Growing up, one of my favorite church services of the year was Christmas Eve. It was such a special time, and one so full of joy and light. One Christmas Eve, one of the kids of our church, who was about four at the time, was walking around saying, “Jesus died. Did you know Jesus died?” It made you chuckle, because here we were celebrating Jesus’ birth, and she was walking around proclaiming his death. It didn’t seem like the message of Christmas. But maybe it’s not not the message of Christmas, because the message of Christmas is that God has become human, born like us, and also dying with us. Without meaning to, she was proclaiming what it meant for God to take on human flesh and dwell among us.
This passage from Hebrews invites us to reflect on how the incarnation allows our lives to be woven into relationship with the divine in a way that we could never have imagined. Instead of believing in, worshipping, and following a God who is elsewhere, God became human, and experienced joy and sorrow and friendship and loss and delight and suffering, so that we might be able to be in better relationship with our creator. How amazing is that?
Incarnate One, in this season of Christmas, we give thanks for the gift of knowing that you have lived on this Earth. When we come to you in joy or despair, we know that you have experienced these things too. Thank you for being like us in every way and yet also being different than us, for being our savior, for being both knowable and an unknowable mystery. Amen.
Rev. Megan LeCluyse
Campus Minister & Executive Director,
(University of Pennsylvania)
Words for Waiting 