This is the brief homily delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen the the congregation of Unfinished Community on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2024.
Listen.
Do you hear that? Do you feel that?
There's something that exists in this space, a kind of tension that fills the air as the last notes of a song are still ringing in our ears. There's something almost…otherworldly about that feeling, that twilight space where the song has only just ended, but you can still feel it in the air like a kind of spiritual, emotional petrichor.
Many years ago, as some of you may know, I was a musician. Long before I was a pastor, I played in wind bands and orchestras, small ensembles and choirs of all kinds. I played all kinds of instruments, so many different styles and genres - even conducted on more than a few occasions - and the one thing that was always the same was this. That silent resonance that seems to fill the whole world in that beat just after you finish playing, but before the audience has had a chance to breathe, to exhale, and to respond to the music they've just heard with hopefully thunderous applause.
There's a kind of magic in that space, the space between that last note and the applause, that moment where the thing has happened but no one has fully yet realized it - where all the significance, all the wonder, all the majesty has fully and completely emerged, broken forth in wondrous and unique beauty.
It's both sunrise and sunset. A space of infinite possibilities, where anything could happen; where anything can happen.
And that space, that liminal space, is where God chooses to enter our world.
Tonight, we pay witness to that moment when the Divine chooses to be present among us, to enter into this space with us. But God does not choose to make this entrance in glory and majesty. God does not choose to make the divine visible with 40-foot high flaming letters painted in the sky, with great fanfare and trumpets blaring. God does not choose to enter the world amidst the high and frantic solos of violins playing at the limits of their skill, or among bold brass players determinedly blasting with enough force to make a cruise liner blush. God does not enter into the world at the climax of the song, with the full might of the orchestra boldly declaiming the majesty of God made flesh.
No.
When everything else has fallen silent, when all the players have played their part, when there is nothing left that anyone can do but to allow the notes of the song to ring in the air, shaking our hearts in sympathetic vibration; in that place where there is no one left to declaim, when there is no more praise to be given, when there is nothing left but to sit, and to listen…that is where God at last enters the world.
Because that's who our God is.
Our God is not the lord of high halls and gilded thrones. Our God is not the lord of the wealthy and the privileged who insist that God's perfection is reserved only for the greatest among us, that God's grace should not be dirtied by the "common folk." Our God is not the lord who walks with kings and queens, who dines with emperors and businessmen while the lowly suffer and starve.
No. Ours is the God of the liminal space. The God of the outside. The God of the lonely, the outcast, the cold and the suffering. The God of those who are on the outside looking in, the God of those who don't have enough, who never have enough, who can't even imagine what "enough "might even look like.
Ours is the God who took one look at all the earthly majesty of Kings, the warm and comfortable homes of the wealthy, and the soft cribs and warm blankets of the powerful, and decided that the only place good enough, the only place holy enough, the only place worthy enough for God's whole self to be laid to rest as a weak and vulnerable infant, was with an unwed teenage mother, her confused but committed fiancee, and the ragtag group of social outcasts, immigrants, and barnyard animals who had gathered together to see just what the Lord of All was going to do next.
Today, this very night, this is the God we look to. Despite all our differences, despite everything else that may divide or separate us, despite barriers of geography, language, and even time itself; here and now we gather to stand in awe and wonder at a God who chooses to stand with us, to resonate with us all here, in that uncertain, liminal space where nothing has happened, but all things are possible.
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