Christmas Day
Is 62:1-5; Acts 13:16-25; Mt 1:18-25
If you have a look at the crib that here is at the side of the church you will see that in the Nativity scene the style of the houses and shops surrounding the stable and the style of the clothing of the different characters are not simply those of 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. In fact, you will find characters in clothes of different eras and even shops and buildings that are not very different from the ones we still see on our streets. This is not simply an interesting detail but it draws our attention to an important truth that we are celebrating today, that is, that Jesus is born right here among us. It is not something that has happened only 2000 years ago but which continues to happen here and now. Perhaps a more accurate representation would be one where we can recognise our own hospitals and our colleges, our state offices and department stores, our houses and our pubs.
God has become incarnate, concrete. He is not a mist somewhere up there which nobody has ever seen or touched. The promise of Immanu-El, "God is with us" has finally been fulfilled. God has entered our daily-ness. God cannot be restricted to a particular compartment but has entered every reality and every situation of our life. I find it very striking that we spend our life trying to flee from all that makes us human: our limitations, our weaknesses. But Jesus comes to pierce even into our doubts and our lack of faith, our sinfulness and our selfishness, because God has come to meet us right where we are. He came to join us in all that makes us human. Being human, all too human, is therefore no longer a limitation or something to be afraid of, because Jesus came and blessed our humanity. Thanks to Jesus's birth, nothing that is human is foreign to God. In fact, it is through all that makes us human that we can encounter Jesus.
In order to appreciate this however we need to sharpen our senses, make them a bit more sensitive. I am always struck by the story of a particular scientist who was a staunch atheist but who finally converted. In one of his interviews that he gave to the press, he says that what led to his conversion was when his daughter was born and he was overtaken with awe and joy as he observed her tiny fingers, her smile and "the intricate convolutions of her ear".
God uses the gentlest things to enter into our heart and into our life. He does not use power and might, but the fragility of a newborn baby born in a manger and which can so easily be overlooked and therefore missed. Despite the artistic representations on our Christmas cards, there was no visible light shining out of Jesus, no halo around his head. And yet, the shepherds were able to recognise God in the newborn child who looked like any other newborn child. Perhaps the shepherds were able to recognise Jesus because themselves they were the outcasts of society and they could sense that Jesus came to be with them there, just where they are. Somehow they felt at home with him. They felt that he was one of them. Only if we are sensitive enough can recognise God among us. In other words, only if we are in touch with out humanity can we really appreciate the birth of the Lord among us.
Every year I am struck by the manger. It is not just a soft – though pricky – place where to place a newborn baby. The manger is also what it is, a place for food, because Jesus has now become our food for life. Fast forward 33 years and we will see him becoming food for us at the Last Supper and giving his life for us on the cross. If you look at some old greek orthodox icons of the nativity, you will see that at the centre of the scene baby Jesus is in a stable, is wrapped in swaddling cloths and is lying in a manger. But the stable looks more like a tomb, the swaddling cloths remins us more of the bandages with which they wrapped their dead and the manger looks more like a coffin. The reason for these associations is to remind us that God became man to join us even unto death and to give us a new life in his resurrection.
God becoming man is also carries an important message for us. As we read in the second reading, over the centuries God sent prophets to tell us of his love and to teach us that we must love each other. But now he did it himself. He stepped down to show us how to do it himself, keeping nothing for himself. Teaching us not only with words but first of all with deeds. In his tweet this morning, Pope Francis said that all we can do is just to stand in front of Baby Jesus and contemplate his humble and infinite love while saying very simply, "Thank you for doing all this for me!"
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