow into the nature of God while living an embodied existence among our fellow creatures. Crucifixion and resurrection are also things for each of us to experience in our own lives rather than simply one-time historical events for us to remember, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves—we have Lent and Easter to reflect on these mysteries. The incarnation alone is a mystery significant enough for us to spend an entire season entering into, and that is what Advent and Christmas are for.