Sixteen years ago today our second son and third child was born.
And so I know that today, like every year we will retell the story of his birth. He was born six weeks early--a scheduled c-section. I had been in and out of the hospital with kidney stones for the last three months--I will say again, "It wasn't so bad."
Chris, who was running our own business and caring for a just turned 3 and 17 month old with no family in town, will say, "What do you know? You were on morphine!" (Can I get an 'Amen'- Lucy, Gillian, and Leslie?) We will tell the story of how William was the only one we found out the gender of before and that SK prayed every Sunday during children's chapel that "that boy baby would turn into a girl" because she already had a brother and needed a sister. (She tricked me by asking me if God could do anything; I answered yes to which she said, "Then God can turn that baby into a girl." and so began her prayer crusade.) Later she would get a sister--for now Boss got a brother and a best friend. 
Just before Christmas (actually on our anniversary...) I had an amniocentesis and the doctor's said his lungs were ready. They gave us the choice of December 28 or January 3. Chris asked the question, "Are you sure it's safe?" With an affirmative answer my fiscally conservative husband (he is such a balance to me) said, "We'll take the 28th. I can write him off on this year's taxes and make it to the Peach Bowl."
We tell the story and it becomes part of our family. The details say something about our family--we try (Chris tries) to be fiscally responsible, we believe strongly in the power of prayer and in living faith, the siblings are close (most of the time) and we're neurotic sports fans. Our family is not alone--people everywhere tell and retell birth stories--they become part of family stories sometimes for generations, and they begin to describe family life and family values. The birth story we heard on Christmas Eve had a lot of details--the poor couple living in an occupied world, the dirty stable, the shepherds, the fear--these details tell us something about God, about who God is--God came in the flesh amidst the brokenness, the dirtiness, the messiness of the world. God came in the flesh and joined with the poor, the oppressed--God came in humility. But there are other details--the angels and the glory of heaven--these details also tell us about God. They tell us about God's majesty, God's power, God's love. These details which seem to contradict one another--I believe, actually describe the reality of the world and in fact the reality of the Christmas season for many people. There is the joy, the wonder, the amazement, and for some of us, there is also the sorrow, the emptiness, the loneliness, and the brokenness. We celebrate God's amazing love while at the same time gathering around a table where chairs are empty that should be full. We are filled with love for those who surround us while we also long for the loving arms of people no longer here.
The details matter. The details, all the details, describe the reality of the world, the story of us, the people of God. Our Gospel today, John's Gospel, leaves out the details. Just as the details in the other Gospels tell us something about who God is and how God loves the world, I believe the lack of details in John's Gospel also tell us something. In John's Gospel there is one line of the birth narrative, "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us." The word became flesh and dwelt among us--us, the people who live in constant contradiction, in brokenness and in joy. God came in the flesh and lived the life that we live--a life that is filled with love and with fear, with good times and with times of deep sorrow. I think maybe John left out the other details because he was ready to move us forward, past just the day and into what it means that God came in the flesh. To move us forward into what it means to live Christmas all year long. It's not that the details don't matter, it's just that there are other things that matter more--
What John tells us is that God came in the flesh so that we might become beloved children of God filled with the power of God through which we can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. God came in the flesh so that we could be defined in the only way that matters--as beloved children of God. The details describe--they describe parts of us but contrary to what the world wants us to believe, they don't define us. It is all too easy to let the details define us--the divorcee, the alcoholic, the successful business person AND if we are honest with ourselves, it is all too easy for us to let the details of others define them. Our Gospel today reminds us that our definition is we are beloved children of God period.
I've told ya'll before the story of my discernment in England and how I was told that every time I saw a particular person who drove me batty I had to say to myself, "God loves _________ as much as God loves me." And I've told you how it was hard and every once in awhile I wanted to say, but maybe me just a little more because ____________ is.... I wanted to let descriptions qualify the given--we are both equally beloved children of God. I've told ya'll that was hard but that over time it got easier and while it didn't make me want to be best friends, it changed me and it changed how I viewed___________. Today as I was thinking about this sermon I thought, "you know that was hard, but sometimes what is even more difficult is believing it about ourselves. Sometimes it is harder for us, harder for me, to believe that the only thing that defines us is that we are beloved children of God. and not the details of our lives. We think about the mistakes we have made in life, the words we have spoken and wish we hadn't, the broken relationships, and we have a hard time accepting, truly accepting, that those are parts of our life but not who we are. Because God came in the flesh they can't, they don't define us.
I have a challenge for each of us. For the next month when you get up and look in the mirror, first thing, I want you to say to yourself, "I am a beloved child of God and through God's power working within me I can change the world." I believe, I really believe that if each of us does that then at the end of January, we
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