Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 – Christmas Eve

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
– Luke 2:7

During this Advent/Christmas season, Members and friends of Saugatuck Church have been reading “The Book of Joy”, a conversation between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As the two of them reflect on the differences that divide us, the Dalai Lama offers this insight: “We are same human beings…No need for introduction. Same human face, when we see one another we immediately know: this is a human brother or sister.” What’s more, (he offers),  all of us are born and die totally dependent on others…

Reading this reflection, it suddenly made sense to me why there’s a baby at the center of God’s story, as though God had been observing all the ways we judge one another, build walls and create divisions, and had wondered, what is it that can overcome all that discord?  What is it that connects everybody? Babies. Birth. Being born. Having or knowing children.  

There is something primal about our connection with the youngest members of our species. Not everyone can or will have children of their own, but that’s ok. Parenting may intensify the bond, but we don’t need to be parents to feel a fierce sense of affection or protection for children. I suspect most of us succumb to the giddy wonder that bubbles up when you hold a baby, or observe a young child interact with her world. If you have had the privilege of watching one or more of these remarkable little humans come into their own, perhaps you’ve felt the urgent impulse to guard their life spark against anything that would snuff it out.

So we look in on the scene unfolding in that stable, a first-time mother and a love-struck father, huddled over the wrinkled pink face of a newborn, hardly sure what to do next, and something stirs within us.

I don’t mean to romanticize the story. There’s nothing romantic about giving birth in a barn, far away from home, without the care of a midwife.  But then, that’s the story for millions of displaced families around the world. There’s nothing romantic about midnight raids or bombed out buildings; abject poverty or prejudice turned hostile – or any of the other calamities that drive families from their homes.

There’s nothing romantic about a 4 month old baby boy being taken right out of the arms of his asylum-seeking father at our southern border, and shuttled halfway across the country to be fostered by strangers.

That’s what happened to little Constantin last year.[1] He and his parents are Roma. They’d fled poverty and persecution in Romania to come to the United States, hoping to find a better life for their children. In Mexico City, the parents got separated. The father, babe in arms, made his way to the US border and appealed for asylum, thinking his wife was somewhere nearby. They took away his son and incarcerated him without a translator for three months.

If you have ever loved a child, you can surely imagine the anguish. It was five months before Constantin was finally returned to his family – in Romania (the father having been told that he would be reunited with his son if he withdrew his appeal for asylum). During those agonizing five months, “the child’s father would be sent for psychiatric evaluation in a Texas immigration detention center because he couldn’t stop crying; his mother would be hospitalized with hypertension from stress. Constantin would become attached to a middle-class American family, having spent the majority of his life in their tri-level house on a tree-lined street in rural Michigan,”  and only then be sent back to Romania.[2]

Yes: we gather tonight longing for Good news, not tragedy. And this is my point: the baby whose birth we elevate, whose sweet face we have reimagined on countless Christmas cards, was a baby as vulnerable as Constantin. In that sense, Jesus represents all the babies who suffer the consequences of our divisions. 

And I can’t help but think that God must have done this on purpose: set a baby at the center, where we are bound to notice, hoping that such sweet vulnerability might just be enough to bring us to our senses, infuse us with fresh determination, plant in us the desire to change the world along with enough hope to believe that it’s possible.

Because look: a baby is born! In a world so achingly unsettled, so split apart, new life still emerges and captivates us, despite everything, despite ourselves.

Ironic (and also appropriate), that the baby in question would be named “Jesus,” which means, in Hebrew, “God saves.” That God would show up as a vulnerable babe, with no apparent saving power at all, except this: the power to capture our hearts, stir our empathy, and convey something of God’s love for all of us – equal parts fierce and tender. 

Is that how we will be saved? By allowing our hearts to be broken open by tenderness? By emerging from our own fear-shaped barricades long enough to save the children? And so, in a bit of holy irony, allowing the children, finally, to save us?

In the end, the Dalai Lama is right: we are all vulnerable – utterly dependent on each other – whether we admit it or not. And as the Archbishop Desmond Tutu would add, we are also all deeply, deeply precious to God.[3]  This is the glorious Good News that the angels sang: God SO loved the world…

 I wonder, this Christmas, whether we might begin to trust that unwavering devotion, whether, having witnessed Love reborn in a stable, we might find it a little easier to embody that love in our lives, for the sake of the children, for our sakes. Surely, then, we will have cause to sing with that chorus of angels: peace on earth, Good will to all!

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/16/us/baby-constantine-romania-migrants.html?auth=login-email&login=email

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Book of Joy, p. 40.