This is one of the most amazing parts of the whole bible, and at the same time, it can be terribly confusing.

“I in me, and me in you, and them in us, and us in you and me and them and us and you and…”

Probably the most confused I have ever been in my life was in calculus class. I remember sitting in my desk and staring at the board, each day learning some new method, the shell method or these parabola things. Each time we’d finally get something, we’d learn some new way that was a thousand times easier, and we’d say, “Why didn’t you just tell us that to begin with?”

But it was all about the process, our teacher said. Building and building on all of these pieces, and putting them all together. We finally got to derivatives, and I don’t remember exactly what happened; the teacher had some slip of the tongue, and we had a new catch phrase for everything that we didn’t understand.

After his slip of the tongue, we’d just look at each other with a professorial look, and say, “Deveed da vooo, da woo da vie…”

It made no sense, even then, and it makes even less sense to me now…calculus has all about drained out of my brain. But I remember “Deveed da vooo, da woo da vie…”, which stood for… “I’m lost. I don’t know what this means.”

And this prayer that Jesus makes can lose me, too.

“I in me, and me in you, and them in us, and us in you and me and them and us and you and…”

Not only can it lose us a little bit, but it’s jumping ahead. Here we are, a week before Christmas, and we’re jumping ahead to the end of Jesus’ earthly life.

Creation and the exodus and the kingdom of Israel and the prophets and the first Christmas and Jesus’ life all are the building blocks for understanding John 17. And in the same way, seeing what Jesus was praying for at the end of his life, seeing him speak out in prayer his hopes and dreams for us who follow him, it helps us make sense of why this celebration of the baby born in a manger is so important.

We’ve been rightly focusing in Advent on how God draws near to us.

This incarnation, this ultimate drawing close to us, is the best expression of who God has always been. He’s always been close to us, and the birth of the baby puts flesh and bones on his infinite, tender, specific love for us.

Jesus, the baby, is God’s son. Yet with more confusion than calculus class, somehow, this baby is also the God of the universe inhabiting a frail body. There is a unity between Father and Son, between Jesus and God, that goes beyond our comprehension.

Smarter people than me have wrestled with it for millennia, and in Christ’s church, we’ve come to agree that there is a Son and there is a Father, and yet they are so unified, so together, that they are one God, along with the Holy Spirit.

It’s this one God who has joined our human condition.

When the Word took on human flesh, Jesus was born. It was the supreme example of God drawing near. God joined humanity, walked in our shoes, completely identified with us, because he loves us.

It’s absolutely amazing that our Creator loves us THAT much. Jesus is the sign that God will do anything to join our human condition.

But it’s not the best part!

Because of the first Christmas, because of Jesus, because of the incarnation, Jesus’ birth is not just a one way street. It’s not just God coming to us.

Now, we are welcomed into the relationship that Jesus has with God the Father, that intimate, unified, unique relationship of love that we can’t really define.

Now, we are invited to really experience community and deep, loving relationships with God AND with each other.

Jesus didn’t just span the distance between God and us…In John 17, it’s his prayer and desire that we have almost a reverse incarnation. His prayer and desire is for us to be able to come and join and participate in the deepest love relationship in creation, the love relationship that is in the heart of God’s essence.

This kind of stuff is so out there, so amazing, that it sort of draws out our most profound language.

We can’t really describe how amazing God’s drawing near is. We can’t really describe what it is to join the very heart of God’s love.

Theologians talk about perichoresis and mutual indwelling. It’s mind-bending to think that somehow, without becoming gods ourselves, Jesus prays for us to join the unified, love relationship that he experiences with the Father.

We’re welcomed in. Accepted. We have a home, a place where we belong and are loved. Jesus came so that we could bridge the gap between our current experience and what we were created to experience.

Jesus came so that we could be freed from brokenness and loneliness and emptiness and strife.

I know without asking that there are people here this morning who are feeling that loneliness.

The holidays can bring out the worst parts of being in our world, the parts where we feel loss and emptiness and being excluded and not belonging.

This is what the birth of a baby came to heal. This baby is the beginning of our deepest longing and hope. This baby is the entry point for us to experience unity and love, with God, and with each other.

At the end of each of the pews, you should find a stack of scrap paper.

If you’re sitting by one, could you take one and pass it down the row? I want to invite us to use the paper and the pens in the racks in front of you to do something that is just for you.

How do we make this more real? I want to invite us to take just a minute or two to doodle, or draw, or write.

When have you felt like you really belonged, like you were part of a team? When have you felt loved, accepted, welcomed into a group?

Would you take a minute or two to draw a picture of that, or write words that describe what that felt like? When have you felt like you really belonged, like you were loved and accepted and together with others? [pause to write]

As you finish up and look at the paper in your lap, use those thoughts to bring these words home.

As good of an experience as you wrote or drew about was, it was imperfect. Some people weren’t welcome in it. You may not have felt completely free to be yourself. And, however good it was, it didn’t last forever.

This is the reality of being a human being in a world that is broken by our suffering and our wrong choices. We can’t sustain relationships with each other, loving relationships unbroken by selfishness or conditions.

God didn’t just draw near to us to see what it was like to walk in our shoes, and then go back to heaven, just to be more empathetic to our condition. Jesus had a much bigger purpose; he joined us to break through the binds that keep us hurting each other. He joined us so that we could join HIM, join with Jesus and the Father in unity.

Jesus joined us so that we could begin now to experience what we will experience completely in eternity: being together with each other, loving each other, on the same team, finding our rightful place. And not just being in God’s family, but somehow, incomprehensibly, right in the middle of the very love relationship that Jesus and the Father have with each other.

As mindbending as that is, Jesus makes it so down to earth and practical.

God, help these frail humans that you and I love, help them love each other.

Help them experience what it is like to be together, in unity, on the same page, on the same team, loved, and not lonely anymore.

Help them, Father, to experience the limitless and unending love you and I experience with each other. Help them experience intimacy, acceptance, and love from and for YOU, God, and from and for each other.

The baby Jesus was born for this, for a very real and practical and tangible reason: that you and I might truly love each other and join the intimate relationship that makes up God’s very essence, that amazing relational love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The fact that Jesus lived and died and came back to life matters! It matters in a real and tangible way. There really isn’t hope for us, left on our own. “Can’t we all just get along?” has proven time and time again to be impossible.

We need something, something beyond ourselves, something beyond trying harder. We need our Creator, our Creator who loves us enough to come near to us. We need Jesus, who broke our willfulness and pride, who broke our sin, and who prays for us to so identify with him that we get to be welcomed into unconditional, unending love.

Incarnation is messy.

It’s not efficient. Why not come in power and might and just change us? God, in God’s infinite wisdom, sends a baby to peasants in a backwater town, in a manner that would raise the scandal of illegitimacy for all of Jesus’ life.

Incarnation is joining us. And joining us, unifying with us, is what God’s love does. This is how God’s love acts. It’s why Jesus prays, not that we would be taken out of the world, but that we would live in the world as he did. He loves us, comes to us, we join him in unity; and then in a sense, he incarnates us back into the world that we live in.

So that we can love. So that we can join others. So that we can welcome everyone into this love relationship with Jesus and his Father.

Because Jesus came, our lives can be different.

The way Jesus came shows us we must live that way, too: incarnationally. We join others, we love them, we identify with them…we don’t get to stay far away. We follow his example and live and love in this world.

This is why Christmas matters.

Beyond lights and decorations and warm feelings, God joined humanity’s ranks so that we could join God. In our time of open worship, let God’s very real Holy Spirit help us wrap our brains around that!