Christmas Day
1992 (Year A) 25 December
The birth of any baby evokes all kinds of feelings within us. Hope, anticipation, joy, awe, tenderness and gentleness. It mocks other virtues, power, strength and authority, for in the beginning there is only vulnerability and dependency.
And the story of the birth of the baby’ we come to celebrate today has all these dimensions and more. It takes us back to our own times past, half imagined, half remembered. Beyond even childhood memories. And it makes everyone of us vulnerable. Things which hurt us, hurt more at Christmas. Crime shouldn’t happen, but it should never happen at Christmas.
I guess each one of us, in our own ways is very open and vulnerable just now and it’s no coincidence that Christmas is the point where most family crises happen, for we are open and exposed more than any other time of the year.
And vulnerability is what this day is all about. The vulnerability seen clearly in the life of a baby is now even more amazing, for this new born child is Emanuel. “God with us”. The vulnerable one is God. He who was without flesh is born. He whom no hand can touch is handled and nursed. In the dependency and vulnerability of this new baby, born on this most holiest of days, heaven and earth are reconciled. They are reconciled because all barriers and boundaries between us and the divine disappear. The Lord of All lies in need of care by earthly parents and heaven allows itself to be embraced by earth.
Our God has the remarkable capacity to empower creation. Yet it is God, who is today the one who is radically weak, the one who Lords it over no-one. It is the earthly parents who are empowered and the shepherds and kings who are enabled to bring gifts.
We would do well, each one of us to look at the vulnerability each one of us is feeling at this moment and over the rest of Christmas, because it is an insight into the very nature of God. And because of it all kinds of divine reconciliations might occur.
For it grieves the heart of the father that his children behave as if they are estranged from him and from each other. He wills, and the nativity witnesses to, an utterly reconciled community. And as we come here today to celebrate a reconciliation between heaven and earth, we must realise that it is ludicrous for beloved sisters and brothers to be alienated from each other in this life. It is an obscenity and yet it is a reality. Barriers are built with utmost care between families, races, nations, ages. And we spend as much time as possible trying to prevent ourselves feeling vulnerable.
Our God wills that we should be like him. And he is vulnerable and dependent, without barriers. Empowering those with whom he is pleased to live not through coercion, nor even with strength of will but through the gift of himself. His gift enables ours, so:
What shall we offer thee, O Christ,
Who for our sakes hast appeared on earth as man?
The angels offer thee a hymn
The heavens a star.
The magi gifts.
The shepherds their wonder.
The earth a cave.
The wilderness a manager.
And we offer thee a Virgin Mother.
God before all ages, have mercy upon us.
AMEN