Christmas Eve 2015

Tradition tells us that St. Luke was a painter. In the Gospel that we just heard he beautifully illustrates with words the birth of Jesus. Down through the centuries other artists have embellished his picture in many different ways. Often they try to tell us more than what the bible says. And that is ok. There is more to the Nativity than first meets the eye. The question I would ask tonight is how you do and I see this event? What does it say to us personally? Unfortunately our understanding is often influenced by what we are accustomed to see in those many representations on our Christmas cards and we can easily end up getting only part of what God wants us to see and only, maybe, only what we want to see.

For example, I don’t intend to be critical but even our manger scene here in Church communicates only a part of the meaning of Christ’s birth. What I find most lacking is the barn or cave, the stable. Here we find the holy family surrounded by beautiful Christmas flowers with little real sign of the poverty and crudeness, shabbiness and harshness of the place where Christ was born. A stable is dirty and smelly. There are absolutely no amenities, nothing to lend any dignity or comfort. It’s for animals. Even the shepherds, who are part of this story, were pretty rough and smelly men, considered among the lowest class of society. My point is that Jesus was born into a very messy situation. Even Bethlehem of Judah was a city in a messy country occupied by a hostile power. Rome hated Jews and their religion and often caused violence. Within seventy years, in fact, it would destroy Jerusalem and its temple. With weeks the local ruler would try to kill the child Jesus. So, not only the stable but so much in this story appears messy.

What is the message? I believe it is that God came into a messy world to save messy people. We may be all dressed up tonight. But in comparison with the holiness and innocence that was born in that stable most of us are messy spiritually. We are messed up by our sins, by our failure to love, by not being human in the way God has shone us and wants us to be. For example, some of us may be excessively materialistic in contrast to the simplicity we see in the Christmas scene. Some of us may be always looking for pleasure and satisfaction compared with the generosity and total self-giving of the Son of God. Some of us are often indifferent to the needs of people who are suffering In comparison with the one who became incarnate for us and our salvation. Unlike Mary and Joseph, who welcomed the strangers, we are not always hospitable as individuals and as a nation. We can easily run the risk of becoming prejudiced out of fear and blaming a whole nation for what individuals do. Finally, we are messy, too, because we often fail to accept the adverse conditions that are at times part of every life in this messy world and we say why me?

Why do I stress this point tonight of all times? Am I being some kind of killjoy, the Grinch? I hope not. There is a positive side to all this talk about the messiness of our lives and world, because it speaks more forcefully about God’s mercy. No matter how messed up and sinful the world is today, God loves it so much that he sent his only Son. And he gave him not only for the world but that everyone who will believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life. No one is beyond God’s love, however much he/she messes up or sins. So great is the love of God that he stepped into this world in a human body to endure like all of us must endure whatever happens to us here. He doesn’t magically make the world a different place but he came into it and lived in it as it is with its good and bad. His coming as truly human is a call to us to live more simply, more selflessly, more hospitably, in short more lovingly. We are the messy stables that Jesus Christ wants to be born into tonight. He calls us in this Christmas Eucharist to let him in and to be grateful, hopeful and to joyfully celebrate his mercy.