A fearsome and awesome event is happening tonight, something so awesome that we should be struck mute by it. Only a chorus of stones cries out in the stillness and silence the marvel that is taking place in our world, the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
In the stillness and darkness of the night, inside this church, we gather to celebrate with joy and awe the coming of God amongst us. This coming is so amazing that words fail us… as they should. Yet we try to speak of the unspeakable because that is why we are here tonight.
In the form of a child, God comes to humanity. Jesus — the crossroads where God’s descending road and humanity’s ascending road meet — the bearer of hope, the redeemer and reconciler of us all, our saviour, comes to us tonight as a vulnerable child. In this child we find our hope, something that at times can be as fragile and vulnerable as a child.
And so tonight there are two things about the nativity story that I would like to emphasise: first, the larger, total meaning of Jesus’ birth and how we respond to it; and second, the gifts of Christ’s birth.
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The words of Isaiah that we hear tonight — the most famous of all messianic prophecies — speak of the irrepressible hope of the people of Israel. The prophet declares that God has shed God’s light on the people of Israel. The nation has grown; its joy has increased. Now there is a child that is born who will free the people from want, from oppression and who will give the people an era of peace, justice and righteousness. A new king will be enthroned and this king will save the people. The prophecy of Isaiah speaks to the hope that the people have for something new.
Christian interpretation layered on top of Isaiah’s words turns the prophecy into one about the coming of Christ. The words ‘For unto us a child is born’ — words that many associate with a long ascending series of sixteenth notes in Handel’s Messiah — now are understood as suggesting the birth at Bethlehem, rather than the enthronement of a king. In the nativity, Jesus comes first in great humility but this is in anticipation of his coming again in majesty and glory.
It is this point that is crucial to our understanding of Christmas. There is more to Christmas than a baby in a crib in a stable. For we stay but a moment at the crib before moving on. What happens at the nativity that we remember tonight is but the beginning of the complete coming of Christ, and the whole of God’s saving act in Christ. Christ is God turned to us in grace and salvation. We remember at the crib the cross and the resurrection as well because that is the mystery of the Incarnation which we celebrate tonight.
Christmas calls a community back to its origins by remembering Jesus’ own beginnings as a human child, a prophet of God’s reign. What the church celebrates during this season is not primarily a birthday, but the beginning of a decisive new phase in the tempestuous history of God’s hunger for human companions.… Christmas does not ask us to pretend we are back in Bethlehem, kneeling before a crib; it asks us to recognize that the soft wood of the crib became the hard wood of the cross. 1
Archbishop Oscar Romero on Christmas Eve 1977 preached: ‘On this night, as every year for twenty centuries, we recall that God’s reign is now in this world and that Christ has inaugurated the fullness of time. Christ’s birth attests that God is now marching with us in history, that we do not go alone. With Christ, God has injected himself into history. With the birth of Christ, God’s reign is now inaugurated in human time.’ 2
That is an awful lot to lay on top of a small baby! But that is what this night is all about: the beginning of God’s reign in our time. There is something unspeakably wondrous about this — God-with-us, Jesus the Christ, is a holy mystery.
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We come tonight to this place of mystery for many different reasons. Some come because this night means so much to us for memories. Some come for solace. Some come because it just seems the right thing to do. It would appear that we human beings are hard-wired for faith. Margaret Wente, self-professed agnostic, surprises herself to find that she needs to go to church on Christmas Eve. She writes about her faith instinct: ‘[Faith] bind[s] people together through collective rituals so that they can take collective action. There is no church of oneself.’ And so she goes to church on Christmas Eve, ‘to pay homage to the importance of tradition and continuity, and to experience the extraordinary power and solace and comfort of community.’ 3
Today’s opinion piece in the Rutland Herald expands upon this innate drive to come to church at Christmas: ‘The emotional power of the day derives from the fundamental simplicity of its meaning. The birth of a child among humble people in a barn long ago, the emergence of the child as the embodiment of the holy — what parents haven’t seen in their child’s birth a miracle of simplicity and of possibility, not that their baby will become the Messiah, but that he or she embodies the human in all its potential?’
Certainly the mystery of the incarnation, God-made-flesh in all of us, manifested itself Tuesday at the Gift of Life blood drawing at the Paramount, which once again broke the New England record for a single day drawing with 1024 pints taken in. As I gave, I looked across the stage at some sixty or so other donors, recognising that the life-blood that flows through them is the same as that which flows through me and, most incredibly, flowed through Jesus. That God could willingly become part of us, in the form of an infant, Jesus, defies words. It is mystery. And this realisation brings about wonder.
Indeed, in the words of the Herald, ‘Christmas becomes about … [an] atmosphere of wonderment and joy…. It is a great gift, better than toys, to awaken the wonder and to convey the love that should surround every[one]. The material gifts can be simple if those other gifts abound.’ 4
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But there are more immaterial spiritual gifts than simply wonderment and joy that we receive from this holy birth. We also receive peace, completeness and hope, and the promise that divine salvation has entered the world. The hope of peace and salvation — that is what we celebrate at Christmas! The hope of peace and salvation — that is what brings us here tonight!
Humans long for peace, for justice, for something holy, for something far from earth’s realities, which we all can list by heart. We can have such a hope, not because we ourselves are able to construct the realm of happiness that God’s holy words proclaim but because the builder of a reign of justice, of love, and of peace is already in the midst of us. 5
‘We must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today’s human and Christian promise be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope.’ 6
And what is this hope of which we speak tonight?
Hope is not optimism.
Hope is a very different thing. It is rooted in trust. It is grounded in a truth much larger than the unpredictable events of our lives.
Hope, says the writer of the Book of Hebrews, is the evidence, the security of things that are not yet seen, not yet experienced, not yet in hand.
Hope is what sustains us when facing the death of one we love; when passing through dark times in our life; when trying to maintain a heart of compassion in a world of endless violence.
Hope is what gives us time and patience when we struggle to understand life, and our future and God.
Hope is what helps us to heal, physically and spiritually, and what helps us to endure the time it takes to find new life.
Hope is what holds us when we have been betrayed or hurt by someone. Hope is what helps us to get up in the morning when the prospects for our life are dim and disappointing. Hope is what helps us face old age and death.
Hope is the energy that keeps us gentle and loving, reaching out far beyond our capacities with care and solidarity for others. Hope is not dependent on day-by-day experiences; rather it depends on God.
Hope is a gift. This gift is always looking for the small crack in our heart where it may find entry.
Hope is rooted in God’s never failing love, in trust and confidence that God will never, ever abandon us. People might abandon us; history might; life at times might. But never God!
Christmas, thus, is the celebration of a very human faith becoming hope. Faith-hope lies in tenderness, play, good will, and life.
May the Christ child whom you meet tonight grace you with the faith and hope that will accompany you this Christmas-tide and always. May the Christ child gift you the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works. And may you be blessed this Christmas Eve and always.
END NOTES
1 Adapted from Nathan Mitchell (CSB, 31) and Leonardo Boff.
2 Archbishop Oscar Romero, Christmas 1977.
3 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/when-in-doubt-an-atheists-christmas/article1406082/--/
4 http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20091224/OPINION01/
912240336/1038/OPINION01
5 Romero, 25.12.1977
6 Walter Burghardt…
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