God’s Address
Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on Christmas Day + December 25, 2024.
How many addresses have you resided at during your lifetime? If I count dorms and seminary apartments, it is over 20 for me. Including six residences on the Northside over three decades. 3641 Wilton. 1246 Roscoe. 2909 N. Sheridan. 658 Roscoe. 4100 N. Marine Drive. 5320 N. Sheridan. A three flat. A two flat. A six flat. A low rise and two high rises.
Anyone think they have lived at over 25 places in your life? Or under ten? You may have to make a list later.
“God with us is now residing. Yonder shines the infant light.” You may recognize that line from a Christmas carol. In fact, we sang it as our gathering hymn.
Just exactly where does God reside now? What is God’s address? It sounds like a children’s question. Or the beginning of a children’s sermon. Or a good title of a children’s book.
Where does God live? On Heavenly Lane? Beyond the clouds? In churches and temples? In nature? In the human heart? Is it someplace or is it everywhere?
A book came out last year called God’s Address. It concerns the existence of God, where God’s presence is found amid many religions and diverse expressions of faith.
But let’s be honest. There are plenty times we don’t feel God’s presence. Or we wonder if the whole God thing is made up or if the story is true. It is easy to be moved by a supreme being when looking out at the ocean. Or when on a mountain. Or gazing at the moon and stars in the sky.
But what about places filled with despair? When life is brutal. When grief is raw. Natural disasters. Warfare and strife. Hatred and prejudice. Poverty and hunger.
And what of the empty spaces within us, the dark places that seem so removed from anything good. Does God reside there, too?
In the Old Testament, God was present in the tabernacle, the place of meeting. And later in the temple. Ancient temples enclosed the presence of gods. And the temple was like a God-box. God was really in there. People experienced the glory of God in the temple. As we read in Isaiah, angels surround the throne of God, and they cry, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty.” And the room is filled with billowing smoke, holy incense. And you know God lives there.
And there’s the Latin antiphon, ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where charity and love are found, that’s where God is.
Theresa of Avila and other mystics use intimate language to speak of the divine taking up residence in our soul as if we are the beloved spouse of God.
Then today’s classic gospel text. The Word became flesh and lived among us. Pitched a tent and tabernacled among us is another way to say it. One author paraphrased it: The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.
What was the neighborhood like where you grew up? I am intrigued with the “official” neighborhoods of Chicago and like to inform newcomers to the city the difference between the official Chicago neighborhoods, like Lakeview, Uptown, Edgewater, Rogers Park, and Lincoln Park – and neighborhoods within neighborhoods. Wrigleyville and Roscoe Village are part of Lakeview. Andersonville is part of Edgewater. And so on.
At Christmas we celebrate that in Jesus God moves into the neighborhood. But not just our neighborhood. Not just with people that look or worship like us. Christ is incarnate in all the diversity of humankind! What an awesome thought!
The Word first takes up space in Mary’s very body, a womb more spacious than the stars, containing the uncontainable, to quote our Orthodox siblings. And now this Word fills all creation. And takes up residence among us. First in Bethlehem and Nazareth. A particular person in a particular place at a particular time.
And now in cities, towns, neighborhoods, churches around the globe. And in bodies. In flesh. Bodies young and old. Healthy and frail. Bodies of all sizes and shapes. And in the cosmos itself. Theologians call it deep incarnation.
Not just at Christmas when we sing of the birth forever blessed, of shining straw, and the glow of the newborn Savior. The Spirit illuminates our everyday lives with extraordinary grace. Where, you ask? Wherever we find ourselves. In our deepest sorrows and our most profound joys.
Yet we cannot separate the wood of the crib from the wood of the cross.
Many of us remember the haunting question Elie Wiesel gives to a character in one his novels, set during the Holocaust. While watching the hanging of boy, someone cries out, “where is God?” And a man nearby replies, “God is hanging here on the gallows.”
Our newest icon is “Christ in the rubble.” It shows that Christ is born— Christ lives—among the Palestinians oppressed, forsaken, and destroyed in the genocide in Gaza. And in all places of despair and terror.
The Word resides today not only in those rejoicing, but in those clinging to hope for health, for a better world, for a future.
At this table, bread is broken. The Word is made flesh. The body of Christ in and for our body. God residing among us. In the bread and wine. In the broken places of our hearts. And in the broken places in the world.
In the end, maybe it’s not so much about God’s address, but God’s address to us. Nothing can separate you from my love. In Christ, I am with you, I am in you, now until the end of time. Evermore and evermore. Amen.