St. Paul's Episcopal Church

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
425 Cleveland Ave SW
Canton, Ohio 44702
Phone: 330-455-0286
Fax: 330-455-9818
E-mail: office@stpaulscanton.org

Christmas Eve
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Canton OH
Luke 2:1-20

December 24, 2009
The Rev. Barbara L Bond

In the Flesh

On this holy night, we celebrate the coming of Christ among us. We embrace with holy awe a concept: that God loved us so much, that God chose to come among us as a human being. God entered history and humanity the same way we all do, by being born. This holy birth is celebrated with carols, with liturgy, with candle light, with warmth, with gift-giving, with feasting through our Eucharist, and with feasting through festive meals with friends and family. We are celebrating an idea, that God came to dwell among us. The idea is called Incarnation: God becoming Incarnate, God taking on a human body.

Oh, you didn’t know you were celebrating an idea? That’s because the idea is only half the story. The idea is so overwhelming that we cannot take it in. And, so like the original idea itself, we must put flesh on it. God’s idea took on flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, in a real human baby. As we try to comprehend God’s enormous gift, we have to put flesh on it, and sometimes bring it down to size.

St. Francis of Assisi understood this. Living in the 12th and 13th centuries, Francis was not big on talking about ideas. In fact, he famously said, “Preach always. If necessary, use words.” He showed the life of Christ and did his preaching mostly by example, in his chosen lifestyle of poverty and serving the poor. Francis did us all a favor when he decided to make the idea of Incarnation real: he put flesh on the idea when he staged the first Nativity scene, with real people. He was reenacting the original manger scene and putting flesh on it, bringing it in understandable form to the people of his day. We have miniaturized this idea with our Nativity Sets – I have nine of them – which bring this idea into all cultures. I have sets from Mexico, from Bosnia, from Vietnam, from the Philippines, each expressing what it looks like to have Christ come among them, in their own dress and materials. Yet all my Nativity sets have a failing: they are all inanimate. There is no flesh there. They are made from wood, ceramics, pine needles, and other materials, but not from flesh. And therefore they have returned to being an idea, representing the coming of Christ as a human being.

And so our task is to find Christ coming into our lives as real human beings, to see the whole concept, complete, with real life.

We saw Christ the human being this year at St. Paul’s every time we reached out to the needy. All year our volunteers have been offering a HOT lunch once a month to whoever wishes to partake. Christ walks into our Guild hall every month, in the helping hands of the volunteers, and in those who seek the help. Likewise, we saw Christ this past November, when we took on the Thanksgiving Basket program, and gave 1200 families groceries. We were able to achieve this distribution with the help of many local churches and organizations, and the Feeding of the 5000 left all of us knowing we had been in the presence of the Living Christ. It happened again last week, when we gathered to wrap Christmas gifts for 14 children, hoping to bring Christmas cheer to their lives of need. We hoped that we were embodying Christ. We knew for sure that the children were.

How do you put flesh on Christ this season? I’m sure you have your own stories, your own warm experiences. I’d like to share one with you from our parishioner, Marie Butler. Marie and her husband, the Rev. Vincent Butler, traveled widely during their years of ministry, including years in Germany and Turkey. Marie wrote to me about her memories of the Christmas of 1960, when they and their family were in Germany, serving the American military. She writes as follows:

“On Christmas Eve we left Langen, Germany, in our old Opel to cross the Rhein River by open ferry and drive cross-country to Kaiserslautern where we held the midnight Episcopal service for the faithful there, and then on to Baumholder for Christmas Day services. We arrived at the officers’ club where we were billeted, arriving very late, something like 2:30 a.m.

“The children – 6, 10 and 12 – were all asleep in the old Opel. I went ahead for the key, to open up the room while Father Vince carried the six-year-old into the club and urged the other two children in and up the stairs.

“When I opened the door to the room assigned to us, I was shocked to find in the corner of the room a trimmed Christmas tree with gifts underneath. My first thought was that the person at the desk had given me the wrong key, and I had entered someone else’s room. I decided to have another look, and as I did, I discovered the tree was covered with many-colored construction paper stars, each with the name of a member of the military congregations. The tree radiated pure love! The year was 1960. We were humbled by so much love, and it has become our most unforgettable Christmas.”

That’s it, isn’t it? As our Christmas carol states, “Love came down at Christmas.” That is all we need to know.