The Radical Truth of Christmas

VMS+ article submitted to The Shelby Star for Dec, 2011:

A few years ago I saw a television commercial that asked the question: “…who’d have thought the biggest thing to ever happen to you would be the smallest?” The visual was a parent holding a baby, and the tag line was: “Having a baby changes everything.”

For Christians, the biggest thing to ever happen in the history of human experience came to us in the form of the least - a baby. Yet this baby, conceived in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit of God, changed everything. Sometimes, however, we pass through this holy season, caught up in shopping, parties, and decorating, and we forget to allow the transformative truth of Christmas to penetrate our hearts and minds, the truth St. Paul said so well to Titus: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.”

In a speech calling for Christian unity and inclusion, Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “Jesus did not say, ‘I if I be lifted up I will draw some… Jesus said, ‘I if I be lifted up will draw all, all, all, all, all. Black, white, yellow, rich, poor, clever, not so clever, beautiful, not so beautiful, gay, lesbian, straight. It’s one of the most radical things… All belong… All are meant to be held in this incredible embrace that will not let us go. All.” The radical truth the Archbishop is pointing out is the nature of the extravagant love of God, recounted for us over and over again in Scripture, and finally, most definitively, revealed to us in the birth of the Messiah.

Luke affirms this in his telling the Christmas story. The first to hear of the birth were the shepherds in the fields. We need to remember that back then, shepherding was a despised occupation. They were scorned as shiftless, dishonest people. Shepherds didn’t bathe much so they didn’t smell good and worse yet, they were ritually unclean, which means they wouldn’t have been allowed in church. And this particular group of shepherds to whom the angels appeared, was the lowest of the low. These were the shepherds working the grave-yard shift.

But God, who sees differently than the world does, chose these shepherds to be the first to see the light, the glory and presence of God, which “shone all around them” when the angel spoke. And the angel proclaimed “good news of great joy” to this lowly audience: the birth of the Savior.

And this is good news for all people! Including them! Including us!

The good news of Christmas is a present reality, not just an event in ancient history that we remember together. Christ is being born in us today, now - when we, like Mary, give our consent, when we, like the shepherds, seek the Savior. In this holy season, we are called to remember that God came to save each of us and all of us. Remembering that, we can respond with love to the God who loved us first, to the God who loved us enough to become one of us, sharing our vulnerabilities and making them strong, and welcoming in all whom the world would keep out.

God took the form of the smallest and the least and changed everything. That’s why we sing out our praise: “Glory to God in the highest heaven! For unto us is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”