Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is gloriously impossible to preach about the lesson for Christmas Day, this poem in John 1, poetry and prose in one. What in the world could be added to:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being, in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

We are confronted today with the wonder and mystery of the Word made flesh. The stores have finally closed their doors, most gifts are unwrapped, the menu is planned, and all that is left is The Glorious Impossible, that God is among us, light and life, the Word become flesh.

The Glorious Impossible is the title of a book by Madeleine L’Engle who tells the story of Christ as seen in a chapel in Italy, in Padua, the Scrovegni Chapel by Giotto. L’Engle says, “Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are those things that bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips.”

John 1, the prologue, is such a song, part hymn, part not, part poem, part prose, breaking away from the ordinary, the possible, breaking out into song, trying to somehow say the Glorious Impossible. And so do the other majestic lessons today from Hebrews and Isaiah.

We of course can’t always follow so quickly to the Glorious Impossible, and even as the festive symbols, decorations, music and gatherings fill the air with expectancy and joy we may somewhere in a corner of our being be left behind, and the Glorious Impossible of God among us, the Word made flesh remains unattainable, out of reach.

For often we are more stuck with the Impossibles of our life that is not showing any particular signs of the extraordinary much less the magical or mysterious or glorious. It is still too impossible that we lost loved ones this year, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers. It is too impossible that we should have lost love itself this year. That we are hurting from cancer, depression. People are faced with the impossible conditions that hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis left them in. There is a war going on, not only one, but many, and if they seem on a back burner, they are certainly not for those affected by them.

We can be stuck quite deeply in our Impossibles; and in the face of them the Glorious Impossible of Christmas can even become a threat – what if I don’t get it, everybody else seems to get it, but I am still stuck.

We are not the only ones who have a sense that the divine may be too grand, too overwhelming, leaves us cold, blank. Martin Luther addresses just that in a Christmas sermon with a keen understanding for his congregation: “Let us then meditate upon the Nativity just as we have it in our own babies. I would not have you contemplate the deity of Christ but rather his flesh. ... Divinity may terrify human beings; inexpressible majesty will crush them. That is why Christ took on our humanity, save for sin, that he should not terrify us but rather that with love and favor he should console and confirm.”

This indeed is glorious that Christ took on our humanity, save for sin, that he should not terrify us but rather that with love and favor he should console and confirm us who are stuck still and not quite ready. Here indeed is wonder and mystery that the Glorious divine and the Impossibles of our lives combine in the Glorious Impossible so we might be consoled, confirmed and see the first rays of light in darkness.

I would like to share with you, sisters and brothers, one scene that is meditating the Glorious Impossible as we have it in our own babies and puts into proper perspective some of the other, less affirming and scary occurrences of the year. It is told by Douglas John Hall in his Christmas letter in which he sends greetings also to the people of Christ the King Church with whom he and Rhoda feel fondly connected. Doug himself had to deal this year a lot with the human condition and finitude, undergoing treatment for cancer from which, Thanks be to God, he was declared free in December. Doug also had to bury his 99 year old mother, 5 months before she would have turned 100. Yet in February the Halls celebrated the arrival of their sixth grandchild, Samuel.

Here is the story: Doug writes, “One day they found my Mother weeping. Months of pain and frustration at being, ..., had brought her to focus on one single thought: ‘I’ll never see Christopher’s baby.’
Then it happened that we were able, at last, to make the rather long car trip ... to where Gramma lived. So, about two weeks before she died, my Mother met for the first time her thirty-third great-grandchild, ... Samuel.
At first the cherub looked at the sick, aged lady with a curious kind of concern - yes, there was real concern in his face: well, he had never met such a person before. Slowly, almost tentatively, she reached out to the baby with her arthritis-gnarled and time-withered hand. And then he, in turn, quite unprompted by the adults, laid his small hand on hers, and moved towards her, stroking her sunken cheeks. ‘Are you going to get right into bed with me?’ she asked him, with a coy, wan smile. He would have, too!”
Doug continues, “Watching this touching tableau, I knew that this was the benediction my Mother, lucid until her life’s end, longed for. ... For I know that in the touch of this dear little hand, so spontaneously given, she felt the blessing of all thirty-three of her great-grandchildren, and her twenty grandchildren, and her six children – yes, and her long-dead husband, and parents, and grandparents, and friends, and centuries of mostly forgotten ancestors in this mysterious dance of existence –

And though, as a Protestant of the old Anglo-Saxon tradition, she was not given to overt piousness, I know she felt, too, the blessing of the Creator of this drama, the Lord of this dance, whose whole attitude towards creation and all creatures was and is revealed in the birth of a Child, a Bringer of New Life to all who sit in darkness and the shadow of death ... Just as we have it in our own babies.”

So there is the Glorious Impossible among us in the midst of all Impossibles, those things that bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips.

May the Glorious Impossible stay with you today and long after Christmas has come and gone.

Amen.