Christmas Needs to Get More Materialistic

This is the best Christmas sermon I've ever heard: it was preached by the Rev. Sam Wells, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University . It's entitled "Christmas Needs to Get More Materialistic," and the Scripture text is John 1:1-14 . You can get the text of the sermon here.

My favorite part, where he really hits it home:

This is Christianity: not some set of disembodied ideals and noble values, but the life shaped around the logic of God in a human form, at Christmas found in a tiny crying baby, on Good Friday found in a naked man hanging on a cross, on Easter Day found in the wonder of a man defeating death and opening the gates of glory. And this is what we find difficult about Christianity: not its sense of the spiritual, not its sense of inner logic and its appeal to a personal God, for who could be against such reassuring things; no, what we find difficult about Christianity is its materialism, its claim that God took human, material form and lived and died and rose again clothed in and surrounded by the sheer material stuff of ordinary life. A God who is watching us from a distance is a God we can keep at a distance. A God who takes human form is a God that comes up close and personal, a God so close to us we can never escape his grace.

Why is it so unbelievable?

From the hymn O Come, All Ye Faithful, waxing Nicea:

God of God, Light of Light;
Lo, He abhors not the Virgin's womb:
Very God, begotten, not created;
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

It is because of this that the phrase "Mother of God" enters into our speech.

That's right. I said it. "Mother of God". Or Theotokos, if you will.

Isn't that nuts? Isn't that crazy? The shock in it has nothing to do with Mary. It has everything to do with the fact that the Creator of the universe condescends and takes on a human nature, made of ordinary flesh made of ordinary molecules made out of ordinary atoms that were fused in an ordinary star sometime in the past, just like you and me.

The logic of the universe (see John 1) is wrapped up in a tiny, crying, pooping baby.

This is the lengths to which God will go to redeem the world. By the standards of human wisdom, this is scandalous.

More reflections on this later.