I adore Christmas Eve, we all do, most Christians do, actually most people do. Nothing touches the heart like that night. Because of the many people come to church who come almost no other time. In addition to the faithful, the devout, the devoted life-long believers, churches have well-meaning caring, compassionate visitors, but worshippers who need simplicity, direct, memorable, easily understood Masses, and lessons, and sermons.

Not so those who come on Christmas Day - the ones who come on Christmas Day, these are they who know, who have long worshipped the Savior, heard unnumbered sermons and homilies and quiet days, who have the Scripture for tem selves, seriously and sufficiently. The varsity, I suppose. They need fuller, richer fare, and more careful reflection and less adornment - the saving encounter with Christ is enough, that is what is sought and needed. And should be offered to the best of any priest's ability. The truth, not in pictures and images and suggestions - the truth in word and worship, and I suppose, in sermons, as well as the preacher can manage. Simple, heart-warming simplicity, and child-like wonder and ease? You missed it, that was last night. Christmas Eve. This today, this morning, the morning of the Nativity of Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the blessed morn so long expected , awaited, and desired by the nations, by people walking in darkness, seeking a great light. That has dawned on us today, God-with-us, born for us, Given to us, Emmanuel. A glorious joyful wonderful morning, but one calling for intending, requiring some more serious words form this pulpit.

A time to reflect, albeit briefly on what it is precisely and profoundly that are we talking about, celebrating, greeting with joy, and relief and gladness. Nothing less then the Incarnation. The Incarnation of God Almighty, the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the unique, supreme, historical moment definable in space and time when God became Man.

No other Christian doctrine approaches this one - not even creation, fundamental as that is. Unless there is the Incarnation, and unless that is true, as we proclaim it, then the rest of what we proclaim, even the Resurrection itself is of no account.

You don't want to rank the doctrines of Christianity, but nevertheless, the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, is fundamental. It is the foundation.

Because we love it so, when we sing my favorite Carol, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, we do sing the line, glorious but risky "veiled in flesh the Godhead see!" All of the worst misunderstandings about the Incarnation are symbolized by a misinterpretation of a line like that. "Veiled in flesh" does not mean clothed in the sense of some garment put on, some appearance assumed, some costume worn by God so as not to alarm or frighten us, thus graciously to move among us in an unthreatening and comprehensible way. It is none of that. The flesh of the Incarnation is not really a veil, it is genuine, it is human, it is identical to ours.

The Incarnation, the Nativity this morning of the Savior of the World, is God's gracious intention to be one of us, not like us, encouraging as that might be, not with us comforting as that might be, but one of us - not simply revealing himself to us, communicating his love to us, but becoming one of us - not similar, identical.

This is all and everything that we have, "No one has seen God, the Son has made him known," this is all we have, this is all we know of God, this and nothing else, Christ in the birth in Bethlehem and that life in Galilee and Judea, he and he alone has made God known, he is the supreme, ultimate, final, sufficient perfect, revelation of God to all creation.

In Jesus we see perfect God and perfect Man, what God is when we are not misunderstanding him, and what we are, when we are not misrepresenting our selves.

Jesus, the babe, child the man, the Savior - that is God, perfectly revealed for us.

Now no one of us need explain, or complain to God, over what it is like to be a human, with all of our problems. He himself was human, fully human, incarnate, born in Bethlehem, lived and died as one of us, not like one of us, AS one of us.

God was born in Bethlehem to redeem his creation and his children, "born to give us second birth, born to save the sons of earth, born that we no more may die . . . Hail the Incarnate Deity!"

It is above all the Incarnation that establishes, that guarantees, that you are not and cannot be unloved or unworthy of love, that there is one who does not regard you as unlovable, by whom you will never be discarded, in whose eyes you can never finally disappoint, that you are not and can never be alone, or unwanted.

The Incarnation answers finally and fully two ultimate and agonizing questions for all of us: Who can ever really know what God is like? You. Who would ever freely choose to be like us of all people? God.

Not a sermon to make us weep with emotion. But a faith, a Mass, a morning, a time a birth, to maybe make us weep with joy and thanks, and love.