INCARNATION, NOT INFORMATION

When I graduated from seminary 32 years ago, we were on the threshold of the information and computer age. Since then, we’ve had to learn a whole new weird vocabulary just to get by in the world.  Think of all the strange words that are a part of our everyday lexicon : Tivo, IPod, DVD, MP3, GPS, HD, and you gotta love Blue-Tooth, Blue-Ray, Quad-Core, 64-bit, and many more. 

I think of how technology has changed life in the church. Email makes it possible to share information over great distances almost instantly. Reports and articles can be composed from the comfort of home and delivered by email. My cell phone makes it possible for my secretary to find me in an instant! (I’m not sure about that one!)  Strangers can log on to the church website to garner information.  We video the services and burn DVD’s to distribute to the homebound.

One cannot even get lost anymore, especially if you have a GPS device in the car!  We can know where we are on the surface of the earth with precision accuracy. (I’m not sure about this one either as some of the most fun times I’ve had have been when I got lost)  

Technology has and will continue to have huge impact in the way we live and the way we communicate.  However, I have to wonder if our information technology has actually prevented us from knowing each other better; prevented us from getting closer; actually increased the distance between us in some important ways. From the comfort of my home or office information about the world can be opened up to me, but can I really get to know the flesh and blood people of the world? Can I look into their eyes? Can I hear their voices? Can I shake their hands, or give them a hug?

You can do your Christmas shopping on the Internet.  But as big a hassle as Christmas shopping can be, there is still something to be said for being out there, tussling with the crowds, interacting with people, looking real people in the eye, letting someone in line ahead at the check-out, wishing a stranger a "Merry Christmas!"

We've watched wars unfold before our very eyes.  Cameras in the nose cones of missiles take our eyes all the way to impact!  It all can seem like nothing more than a video game, disconnected from real people, real blood, real tears, real suffering and pain. It converts three-dimensional reality into two-dimensional fantasy. 

Even though technology has made the world smaller and more efficient, in many ways it is less personal than ever; easier than ever to become more isolated, insulated and indifferent.

Even the Christian Faith has fallen victim. It's been over 40 years ago now that we saw the birth of the "Electronic Church", a church that is squashed into a few hundred square inches of a screen where the two-dimensional Evangelist can make all sorts of holy pronouncements from the safety of his relative isolation, pronouncements that travel instantly into the safety of the viewer's living room isolation. Somewhere in the midst of it all, the whole reality of the body of Christ and the community of real people wrestling real issues of faith and life is lost.

My imagination got going this week, and I wonder what would happen if tomorrow morning, all over the world God decided to communicate some vital information?  Appearing on every computer and TV screen; text messaging every cell phone, in every e-mail would come a divine virtual message for everyone to see and hear that said, "I REALLY EXIST!" or "GOD IS!" or even the words, "I LOVE YOU!"  I wonder how people might respond to such vital information?  At first most of us would probably think it was some kind of a joke. But as the day would wear on people would quickly become aware that this was a universal message of such magnitude that it only could be divine.

- I suppose there would be some who would crumple down on their knees in front of their computers and cell phones.  There might be a few who would bolt out of their offices and homes in sheer GUILTY terror -- fearing judgment!

- There would be those who would sit in their chairs wherever they were and perhaps weep tears of regret thinking if only they would have known it before, what different lives they might have lived.

- In others, there might be a wild surge of hope and joy! The sick and dying in hospitals and nursing homes everywhere looking up from their despair and burned into the screen before them, seeing proof at last of a reality beyond time; a reality beyond their suffering.

The initial impact of God's supplying the human race with this vital information could very well be an extraordinary thing!  But then somewhere, someplace, in some office, somebody would step up to their computer keyboard and send a reply to only God knows where, and the message would say, "So what?"  Suddenly the divine message on screens everywhere would disappear forever.

For what we really need is not more "information" about God.  All the information in the universe about God that we can possibly gather together will not in the long run silence our doubts, calm our fears, and fill the lonely empty places of our souls. What we really need is not more information, but what we really need is to know that there is a real flesh and blood presence right here with us; a real flesh and blood God in the thick of our day-by-day lives; a God who is participating with us, struggling with us, walking along side of us, leading us; touching us, crying with us, laughing with us, embracing us, and encouraging us - a God into whose eyes we can look; a God whose voice we can hear.

Gospel is a word that means "Good News."  Christmas is "Good News" because it's not about INFORMATION -- rather it's about INCARNATION!  John in his Gospel said, "...the Word became flesh and dwelt among us!"  That’s incarnation, not information.

An 11-year-old boy with cancer lost all his hair as a result of chemotherapy treatments. When it came time for him to return to school, he and his parents experimented with hats, wigs, and bandanas to try to conceal his baldness. They finally settled on a baseball cap, but the boy still feared the taunts he would receive for looking "different."  Mustering up his courage, he went to school wearing his cap.  When he got there he discovered that all of his friends had shaved their heads in solidarity.

That's the miracle and wonder of Christmas!  God shaves his head in Jesus Christ and delivers a personal message of solidarity that cost him his own sweet flesh and blood.  There are no divine emails, no text messages, no TV or computers -- just a flesh and blood God -- a baby who grew to be an adult who died on a cross; into whose eyes you can gaze and from whose lips you can hear the very special words that literally make your life priceless and precious beyond your comprehension -- words that bring you into a real relationship with God who says, "I Love You!  I forgive you!"

God is able to accomplish what the sum total of all the information technology in the world cannot accomplish: to call us out of our isolation, and get us together as people: as friends, as family, as neighbors, even as adversaries and bitter enemies, and in the name of Jesus Christ to look each other in the eyes; speak to each other, hear from each other, embrace each other;  speak the same words of love that God has spoken to each of us, "I Love You!" "You are forgiven!" "You are precious beyond your wildest dreams." When that happens maybe there finally will be not only "Glory to God in the highest", but truly "peace on earth!"  Amen.