Three hundred years after Jesus, a man posed an experiment. His name was Augustine and he wrote this experiment down in a book. People would read this book and ask themselves this question for hundreds and hundreds of years. The dilemma would shape our understanding of God and of how we are saved. This is the experiment:
Imagine that God offers you a deal. God offers you everything: power, pleasure, wealth, honor, freedom, even peace. Nothing will be a sin, nothing will be forbidden or impossible for you. You will never be bored and you will never die. And there is only one condition...if you accept all this, you will never see the face of God.
What would you choose? Would you choose to live your life comfortably and pleasurably for all eternity and never see God's face? Would you?
You see, ever since we fell from God's grace, we have suffered. And the only way back to God, the only way to be saved is to move through suffering and even death. There is no other way to God but through the cross, through pain. And there is nothing that we are more afraid of than pain except perhaps death.
When my father-in-law found out that he had cancer, I don't know how scared he was but we were sure scared. For one thing, he had to shave his head. We all cried together in the hotel room that day. Everything seemed so unknown. I didn't want him to feel pain. I did not know what to say, what the future might hold.
I remember vividly how my husband walked into the bathroom to help his father shave his head. They ran the water in the sink. My father-in-law sat down in a chair in front of the mirror and his son stood behind him. My father-in-law took off his shirt. So did my husband.
"What are you doing, son?" he asked.
"Dad, I can't make this cancer go away but I can be there with you. I am here with you, every step of the way."
And my husband began to shave his head.
The Middle East is exploding. Egypt is burning. Syria is suffering. There is starvation and deprivation all over the world. People are homeless on the streets of Jacksonville and there is talk of a financial cliff. But all this did not touch us directly. It was hard but it was far away or it might not happen or it was the pain of unfortunate people whose lives were somehow different than ours.
But then, a young man walked into an elementary school with guns and shot children as they cried and cowered in a corner. He shot teachers, principals, counselors, little blond girls who were just learning to read, a disabled boy, a playful first-grader, and he looked like any of us. He could live right down the street from our schools from our children. We try to make sense of it, but no one can even begin to imagine any kind of mental illness that could take you that far into evil. No one can even begin to understand why. This is our country. This is our backyard. And we are afraid. That little town in Connecticut had no idea that horror was about to visit them. They had no idea. And neither do we.
Mary was so young. She was only 13 or 14. She had never had a baby before but I'm sure she knew that many women died that way. Giving birth was dangerous, it could be deadly. When we are afraid, we long for familiar settings, for something we know. But Mary had no idea where she was. She had never traveled this far away from home. This was the land of her husband's ancestry. This was Bethlehem. And she didn't have a home.
She could feel the pains coming. They couldn't find a room. She must have felt her fear mounting. Where could she have this baby? How could they stay warm? Would they all die?
The Romans could kill Jews for no reason. King Herod was paranoid and afraid of the coming of a Jewish Messiah. The land was tense, it was about to explode with violence. And Mary was bringing a baby into all this mess.
Mary was afraid. To be human is to be afraid. We do not know how we got here, we do not know when we will die. We dont know why God made us exactly as we are and we dont know when God will take us home. When someone is dying, I tell them that it is so much like birth. You never know when it might happen.
We are not in control of our lives. And we are afraid, deep down inside, afraid of what we do not understand. So we numb ourselves with routines and schedules and comfort foods and rituals and belongings, pretending that we do have control, that our lives are up to us, but the truth is that we are fragile. This entire earth teeters in a balance between good and evil and we never know what is coming next. No matter how much we plan and save, we do not know know what will happen tomorrow.
What does a mother do when her baby cries out in the night, afraid of the darkness? She goes to the child. She is there with the baby. She cannot make the night go away, she cannot make the darkness go away, but she can stand there with that child in the midst of the darkness.
That is why God became human tonight, because we were afraid. Because we still are afraid and we live in a broken world, where we do not know what will happen next. We do not know when a man will walk into our schools with a gun and kill our children. And so Jesus came, not to fix it all, for we must try to do that ourselves, but just to be with us.
And Mary, on that holy night, did not give into her fear. She lived for something more than that. She entered into the pain and the darkness and brought Christ into it and that is what we are called to do.
It is OK that you are afraid. I am too. It is OK to be lonely or sad or frightened. Mary was too. Don't try to erase your fears by drinking or getting really mad or trying too hard to control everything. Just be scared. Let fear knock on your door. But don't let it have the last word. It did not have the last word on that holy night you know, and it didn't have the last word when my father-in-law had to shave his head, or even when those children died. Fear does not win the day. Church bells will ring, Jesus will come.
Do you want to see the face of God? Begin by looking at that baby and then watch him grow. Model your life on his life, do as he did. Give your life to him and you will see the face of God, you will.
Amen.
