Christmas Eve 2023: The shape of God
The Rev. Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
December 24, 2023—Christmas Eve
I don’t remember much from my tenth grade Geometry class (give me Algebra or Calculus any day), but I have never forgotten a book we were given to read, written in 1884, called Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions). In it, we meet a resident of a two-dimensional world, A. Square, whose world is populated by nothing but lines and shapes. In two dimensional spaces, everything is flat. You can have points, and lines, and shapes like squares, circles, triangles, hexagons: anything you or I could draw on a piece of paper. Two dimensions. And in this book, this 19th century author explored all kinds of social ideas, such as the fact that women were simply lines (thin, straight, and beautiful), but men were any number of shapes, with prestige growing with each additional side.
All very interesting and exceedingly recognizable! But what really stuck with me was what happened when our hero, A Square, began traveling between dimensions. I was delighted by the realization that what was a square in a two-dimensional world could only be a line in a one-dimensional world, but would become a cube in a three-dimensional reality. Similarly, a sphere from a three-dimensional world (such as ours) would become a circle, as soon as it entered Flatland (think of trying to draw a ball on a piece of paper).
By now, you might well be wondering what on earth this has to do with Christmas. Well, at Christmas, we contemplate the mystery of the Creator of the Universe entering our world; infinite into finite; eternal into time-bound; immortality into the limits of mortality.
Our imaginations cannot possibly encompass it. It is as though we are residents of Flatland, a single plane (like a piece of paper), and a sphere intersects with our world. And the most we can see, is a circle.
At Christmas, God intersects with our world. We cannot begin to perceive the whole of God: the immensity and the mystery and the unknowableness of God. But we can see the shape God makes in this world, and in that, we get a glimpse of God. Just as the circle tells the people of Flatland something about the nature of a sphere, Jesus gives us a vision of what God looks like in relation with our world. God, given the beautiful, terrible limitations of flesh.
The life and ministry of Jesus will add shape and color to that vision, making our calling as the body of Christ clearer as he shows us how we too can reflect the nature of God into our world. For now, though, for tonight, we are simply invited to the birth. To receive the gift. To catch our first glimpse of infinite God meeting finite earth.
We find him in a manger. Not tucked up away in a guest room, but on the main floor, where the family and the animals live. Noisy and probably smelly, but also warm, with plenty of hands available to help. All of this, surrounding the place where the nature of God was being made visible: in a manger.
And not just any manger, but a manger in Bethlehem. The House of Bread. Not exactly subtle, this message: a food trough in the house of Bread. God’s first impression in this world, the first outline or shape we see is not a king, or a judge, or even a sacrificial lamb. It is food; it is sustenance. And not just a plate of food for one person, but an open trough, for all to come and eat. This is the shape that eternity takes as it intersects our world.
Glad tidings indeed, for a world that hungers.
Hungers literally, as environmental disasters, corporate greed, and economic adversity mean that far too many people are undernourished or starving.
Hungers also for things like understanding and cooperation, hope and kindness, liberation and possibility. Hungers for all the things that sustain the human spirit and lead to human flourishing and a richer common life.
And glad tidings for you. You, who might not even realize what you’re hungering for, as you busy yourself with all the things this world requires of you, day after day. You keep moving, keep going, and if you get behind, well then you clearly aren’t working hard enough. Or perhaps you get overwhelmed or dispirited and give up. Either way, it can be hard to realize that you’re running on empty.
Until a child is born in a manger, to remind you that you are HUNGRY. That you need to be fed, deserve to fed, long to be fed. A child is born in a manger, to demonstrate to you that God’s longing runs even deeper than yours. That God longs to feed you so deeply that the infinite God chose to enter our finite world, to offer Godself to us, to make Godself known to us as sustenance for body and soul.
My friends, may this holy night bring you to the manger. There to catch sight of God come to earth. There to receive the gift. There, to be filled with the holy darkness of Christmas, in which hope and promise germinate and grow. There, to receive the holy light of Christmas, which banishes fear and despair. There, to be fed.
A blessed and joyful Christmas to you and yours, my friends. Amen.