CHRISTMAS 1A 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

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 At a recent conference I heard a word that seemed to be the thread in the needle sewing its way through every workshop and presentation. Different speakers spoke of ministries where those living on the margins of society found nourishment of body and soul, clothing of shirts and pants and hats and coats hanging on hooks of righteousness, which means living in right relationship. The word was solidarity. 

We might hear the word solidarity in political terms. It was the name of a movement that helped move Poland out of the oppressive domination of the Soviet Union. Its many-faceted expressions helped raise one leader to that country’s presidency, and another to the papacy. 

I listened to the various conference speakers and began to hear solidarity in an old, familiar way. If there had been time and opportunity for open discussion, I wanted to ask, “Isn’t solidarity just another way to say incarnation?” 

Incarnation is what this night is all about. It’s not a birthday party; events described in Luke’s Gospel were more likely to have happened in Spring. It’s also not about a recent event, as Jesus was probably born sometime around the year three or four BCE. Manger birth records are somewhat incomplete. 

You can research the reasons why December 25 was chosen as the date to celebrate the meaning of this day and find that the idea of light coming into the dark world made a lot of sense by celebrating it as the days were beginning to lengthen. Then go ponder the sense of that to those living in the southern hemisphere, where hours of daylight have just peaked and are beginning to shorten. Our ideas, our hymns, our traditions are very much a western European, northern hemisphere thing. 

I’m tempted to say that our celebration seems to be more about us than it is about Jesus. But, then, that is true on many levels that often get ignored in our revelry. 

The birth of Jesus takes on new meaning when we consider it as God choosing to be in solidarity with us, with all humanity, and even with all creation. 

God comes to us in the weakest, most vulnerable form—a human baby, who will take longer to learn to walk and talk and eat and care for himself than any other animal on the face of the earth. The event we celebrate this night is a call for us to remember that we are more likely to find the true God whom we seek in the most vulnerable, the weakest, the poorest, the neediest among us than we are in any fortress of power and wealth. 

Isaiah speaks familiar words that echo that same call. He points us to an event, but that 
​ but that event in turn calls us to be that which we claim for ourselves. The prophet’s words remind us that we are to be the light that shines in the darkness by joining those huddled in the shadows, and then lighting the path out. We are to be agents of new life joined in solidarity with those caught in the birth pangs of despair and uncertainty, acting in some way as midwives into new life. 

One of the speakers at that conference I attended is herself a mother of three who reminds us that giving birth is painful and messy—and that’s before the first diaper change. We who gather here to celebrate a long-ago birth are asked to remember our own new birth by water and the Spirit, children of God who are then sent to be light in an increasingly darker world that God still loves enough to become part of it through the body of Christ, the church, and to declare the new birth of redeeming love wherever we go. 

The old folk song says “Go, tell it on the mountain.” May we find courage and hope to declare it in the dark valleys, too. Because the birth of Jesus sets in motion the way to our own, and everyone’s new birth, now and forever. 
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