"Why?"

"Why?” – Rev. Tony Romaine
 
Perihelion—The point at which a star, planet, or other cosmic entity comes closest to the sun in its orbit. 

Earth just had this happen yesterday!  And while this happens every year around this same date, it seems appropriate to highlight it this New Year, as we move from 2020 into 2021.  The time when we need our Son to be closest to us is, fittingly, at the change of the year; a time when we as a church celebrate the light of the world entering our lives.  And as we have been journeying through the Christmas season, we have explored all the basic questions that we as humans seem to come innately equipped with; what, when, who, how, where…and today we come to perhaps the greatest of them all; why.

Like all of the questions we have, even the question itself can be deciphered into myriad realms of possibilities.  But for our purposes today, we specifically ask the “why” of God entering our world as the Incarnate Christ.  The first answer to this specific question is the one we are all taught throughout Sunday school, through Confirmation, and into our adulthood; but is one we constantly need reminding of; Jesus came to save us.  God sent Jesus to embody the forgiveness of our sins and to welcome us to this table of sacrifice where we remember that fateful night where Jesus broke bread and cup.  God became incarnate in human form, being born into our world as Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph, but also Christ, the Messiah, the Promised One, to bring us home; all of us lost sheep. 

And while this is most definitely the answer to why God came in the first place; to save us from our sins and grant us grace, there is another reason why God entered our world as Jesus Christ that might even undergird this salvation message.  God sent Jesus to remind us of our creation and that we indeed are divine, each and every one of us.  Within every one of us is a divine spark that has been there from our creation.  From the moment we were made in the “image and likeness of” God, we have had a God-spark which burns deeply.

But like so many of us, the ancients too had forgotten this spark within them, they had forgotten how they were supposed to treat each person as part of the whole, they forgot how to love one another and look out for each other, they had forgotten what it meant to be children of God, they had become too focused on rite and ritual and law, and they had forgotten the greatest gift they had ever been given was the divinity within each other.  And in this, while they may have known it or not, they were sinning and this sin could not be erased by payment, sacrifice, or personal action.  So God entered into our lives to remind us once more of that Spirit within us.  And in so doing awoke a movement within a group of people who longed to be reminded of that divinity, who longed to lift up others around them, who knew that if they themselves wanted love and acceptance and freedom, then they must offer it to others as well.

Which leads us to another answer to the question of “why:” God came because we are loved.  If you do not have them closed already, I want you to close your eyes and be with me for a moment.  Allow yourself to feel the answer to the question of “why?” deep inside you.  Reach out to that divine spark within you and hear these words from God:

“I Love You!”

“I Love You!”

“I Love You!”

Those tears in your eyes, that warmth in your heart, the tingles you may be feeling, is all God’s way of saying to you how much you are loved.  What better response to our question of “why” is there?!

See, here is the great thing about all our answers to the question we have asked today: they all lead back to God loving you.  In the beginning God made the world out of chaos, but it wasn’t enough, all this natural beauty, everything God sent in motion, God needed a deeper creation, one that would be made in the image and likeness of God, one that would be blessed with free will and the ability to love.  And when that creation sinned and moved away from God, God so loved it that God became incarnate through the Christ-child to love that creation home.

We need to be reminded of this love, which is why I believe God created the sun and the stars and the planets to work the way they do; that we would orbit the Sun every year and at the moment when the Christ child bursts forth into our lives, it is also the same moment we are closest to the brightest star in our universe.  It is also the moment we are closest not only to the sun but to the Son.  It is the moment that after Christmas and all that comes with it and after another year in which we are trying to move on into a New Year, we come closest to warmth and energy and light in our lives.  So that we would be reminded again of THE LIGHT which is always with us and warms each of our days, so that we would be reminded again of the love God has for us, the love God created us in, and the love God longs for us to remember through this baby born to our world; Jesus the Christ.

And when we find that moment of love, when we can see that the answer to all our “whys” is that God loves us, it allows us to re-create our lives centered around a love which never fails.  So that maybe our New Year will be a better year, maybe, just maybe, 2021 will be different.  Maybe we will change the old normal which was obviously not working into a new creation.  Maybe God is calling us to something deeper, something more divine this year.  Maybe this year instead of just moving on with our lives and living another year, this year will be the one where we live into the love God has for us and for each other.  Maybe this will be the year that the broken systems of the past become the fulfilling systems of the future.  Maybe this is the year that we truly work on living each day as one filled with the love God has for us; which means that we respect our created neighbors as they are, God’s Creation.  Maybe this will be the year we care for the Earth like it is God’s gift for us to care for; because it is God’s gift for us to care for!  Or maybe this is finally the year that God’s love breaks through to you; and you finally can see that God loves you just as you are and is loving you into eternal light through Christ Incarnate.

I wish I could adequately express to you all the depth of love God has for each and every one of you.  But as we are just past our point of being closest to the sun, our perihelion, let us be reminded as we enter a New Year of the moment when we come closest to our God; the moment when we come closest to the love God has for us for all time in that God spark within us from creation.  Placed there so that we would not orbit as it were, but reside eternally right where God longs for us to be, right where God created us to be, right where we are reminded, we need to be through the Christ child.  In the place where all our questions of why today are answered; that deep, unspeakable, unexplainable, center of love God placed within you, just for you, forever with you; that place where you hear those words which answer every “why:” “I Love You,” Amen!