Holding God in Our Arms

 Sermon preached at St. Thomas' Church, Bath, NY on Holy Name Day, January 1, 2023:  Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 2:15-21

Sculpture by Guy Reid
St. Matthew's, Westminster, UK

          I love this image of Mary and Jesus. It is so different from most depictions of Mary and Jesus, with the two focused entirely on each other.

           Here both Jesus and Mary are looking outward. If the picture were head on, you would see them both staring straight at you.

           And the pose. The first time I saw it I instantly thought, she’s wanting you to hold him. Like so many mothers with their newborns, at least to people they trust:  Would you like to hold him?

           As Episcopal priest Martin Smith says about a similar statue, that question—Do you want to hold him?—gets at the very heart of Christmas.  It is as though Mary were saying, “My baby is as much yours as he is mine.  He belongs to you as much as me. Let me hand him over to you.”

           But it is not easy, is it, to imagine taking Jesus into our arms, especially if he is who he says he is. If he is the Word made flesh, God incarnate, well, that would put us in the ridiculous position of holding God in our arms.

           But this is absurd, is it not? God is all-powerful, to be feared in dreadful majesty.

           And that gets at the point. We can’t hold the baby Jesus in our arms and hold onto our fear of God.  We are so attached to our fear of God. We are so convinced that God is menacing, even though we sometimes bravely say he is love. We are so sure that God’s closeness would be overwhelming, somehow dangerous, that we are glad we can keep our distance.

           But that sentiment comes under judgment when Mary says, “Here is the God you are so afraid of. Will you hold him?”  We can only do so if we let go of our fear.

           Remember, what are the first words spoken directly by humanity to God in the Bible?  In the Garden of Eden, God calls out to Adam and Eve, “Where are you?”  And Adam replies, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid . . .”  The consequence of the first sin is to fear God.

           Now, you will say, the Bible tells us to fear God, frequently.  Yes, yes it does.  But then, when God speaks either directly or through an angel, or through Jesus himself, how does that speech so often begin?  “Do not be afraid.”

           It is what the angel Gabriel said to Mary, “Do not be afraid, I come with good news.”  The same is said to the shepherds.  And Mary, as pictured in this statue, is giving that same message to us, “Would you like to hold him? Do not be afraid.”

           What if the fear God wants from us turns out to be love? That love which one of our post-communion prayers calls “gladness and singleness of heart.”

           So we come to this Eucharist on this New Year’s Day, the 8^th Day of Christmas, celebrating, in the words of St. Paul, the self-emptying of God. We confess together with some embarrassment and, hopefully, some relief, that once again we have gotten God all wrong.

           The word comes to us through the ages, “Do not be afraid!”  And when we get to Easter in a few months we will hear it again, as was said to the women at the tomb, “Do not be afraid.”

           Will we believe them?  Will we say “yes” to Mary when she hands us our God to hold? She says to us, “This is the one of whom you are afraid.  Here, hold him.”

           And isn’t this precisely what I will do in a few minutes? Hand him over to you, in a bit of bread.  Take him, it really is him, but in a form that makes our fear absurd.

           We come together as Christmas continues, doing the thing we always do, remembering that day more than two thousand years ago when being afraid of God itself became absurd.

 With grateful thanks to The Rev. Martin Smith’s sermon, “Would you Like to Hold Him?” found in Nativities and Passions: Words for Transformation (Boston: Cowley Press, 1995, pp. 3-7.