Lectionary: Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
En el nombre de Dios: creador, redentor, y santificador. Amen.
In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
Love is born today and it’s truly something to celebrate. What is it about Christmas that excites our souls with renewed joy and hope? Why do we collectively gather with family, sing carols, and decorate our homes for this holy day?
As a priest in the church, I rarely have time to decorate my house for Christmas. This created dismay among my children almost 20 years ago when I was ordained. One year, they put the decorations up themselves. I felt guilty but was too busy and too tired to do much about it.
This year, even though my kids are grown and have their own homes, I was compelled to challenge the liturgy police and put up my Christmas decorations during Advent (gasp!) I needed the joy. I needed to sit in my sweet, little St. Louis brick home and look at the tree with its twinkling lights covered in all the ornaments my children and I made through the years. I needed to see their preschool pictures in Santa hats, and the red and green sachets they made in kindergarten placed just so on my bookshelves.
I needed to see, touch, and smell joy in my home this year. It needed to be more than in my head and my heart. It needed to be real in my world.
That is exactly what Christmas is - the coming of God into the world. It’s the historical moment when God took on flesh and became a reality for us, and this isn’t just a theological or religious concept. The beauty of this is, that what started as a historical moment, became an eternal reality - our eternal reality: Emmanuel, God with us.
It’s a reality we need because another reality for us is suffering. Suffering is part of our earthly experience and it takes many forms: the parent of a child who is sick or has died; those experiencing the ravages of war; those whose furry family member has been lost or stolen; the soul on the edge of suicide; the parent who lost their job and the child abused as a result.
The good news is that God, who created us, redeemed us, and sustains us is with us - Emmanuel - in every moment of our lives. God knows our suffering, shares our heartbreaks with us, and heals us continually, every moment of every day for as long as it takes.
That’s the key: for as long as it takes. In our finite thinking, we seek resolution. We want an end to suffering. We want it like we want the resolution of mysteries or crimes in TV shows. We want the story to wind up after 60 minutes or at the end of a series, and we apply that same expectation to God’s reconciliation of the world.
The thing is, that isn’t what God promises us. We created that concept out of our need. What God promises is constant presence and provision, steadfastness to us, and eternal life. God promises to stay with us no matter what, for as long as it takes.
The prophets in our Scriptures speak of God’s continual faithfulness to us even in the face of our unfaithfulness to God. That is the steadfast, unwavering loyalty of God to us. It is the promise of the unquenchable fire, of God who never gives up on us but is always there to purify us and give us new life.
Today we celebrate the day God’s steadfastness to us opened a new way for us - a way that enabled us to go beyond God as a concept to seeing, hearing, touching, and loving God as an embodied reality in Jesus. In Jesus, we witness how God relates to the world and how we should relate to God and one another, and until we get that right, God will stay with us, showing us the Way of Love, which starts for us as it did for Jesus: in humility.
Jesus began his human life in poverty, the son of an unmarried peasant child. As he grew into his purpose, Jesus became an itinerant preacher (hardly a respected profession). Going out to the people in the margins: the poor, abandoned, outcasts, and the sick, Jesus healed them, opening to them a new life - a life set free from their suffering.
We know that suffering isolates us. It makes us feel unheard, unloved, and alone. Jesus heard them, loved them, and restored them to their communities, their healings being evidence of what divine love does. Then he told us to do to others as he had done (think Maundy Thursday).
By giving up his own life for our sake, Jesus showed us what divine love requires (think Good Friday). Then he exhorted us to love another as he loved us for “there is no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13)
Does that mean we have to die like Jesus did? Maybe, but more likely for us, it means laying down our priorities, our plans, our need to control, and giving someone else’s needs our priority, even if that means going against earthly systems that benefit from their continued suffering.
Then Jesus demonstrated just how unstoppable, how unquenchable God’s love for us is. After we (humanity) responded so unfaithfully and killed Jesus for threatening the status quo of earthly and religious power, Jesus rose from the dead, showing us that not even death can stop God’s steadfast love. In Jesus, death is simply a doorway to new life (think Easter).
But wait - there’s more! After his resurrection from the dead, Jesus promised to be with us always, to the end of the ages (Mt 28: 20) and he breathed his own Spirit into us (think Pentecost), to dwell in us. Jesus is literally with us, in us, right now - for real. How amazing is that?
So you see, Jesus who came to earth on that first Christmas Day is with us still, just as he promised. In fact, all of God’s promises: constant presence, provision, steadfastness, and eternal life are found in Jesus, then, now, and always. This isn’t a concept or a theological idea. It’s as real in our world as the Christmas decorations are in our homes.
Merry Christmas, everyone. Joy to the world! Amen.
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