Feet that ache and a heart that breaks

It was a somewhat ragged looking procession, Joseph, in his homespun robe, and Mary, struggling to keep her scarf on, hesitantly moving toward the manger and the coming of the baby. It was not the first Christmas Eve, of course, but Christmas Eve last year, when the children of our parish reenacted that story that is so familiar to us, and that we gather to remember each year.

Mary and Joseph were soon joined by the baby, a bouncing nine month old, smiling and waving. Then the shepherds straggled up the aisle, clothed in bathrobes and dishcloths, followed by the angels in their Christmas best, adorned with fairy wings and haloes of dubious provenance. Finally they all reached the front of the church

and paused in a glorious tableau of worship, angels adoring, shepherds kneeling, as we sang,

“Come to Bethlehem and see

him whose birth the angels sing:

come, adore on bended knee

the infant Christ, the new-born king.”

There was a lot less carpet and a lot more dirt, but I suspect the original Christmas

would have been just as chaotic and just as glorious when finally the baby was born and the shepherds arrived and the star shone brightly overhead.

But sometimes I wonder if, wrapped in the the beauty of the familiar story, we forget its astounding significance. Because the story of Christmas isn’t just confined to that scene in the stable. After all, the birth itself was like any other one, and the appearance of the shepherds a passing curiosity.  What makes it different is that we understand it to be the time when the Incarnation became tangible: God came among us as one of us, or, as the letter to Titus puts it, grace appeared.

In Jesus Christ, grace appeared.

What Titus means, as far as we can tell, is not that some abstract thing wafted over humanity.  Rather, in the Incarnation, the grace that the people had always known as a characteristic of God materialized. It became real.  Grace with flesh and blood.

And that grace that is embodied in Jesus Christ makes a difference.  It makes a difference because now we know that God knows exactly what it is to be human, the best and the worst of it.  God knows the joy and the pain, the ordinary and the extraordinary.  God knows about feet that ache and a heart that breaks.

Because grace was embodied, we know that the physical part of our existence, our bodies, are no less holy than our spirits, our souls.  God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and in so doing entered the created world in a way that left no room for lingering doubt.  We, as created, embodied beings, are part of the good creation of God.

And grace that was embodied in Jesus Christ lived like us and died like us. And grace turned the cross from a thing of torture to a hallowed place of forgiveness. And then grace rose again, with the promise that we too will rise again.

And perhaps the children walking up the aisle to create that tableau have it right.

Because it’s the way of grace that we don’t always know where we are going; we’re not always sure what we are supposed to do. But we trust that we will be led to see our Savior - and the grace of it is that we will. God is waiting for us in the manger in Bethlehem, in the cross of Calvary, in the empty tomb and resurrected Christ, in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Grace has appeared.