Risky, gritty love

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The Rev. Clare L. Hickman

St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

December 24, 2024—Christmas Eve

…this is how the stars

get in your bones.

This is how the brightness

makes a home in you,

as you open to the hope that burnishes

every fractured thing it finds

and sets it shimmering,

a generous light that will not cease,

no matter how deep the darkness grows,

no matter how long the night becomes.

(from “How the Stars Get in Your Bones”-Jan Richardson)

          These words capture, for me, the possibility of Christmas. The possibility that the sorrow and pain and injustice of the world, these things which threaten to break us, can also forge a greater hope within us. That they can work on us in the way that massive geological pressures form gemstones in the heart of the earth.

          And I could perhaps do nothing tonight other than read you that poem, and the message of Christmas would be illuminated. But first … I want to talk about Dan Campbell.

          MCDC, Motor City Dan Campbell, head coach of the (13-2) Detroit Lions, a team so battered and beset by injuries that they should by all rights have disintegrated mid-season this year, but have instead continued to come so hard that they’re serious Super Bowl contenders.

          And a big part of the magic is the sheer Dan Campbell-ness of it all. He’s an all-out, risk it all kind of guy, whose team lives and (to be honest) dies by that style. Most famously, he almost always goes for it on 4th down. Which gives us one more chance to get that first down and continue marching toward a touchdown … but also means there are times when we could have kicked an easy 3-point field goal but end up with nothing … or that we turn the ball over to the other team with them in excellent position to score.

          Which means that Dan Campbell is either a confident genius or an impulsive nutcase, depending on a couple of things: whether you’re a Lions fan, or, more likely, whether the audacious risk was successful or not.

          But here’s the thing: if you’re really all in on this thing, it doesn’t matter whether any given 4th down attempt works or not. Because it’s the audacity, the “risk it all” approach that’s the appeal in the first place. Yes, you could say it lost us the NFC championship game against the 49ers last January. But it was also an integral part of what got us there in the first place.

          It’s the daring. It’s the trust. It’s the, “we will do ANYTHING, because we want the other team to know that we will do anything.” Which makes for a team that would lie down in the street for a coach who trusts them that much. And it makes for a fan base who are DELIRIOUS in their belief in this gutsy, audacious hope.

          Which sounds a lot like, and you knew this was coming, a lot like the story of the Incarnation. A lot like the absurd, all-in, “what the heck, let’s try it” idea of God sending Godself to be born on earth in utter and complete fragility. God had tried all the other things, had tried doing it yard by yard, sending prophets to speak about God, to remind people of God’s ways, to call people back to God’s priorities of taking care of the poor, the widows, the immigrants and refugees. Centuries of prophets. Millennia of prophets. Still, people prioritized their own fortunes. Still, people convinced themselves that God was more concerned with the way they worshiped than the way they treated each other.

And still, God’s desire to break through to us only grew. Which is where the “going for it on 4th down” moment arises. Which is where famed preacher Barbara Brown Taylor imagines a cabinet of archangels as appalled by God’s plan as commentators frequently are by Dan Campbell. Faced with the idea of God being born as a human child, they point out with forceful concern, that this will put the Almighty at the mercy of these human creatures. “Couldn’t you at least create yourself as a magical baby with special powers?” they ask?[i] Invisibility, perhaps? But no, God says the whole point is to enter humanity fully, just as vulnerable and fragile as we are.

Proving to us, once and for all, that God is willing to do ANYTHING, risk everything, and leave absolutely nothing on the field. Having tried everything else, God’s going to try this, going to take on all the pressures and pain and sorrows of life in this world. And in doing so, God’s love for us has never shone brighter, never been more beautiful and more wondrous. As the poet wrote it:

Sapphire, diamond, emerald, quartz:

think of every hard thing

that carries its own brilliance,

shining with the luster that comes

only from uncountable ages

in the earth, in the dark,

buried beneath unimaginable weight,

bearing what seemed impossible,

bearing it still.

She wrote this poem about us. But tonight, I invite you to hear it as it speaks Christmas truths about God:

I tell you, this blazing in you—

…

It comes from the helpless place in you

that, despite all, cannot help but hope,

the part of you that does not know

how not to keep turning

toward this world,

to keep turning your face

toward this sky,

to keep turning your heart

toward this unendurable earth,

knowing your heart will break

but turning it still.

In the incarnation, God turns not just face, and not just heart, but their entire being towards this world. Towards us. Allowing Godself to be born and to be broken, and by doing so, showing us a love that is as strong as it is beautiful.

As for us, we too might become gemstones, living as we do with all the pressures of this world. But all that talk about the Lions has me thinking about grit, and wondering whether our call might actually be to become pearls. That just as God was born into this world to disrupt the domination and corruption of empire, we are called to disrupt those same forces in our own time. To be the grain of sand that irritates the system, that cries out for something different, that lays claim to God’s astonishing, self-sacrificial love for the world. And in doing so, begins to shine.

It is not an easy world my friends; the archangel cabinet was right to be concerned. Because this world has rarely thanked those who dare to speak God’s values into the world’s greed and selfishness. But the message of Christmas invites us to join God’s thrilling recklessness. Knowing it will not always be successful. Knowing that some will call us fools. But knowing that this beautiful, breakable world needs our daring to remind it of God’s daring, needs our love to reminds it of God’s love, needs us to go all in, to remind it of God’s choice to go all in for all of us.

Merry Christmas my friends. Amen.

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, “God’s Daring Plan”