Yesterday after worship, I was holding the baby who played the part of Jesus in the morning’s Christmas pageant while his mother took his brother through the line to get cookies after worship. The seven-month-old child was very comfortable with being a part of the after church crowd in the fellowship hall and not threatened by his mother walking away for a few minutes. He had been a great actor in his first role. He loved the music and when the other children sang, his feet and hands danced in rhythm. As I held him I was struck by how at home he is in his world. He is not an anxious or confused child at this age. He has known love and care and nurture and is a trusting soul when he is in his church.

That’s one of the remarkable things about the incarnation. It is utterly common and ordinary. A baby is born. A baby is loved. A baby grows through childhood into adulthood and shares love with others.

The people of Israel had waited for a long time for their messiah. In the waiting and anticipation, they had come up with a lot of different visions about what it might mean and how it might happen. Many expected a political savior, in the model of King David, who would rise up and make their country into the dominant world power instead of a conquered country living at the edge of an expansive empire that didn’t seem to care about them very much, except to extract taxes and train inexperienced military. Others expected a cataclysmic world event, in which history as we know it would come to an end and God’s reign over the world would change everything.

Most expected that the coming of the messiah would mean that their particular religious views would be accepted by the majority and those who disagreed would be punished by God.

Then it happened. In fact we don’t know for sure the exact date or the specific location because so many people didn’t notice it at first. The reality was that poor young women gave birth to babies in the common rooms of homes every day. You cleaned up the mess, washed up the baby, wrapped it in clean clothes and went on with life. It was completely ordinary. Other women in the family taught the new mother how to care for her baby and life went on.

But you know that no birth is “ordinary.” Every birth is its own miracle. When they hand that baby to you and you hold its fragile little body in your arms and your realize what a miracle new life - a whole new person - is . . . you know you are witness to a miracle. Each child is a special gift of God and a sign of God’s presence in the world.

Of course our people have been telling the stories of this particular child for thousands of years. We all know the reaction of the elders when he was presented at the temple. We tell the story of how he amazed the teachers when at age 12 he visited the temple again - and we know that his parents insisted that he return home at that point instead of being apprenticed to a temple leader to become a religious official. And we know the stories of his life: how he called disciples, healed illnesses, reached out to marginalized people, fed the hungry with meager resources, and demonstrated that death is not the end of life.

We continue to sense his presence and influence on our world in very real ways as we live our everyday lives.

And we have begun to tell stories of what it will be like when he comes again. The second coming of Jesus has long been predicted by those who study what he said before his crucifixion. We have formed images of what the end of time might be like. And some of our expectations are as fantastic as those our forebears had when anticipating the first coming of the messiah. There are those who think the event will include punishment of all evil persons - and who define evil persons as those who are different or who disagree about religious interpretations. There are those who think the event will involve world wars and much destruction.

I have no special insight on the nature of the future, but I suspect that God continues to come to us not in the extraordinary, cataclysmic events, but in the ordinary, every day events.

There were a half dozen babies born in our congregation this year. If that isn’t enough to convince one of the goodness of God, perhaps we just aren’t paying attention. As a congregation that welcomes new members by baptism at all ages, I have had the honor of performing more baptisms in the past year than in any year of my active career as a minister, and I still have one more coming next Sunday. I’ll also start out 2016 with the celebration of baptism. If that isn’t enough to convince people that God is present and acting in this world, they need to spend more time holding those babies and looking into their eyes.

Incarnation means that God enters into our world, not that our world is somehow radically transformed into something else. God shares our common lot, understanding intimately the joys and trials of human existence. In Jesus, God fully lived a human life experiencing even human death that we might understand that we are a part of something much bigger than the span of a single generation. The shepherds to whom the angles sang the good news of Jesus’ birth were not extraordinary people. They weren’t sages or scholars or leaders of government. They were common, everyday working folks. That is the way God comes to us.

This Christmas, my advice is to look closely at the ordinary and in the ordinary open yourselves to the miracles that surround us every day. It is as easy as holding a baby. It is as wonderful as holding a baby. It is as miraculous as holding a baby.

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