Human beings tend to have a failure of
creativity. It is not remotely the same thing as being too conservative or
too liberal, or too young or too old; in fact, part of the issue itself is our
tendency to create simple categories for things and for people. No, a failure of creativity is much more
significant than that. It’s maybe best illustrated with a few examples.
The priests and the lawyers who one day met the grown
Jesus had a failure of creativity. Hamstrung to their narrow interpretations of
the law they were not open to the possibilities that emerged when God came down
to earth. Herod also lacked creativity. It was he who ordered the execution of
the children of Bethlehem, imagining only one way to be a king, which was to
overthrow the kingdoms already established. For the first time with Herod we
see what the opposite of creativity is, and that is fear. Fear that manifests itself in prejudice, anger, and hate.
Creativity is always pitted against fear. This is why, in
that most creative of nights when the Son of God entered the world, the angels
appear to the shepherds with a word, “Fear not!” Do not be afraid because it is
the natural tendency in such times, but rather be open to the presence of God,
which will seem scary—very scary, indeed—until you come to understand the
depths to which you need this. For Jesus, anything was possible—he was
creativity-incarnate; the only time when creator and creation became utterly
and indistinguishably one—which is why grace is so utterly astounding. Jesus
could have done anything, become anything, achieved anything, and the life he
chose above all others was a life directed toward the cross. God chose
creativity through death, not apart from it.
The angels first words, “Do not fear” are cast against
the life that Jesus will live. The angels know human nature; they know how
easily we turn in on ourselves when confronted with something strange and new;
they know that you cannot be both creative and fearful at the same time. They
know, in fact, that this is what separates man from God; that we choose
self-preservation and God chooses to enter into squalor. The angels have to open
the shepherds eyes and remove from them from their security blankets in order
for them to be vessels of the good news. Some of you probably saw the story
going around this year from the Charlie Brown Christmas story about Linus and
his blanket, how, if you’ve ever seen that scene on the stage where Linus
explains to Charlie Brown and company what Christmas is all about, he lets go
for the first time ever of his security blanket that he holds on to for dear
life from the beginning of the story. Linus casts aside his fear with that
blanket on the very moment the shepherds say “Do not be afraid!” because in
that moment he is freed from fear.
There is no more Christian thing to do than to throw our
security blankets away; to model creativity over fear. We do this already. The
ultimate creative act is giving birth to a child; all those who have
participated in that—mothers and fathers alike—know that there lies the source
of your fears even while a child becomes the embodiment of your creativity.
This is not the only way it happens, but on Christmas Eve it is perhaps the
most poignant. More than that, in giving birth we admit that our creativity
trumps our fears, because what might happen is not a good enough reason not to
create. When fear trumps creativity life is quashed.
But after birth is where things get more muddled. We are
limited by the walls we construct, the choices that we make, and the awareness
that we are never completely safe. We come into the world vulnerable and
without guarantees. As we grow older the dangers become over more real. We
become fearful of other people; the very beings who are
creativity-in-the-flesh. This is for good practical reasons, to be sure. People
can hurt. People do hurt. Strangers, we know, live in a kind of darkness to us—a
darkness in which we imagine the worst, because the worst is possible. And so
our sense of possibility becomes less about creativity and instead becomes a
playground for our fears.
The
hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Into this darkness comes a baby, Jesus, who begs us to
consider another way. Here, at the intersection of creativity and fear, we are
forced to consider where we will direct our energy. The shepherds decide
eventually to follow a star to Bethlehem where they find the baby Jesus, along
with Mary and Joseph, in the manger. There, Luke tells us that everybody was
amazed. Amazement is fear put in its place; not its opposite; it is, in fact, a
by-product of it, but amazement is a response that yells to the heavens, “Even
though I am fearful, yet, I believe! I believe in something more powerful than
me! Yea, though I fear, my fear is crushed by the promise of creative joy found
in God, my savior, made human in this baby, this Jesus.”
If Christmas matters less in our world it is because of a
failure of creativity. It is not because we haven’t worked hard enough to keep
Christ in Christmas; it’s not because we haven’t written enough letters and
emails to the government and to corporations to maintain Christian ideologies and
practices. If Christmas has lost some of its luster it’s because we, who have
so many wondrous things, can no longer manage to be amazed. What would it take
to amaze you? If in those moments where fear tingles at the back of our necks,
hate and anger and resentment rise in our guts rather than awe and wonder at
what yet might be, then we have truly and wholly lost what Christmas is really
about.
We have a failure
of creativity, my friends, because Christmas has become just nice. It’s
just nice to get together, it’s just nice to have a time of the year dedicated
to hope and joy, love and peace. It is just nice to come to Christmas Eve
services and go home and open presents. It’s just nice. It’s not
world-changing, and that’s a failure of creativity. This is
God-come-down-into-the-world and it is not just nice; it’s world-changing. It’s
a moment of the worst fear you can imagine—where death and rot and grime are
front and center; where you are reminded that you are dust and to dust you will
return; where a baby is born to die, not to live—and there in those fears lies
amazement, lies creativity, lies God-birthing-a-new-world. This is the great
mystery of God becoming flesh. Worse than hating it is making it “just nice.”
Friends, we have a failure of creativity. A failure to
listen to those words of the song, “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” and wonder what it
was like to wait on without security. “And ransom captive Israel.” Captive to
fear, to vengeance, to anger. Captive to a failure to imagine what might be. “That
mourns in lowly exile here.” Exiled by policies, opinions, or our own stubborn
tendency to just be comfortable and enjoy a bit of solace. “Until the Son of
God appear.” And that’s where it all comes crashing down. Wherever God enters
the world fear runs and hides, turning us loose—not in on ourselves—but instead
fear becomes turns to awe that we are wonderfully made, that God has knit all
of us together in the same way as
Jesus; that we come into the world as creativity-embodied, and yet we
are needy, we are poor, we are dependent on our mothers and fathers and the God
who created them to create us, not to mention the other things so completely
outside of our control.
When God enters the world he takes on all the fears of
all the years. So what have we to fear? What have we to risk? Where is our
creativity flowing? Where is our energy directed? Do we have any in the first
place?
We have a failure of creativity, my friends, when the
reality of God-in-the-world becomes to us just another thing we believe and not
the central pivot of our universe; the thing that frees us from a world that is
harsh and big and scary; the thing that compels us to feed the hungry, clothe
the poor, give homes to the refugee and the homeless in our midst, to visit
those in prison and to care for the sick—no matter the cost—we do all this not
because we are safe but because we are not safe, and yet God has chosen to
enter into the squalor with us, having been there he will be there again.
Because Christ entered the world as we all enter it. In a smelly place, crying,
fearful, amazed. And so were they all.
We are created to create, born to imagine, and our
failure for creativity can be fatal, but that is not the last word because there
is no fuller expression, no better testimony, to God-in-the-flesh than our
willingness to stand in amazement with the shepherds, the wise men, Mary and
Joseph, even the animals who were, I assure you, dirty as all hell. Where else
would Christ come into the world? And where else would we be called to follow?
This is what it means to be a Christian.
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