December 23, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
We can’t keep hyper-sensitivity to it because… well, because we just can’t; but in every single moment God is emerging with all the drama of an infant head glistening for the first time in light.
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Preached Christmas Day at Trinity Buffalo
2011
I was never a midwife
as the poem describes,
but I was very present
to the births of my four children.
Labor and delivery
is noisy and sloppy,
and a rush of people, emotions and images;
but the thing I remember about each birth
was that moment of emergence.
Like with a car accident
or any spectacular event,
there was a slow-motion moment.
You know what I mean?
It is as if every movement, sound and action
distills into singular, discrete motions
and you see it all as if in a slow-motion rerun.
And at the same time,
you are surrounded in silence.
Even though there is an abundance of sound,
and really a lot of noise actually,
something about that moment
is like being wrapped in a cocoon of quiet.
What I remember about those moments
when a new person
is emerging headfirst for the first time into the air,
is feeling the presence of God.
Feeling that presence,
not around me
so much as gushing up
through me
as if another kind of birth
taking place in that moment.
Tears leaking effortlessly from my eyes,
life-energy rushing through the pores of my skin
so that every sense is heightened,
and tingling prickles from raised hair upon my neck and arms
as if the antenna of radar shouting,
“Incoming!”
What I wonder is,
if you are a labor and delivery nurse or doc,
does it get routine?
When it is not your wife or partner and child,
and you are working,
with the weight of responsibility rounding your shoulders,
does it become just another birth?
It seems as if it would have to,
and somehow it seems appropriate that it would.
After all,
we all grow accustomed
to the ordinariness of God in our midst.
Hearing this story,
walking through another Christmas,
being surrounded by the familiar annual images
of first century pastoral life,
there is a sense in which
we sleepwalk through the extraordinary.
We know it so well,
we’ve heard it all before,
we’ve decided what we think and believe
and what we don’t,
or how we explain what we need to
and leave the rest on the plate.
But the reality that we have grown accustomed to,
the routine that has rubbed cataracts over our perception
is that every moment
is pregnant with God,
and every moment is a birth.
We can’t keep hyper-sensitivity to it because…
well, because we just can’t;
but in every single moment God is emerging
with all the drama of an infant head
glistening for the first time in light.
We should not feel badly about it,
about the eyelids of dullness that droop over our vision.
If not for the capacity to dim the spectacular
we would never get anything done,
or at least not very well.
What we DO need to remember though,
is that it is taking place in every moment
and whether or not we have the wherewithal to gasp at it,
the presence of God is emerging.
What we DO need to do,
is find times and places
to stop and cut through the glaze of routine
and be awed
all over again.
Whether it happens on Christmas or two days later,
it doesn’t really matter.
What matters
is that we remember
to DO the kinds of things
we need to do
to enhance our capacity
to see
the ordinary miraculous-ness of every moment.
I mean really,
the spectacular
is born
right now..
right here…
right now…
in you.
Merry Christmas.
Amen.
