I hope you had a blessed Christmas Eve and have enjoyed the beginning of your Christmas Day. Christmas is the day we celebrate the incarnation of our Lord Jesus with us here, in our lives, in our bodies, in our families, and world. It’s a day of celebrating the very real presence of love and hope with us.

I also recognize this can be the hardest day of the year for many. A fair number of folks may be living through today by pretending it’s just another day or putting on a brave face on during festivities, ignoring that their heart may ache for the loss of loved ones, loss of hope, or a lost sense of inclusion. For many, this day holds sadness alongside all the good that also may be there.

It’s a more complex day than we often know what to do with. So thankfully, we worship a complex God. In God, there’s room for our complexity; for our simultaneous joy and longing, our gratitude that’s right next to our loss or isolation, or whatever complex combinations of things we may be feeling. There’s room for all that is in us to be held in God and here, as well. I am glad you’re here, including all of your complexity.

There’s hardly a gospel that is more complex than the beginning of John, which we read this morning. This part of the gospel is part of what the doctrine of the Trinity is based on, which basically says our one God is one, yet is three persons who are distinct, yet perfectly unified. So that is complex. The Trinity is hard to understand because it is non-linear. However, we can more easily talk about what it means that our God is a Trinitarian God. We can talk about the experience of it. This might be most relevant and hopeful to us when we find ourselves in sadness or feeling lost. It may feel also the most real to us when we are awash in love.

When we profess the Trinity, what we are saying in part is the foundation of our world, God, involves relationship from the very beginning. This means there is no part of our world or our very being that is not in relationship, because the foundation of our existence is relationship.

We don’t profess a static God who sits on high who is separate from us. Nor do we believe in we live in a world that is not imbued by God’s presence. On Christmas Day, we celebrate God becoming flesh with us now. We believe in a dynamic God whose very nature is like a big hug from the beginning. So, maybe God, and therefore our world, is something like a loving party that we are not just invited to, but already includes us, even if we don’t know it.

We are already surrounded, swept up, and adored, even as we may believe we are sitting on the sidelines, watching all the good stuff happen elsewhere. While we may think that way sometimes, that is not God’s way. It is impossible for us to not be in relationship already. We are included from the beginning, along with everyone else, along with all of creation. It is all one very big and glorious party.

That said, our Holy God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is a complex party, allowing for all that our world entails. All of the world and all that is in it is held in loving relationship and care. Your joy is held. So is your sorrow, whether you can even name it or not.

The full complexity of who we are as God’s creatures is included in this broad, loving gathering that is our God. God provides that beautiful setting for this party, but also is in every face you see, including your own. And God is in the sparks that fly between us, the joy and the tender moments when we hear each other’s stories. God is here with us now, in this space. God Emmanuel.

Today we celebrate Jesus’ birth, God who came in physicality for us to more fully experience, see, and know God. Jesus helps the gifts of God to feel all the more present, more real, more alive in us. God who says, ‘Here I am’ to each of us, and asks each of us to join in the dance of this party.

The invitation is always and forever for you and all people. My prayer is that each of our hearts is opened incrementally more to feel the loving care, the holding, the inclusion, the wanting of us on this Christmas day – the day that Jesus was born to be with us all in all the complexity of our lives and world. I pray our hearts our also opened to each other and to all of Creation; that we may experience and express God’s presence in our relationships and communities. God surrounds us, meets us, holds us in this vast loving party we are invited to for the sake of ourselves and all of us. For that we gift, for that holy inclusion of all of who we are in the loving gathering of God, we say thank you and amen.

AMEN