Making God’s dream real…
Wonderings:
I wonder about the best Christmas gift you’ve ever received.
I wonder…what’s your love language? How do you usually show love?
Reflection based on these wonderings + the readings assigned for Christmas I in Year A in our lectionary.
Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Luke 2:1-20.
Let us speak and listen, held in the presence of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God.
When I think back on the best Christmas gifts I’ve received, close to the top of the list is a Brio Train set. In fact, THIS Brio Train set, which my parents still have at their house, and kindly brought down for this occasion.
Do you want to build a track with me? [kids begin to build a track on the carpet in front of Fr. Carl]
Here’s a picture of me playing with this Brio set, on Christmas morning at my grandparents’ house, back in 1988 or 1989.
Fr. Carl, contemplating infinity, circa 1988.
And...here’s a picture of my nephew Fritz playing with his Brio trains, thirty years later. Fritz is into Brio, too.
Fritz Adair Dixon, circa 2019.
Now here’s the thing. Brio trains have gotten even MORE COOL since I played with them. There are all these new sets that you can get, and link them up with each other. You can get
A farm set. A freight goods station. That’s so cool. A monorail!
And here’s the thing. All these sets can be combined in infinite ways.
When I was little, we just had Brio Trains. Now, all these sets together they make up BRIO WORLD.
A while back, Fritz asked his mom, my sister, a question while they were driving to preschool.
“Mommy, is Brio World on earth?”
In her great wisdom, my sister said, “yes, Fritz. We create Brio World every time we make a track.” Whenever we play with Brio, we make Brio World real.
Here’s what I want to say to all of you on this Christmas Eve. God’s dream for all of us is to grow together in love. And God makes that dream real through us.
Whenever we work and play in the freedom of being loved, and whenever we encourage others to keep growing, loving them even when growing is hard—we are making God’s dream real. We are helping to create the world God dreams of for us.
Let me say this again, as a story, drawing on the language of Holy Scripture. In the beginning, before there was anything else, before there was even time, Jesus and God were together, and they were snuggled up in the total love of parent and child. Can you imagine being held in your parents’ arms, all warm and cuddly and safe? That was Jesus and God, times infinity. Just loving each other so much they thought their hearts would burst open and rainbows would shoot out. And that love, we call the Holy Spirit.
One day, God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit did a project together. Some kids bake cookies with their parents, or do a puzzle; others build a Lego set, or a Brio train. Together, the three of them made...the whole world: together, they created everything that is. And do you know what made everything out of? Love.
They took all that love that kept pouring out of their hearts and they pat it, and pricked it, and shaped it into plants and rocks and animals; little amoebas and whole galaxies. And in one little corner of the universe, they made us: human beings. They made us out of love, too. All of us are made of love, and we are made for love.
But you know how when you do a project, sometimes things don’t fit together in the way you plan or expect? That happens to me all the time. I follow the recipe, but the cake batter turns out all lumpy. I build a big tower out of Legos, but just before it’s finished, it falls over and breaks into pieces. When a project doesn’t work out the way I want, I get really frustrated. Sometimes I want to just throw it all into the garbage. But I go cool off for a while, and then I come back and try again.
This happened to God, too, when they created the world: they made everything and everyone to fit together, to be warm and snuggly and interdependent. They made all forms of life to grow and flourish together. It all looked perfect! But human beings didn’t want to fit into this beautiful created order. We wanted to do our own thing. We kept getting into fights with each other, and we kept hurting the other forms of life around us, hurting the earth.
God and Jesus got really frustrated! They took some deep breaths, and cooled off. How were they going to remind human beings that we are made out of God’s love—that we are made for loving one another, that we are made to grow in love until our hearts burst open and rainbows shoot out!?
Jesus had an idea. He said to God, “I know what to do. I will become a human being myself. I’ll be born as a vulnerable little baby, among poor people who are losing hope. And as I grow, I’ll show people what love looks like, in terms they can understand. I’ll show them, God, that there’s no limit to our love; I’ll show them that the light of our love will always shine even in the darkest places, where people are bullied, or scared, or grieving, or feel they have to hide who they are. I’ll remind them what it feels like to feel warm and cuddly and safe; I’ll show them that love is more powerful than any agency or any army, that love is deeper than the deepest ocean, that love is stronger than anything, even death.
And that’s exactly what Jesus did. He chose to be born, not in majesty and might, on silk sheets in a palace, but among hurting and frightened people, among the poor and those pushed to the margins. And if we want to see Jesus today, that’s where we should look.
Jesus is God’s love language for us.
There was one other thing that Jesus showed us. He showed us that whenever we open ourselves up to the love that all things are made of, and show that love to one another, we make more love in the world. And that means that we join in with God in creating the world; we add to the universe. We get to shape love into new things—like art projects, and Christmas cards and gifts, and new Lego towers and Brio train tracks.
And all of those things that we make out of love become part of the dream that God has for us, and for the whole world: a beloved community where everyone knows they belong.
It’s like what my sister said to Fritz: whenever we build a new track, we’re making Brio World. Wherever we show love to one another, and shape that love into new things, we’re making God’s dream a reality.
So if your heart is full of love and on this Holy Night, make something out of it: make God’s dream real by sharing that love with others. Piece by piece, let’s keep building the world that Jesus showed us is possible; let’s keep building God’s dream. And if your heart is hurting tonight, or you feel anxious or afraid, hear this: God chooses to be born right in the middle of our hurt and fear. God is with us, right there. Right here.
Amen. And Merry Christmas.
