Christmas
December 25, 2015
 
           If we did birthday cakes for Christmas, Jesus would have well over two-thousand on his this year!  But we don’t do birthday cakes at Christmas, do we?  We don’t celebrate the immense age of Jesus – that’s not what Christmas is about.  No, we celebrate Jesus who, to quote St. Paul, is “the same yesterday, today, and forever;” Jesus who is Emmanuel, God-with-us: ageless, never old, always new.

            I have Father Timothy Radcliffe, the English Dominican and contemporary spiritual writer, who spoke here at St. James a few years ago on Good Friday, to thank for that insight, and it’s a good one, I think.  It’s not Jesus’ age that we mark or celebrate at Christmas; it’s the simple yet stunning fact that Jesus once came among us and is still coming among us. And because of this, we have reason for hope, we have a future.

            Father Radcliffe brings this thought to life with a poignant story that goes back to the time when he served as the Master General of the Dominican Order.  He was paying a visit to his Dominican brothers and sisters in Rwanda in the wake of the terrible genocide there, and he spent some time one evening with a Canadian priest there who was quite desolate.  Nearly all his friends had died and everything he had worked so hard to achieve had been destroyed.  There seemed no future at all.  But then Radcliffe goes on to tell how, the next Christmas, he received a Christmas card from that priest. It was a picture of himself holding two chubby Rwandan babies.  Under the picture he had written the words, “Africa has a future!”

            Every Christmas when we remember the birth of the Christ child we look backwards in time, yes, but we also look to the Christ being born among us now, and for that reason we are able to say the same thing as that priest in Rwanda.  We are able to say that ‘humanity has a future.’

            And isn’t that a message we all desperately need to hear – that humanity has a future?  So much around us says otherwise, doesn’t it?  So much around us spells defeat.  So many of our efforts come to naught.  So many human enterprises collapse under the weight of hatred, selfishness, extremism.  Look at the recent unspeakably tragic events in San Bernardino, Paris, Beirut (and the list could go on); look at the millions of refugees, desperate for asylum, with children in tow and babes in arms; look at the dark ghettoes of world poverty.  Look at the poverty of our own lives.  But then look also at the Christ – the Christ of Bethlehem, yes, but the Christ of the here and now, too.  The Christ we carry in our hearts, the Christ whose sacraments sustain us on our journey, the Christ we meet in the least of our brothers and sisters, the Christ whose gospel still pricks and prods our consciences and the consciences of millions.

            My friends, we celebrate a birthday at Christmas but we celebrate so much more.  We celebrate the embrace by the all-merciful God of our broken world and our broken selves.  We celebrate the fact that not only did God once come to us as one of us, but that God still does – still continues to come among us in countless ways, human ways, sometimes surprisingly human ways, ways we can touch and ways that touch us.  He comes in word and sacrament, he comes in bread and wine, and he comes in the flesh and blood of our brothers and sisters: the ones we love and the ones we find it hard to love.

            This is why Christmas is as much about now as it is about then.  Oh, it’s fine to remember the then – in fact, it’s important that we do: important that we dim the lights, trim the trees, sing the carols, give the gifts, and visit the crib.  We must.  But we must not stay there.  We must look around us and see where hope is showing its face today: in two people falling in love, in the birth of a baby, in love showered on an aging parent; in the sheltering of the poor, the welcoming of refugees; in the awakening of a conscience, the conversion of a heart; in the dialogue between religions, the pursuit of justice, the search for peace.  Each of these flashes of hope gives a glimpse of the face of God whose name is mercy and who once showed us his face – and continues to show us his face - in Jesus Christ who is mercy personified.

            My friends, Christmas means that God loves the human family.  Loves, not loved.  Christmas means that God is part of our family and that we are part of God’s family.  Ever since Christ took flesh in our flesh in Bethlehem, Christmas became an ongoing thing, a forever thing, not a once-upon-a-time thing.

            Let me conclude with a little poem I came across not long ago:
 
            Light looked down and saw the darkness.
            “I will go there,” said Light.
            Peace looked down and saw war.
            “I will go there,” said Peace.
            Love looked down and saw hatred.
            “I will go there,” said Love.
            So he,
            the Lord of Light,
            the Prince of Peace,
            the King of Love
            came down and crept in beside us.
 
My friends, he is still beside us.  He is still beside us! That’s why there is hope. That’s why there’s a Christmas. Merry Christmas!

     Father Michael G. Ryan