Ricky Bobby Preaches Christmas Eve

I love Christmas. The fact that the Episcopal Church observes the season of Advent prior to Christmas is probably the toughest part of ordained life for me. As a kid, and even now, my house has been decorated for Christmas as close to the day after Thanksgiving as possible. I love seeing trees all lit up; even Palm Trees. I love clay-mation movies from the 1960s. I love Christmas carols. I love the smile you see on faces as the “Merry Christmas” wishes are exchanged. And, like most of us, I love the image of God entering the world as a baby, wrapped in bands of cloth, lying in a manger.
It is tough for me to slog through Advent. Singing Advent Carols instead of Christmas Carols. Waiting not just for Christmas, but for Jesus’ return to earth with power and great glory. Advent, is, no doubt, an important time of waiting, but for me, Christmas can’t come soon enough. And tonight, it is finally here. On the Eve of the Eve of Jesus’ Nativity at least part of our waiting is over. Jesus Christ is born this night, a Merry Christmas indeed.
Luke does a wonderful job of telling this story. We get a full detail of how it is that Joseph and his pregnant, virgin, bride-to-be, Mary, get from Nazareth to Bethlehem. We find them set up in a quaint Nativity scene, as if Luke knew that one day our knick-knack shelves would hold a display of his story. We see the baby Jesus, in perhaps his most famous role, a newborn infant, wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. This portrait of baby Jesus and the one 30 some years later, hanging on the cross, define, for most of us, our image of Jesus. And it is the first image, the one we celebrate this evening that is most assuredly preferable. It is a lot easier to picture Jesus lying silently in the manger. It feels a lot safer. It makes our God a lot more cuddly.
In the movie, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, we see, in popular culture, what this image of Jesus offers us.
As the Bobby family sits down to dinner, Ricky offers a prayer, “Dear Lord baby Jesus, or as our brothers to the south call you, Jesus, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Dominos, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell… Dear Lord baby Jesus, we also want to thank you for my wife’s father, Chip, we hope that you can use your baby Jesus powers to heal him and his horrible leg… Dear tiny, infant Jesus…”
When challenged with the fact that Jesus did grow up, Ricky responds, “I like the Christmas Jesus best and I’m saying grace. When you say grace you can say it to grown-up Jesus, or teen-age Jesus, or bearded Jesus, whoever you want…” He folds his hands and bows his head, “Dear tiny Jesus, in your Golden Fleece diapers with your tiny balled up first…”
Again, Ricky is challenged, “He was a man, he had a beard!”
Ricky finishes his prayer, “Dear 8 pound 6 ounce, newborn infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent. We just thank you for all the races I’ve won… thank you for all your power and your grace dear baby God, Amen.”[1]
It is very strange to hear it out loud, but I think that this is often the way we pray. “Dear tiny infant Jesus” is a pleasant way to picture our God. And, you know, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that image of Jesus. It is part of what makes Christmas so special. God came to earth to put his creation back together not by appearing magically out of thin air, but through the natural means by which a human being comes it this world. God entered the world just as helpless as the rest of us. He arrived as “dear tiny infant Jesus”; fully God and fully human. But, unlike Ricky, we can’t stop there. God’s coming into the world was much larger than a Nativity scene on a knick-knack shelf.
Which brings me to the theological reason why I love Christmas; because it is the day that we celebrate what I believe to be the key to God’s restoring of relationship; the Incarnation. Incarnation is a fancy church word, and for that I’m sorry, but I’ll break it down. It is created by combining two Latin words. The first, y’all know well, “in” which means, well, in. The second is “carnis” which means flesh. In – Flesh. Theologically, it is the understanding that God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The Incarnation means that God was one of us. It means that as Jesus experienced desires, temptations, frustrations, joys; all of the messiness of life as a human being it became a part of God – as Jesus experienced them, so too did God. Jesus being “in flesh” means that the gap between God and humanity was bridged; our relationship was restored. God, having now felt what it is like to be a human, to have will that is prone to messing up, knows more fully what it means when we come to him with all of our joys and all of our sorrows. God was “in flesh” on earth! This is the good news of Christmas; God was intervening radically to restore our relationship; not just as a helpless baby, but throughout the life of experiences of teenage Jesus and grown up bearded Jesus.
Not only does God experience what it is to be human, but we have a chance to see how God would have us live. The other side of the Incarnation coin is that God is made comprehensible by being “in flesh.” In the full life of Jesus we see a life lived fully in accordance with God’s will. From Jesus’ first cry as an infant to his final gasp for breath on the cross, we get in the life of Jesus a life lived in perfect harmony with God. And, to be honest, we see that it isn’t all that demanding. It begins with a life lived modeling tiny-infant-Jesus; looking up with wide-eyed awe at the splendor of God’s creation; recognizing our full dependence on him for all things. As we grow in faith, we become more like teenage Jesus, getting to know God through Worship and the Word. And then, as we mature, the model becomes grown-up-bearded Jesus. His life was one of service to the poor, outcast, sick, widowed, and orphaned. It was a life lived sharing the good news of God’s divine justice with the oppressed, the sad, and the lonely. It is a full life; from birth to death; a life lived from Sunday to Saturday – week after week after week.
The incarnation is all about God’s love for us overflowing. It is about God coming “in flesh” to show us how to live in response to that great love. As we gather this night to celebrate the Incarnation in the Nativity of tiny-infant Jesus we take that first step. Hopefully, it is the beginning of another year, growing in faith with this remembrance of Jesus’ birth. As we leave to our parties and to await Santa’s arrival, we enter the world refreshed and renewed; ready to live another year in the model of the life of God “in flesh”. We prepare ourselves for another try at living in full harmony with the will of God. But we go, not filled with our own abilities, but instead empowered by the Holy Spirit, glorifying and praising God for all that we have heard and seen; excited for what a life lived with Jesus has in store.
Thanks be to God for coming into the world as the newborn infant Jesus. Thanks be to God for his willingness to restore his creation by living as one of us. And thanks be to God for his perfect model of Kingdom living. May he fill us to overflowing for anther year of trying to live that life. Amen.
[1] From, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby¸2006. Written by Will Farrell and Adam McKay.