Today's Gospel: Luke 2:1-20
“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:20
Let us pray: Open our hearts o God, to your Living Word. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters, while I was preparing this sermon, I was remembering my friends from childhood. We used to have a ball game where we would throw the ball from one to another and the fun was not to let the ball fall on the ground. And the more we tried, the more fun and laughter we experienced.
The days after Christmas Day are very much like this game. We have 12 days to celebrate Christmas and the challenge is to keep the Christmas Spirit up till the Feast of the Kings, or the Day of Epiphany, which this year we will celebrate on January 8th.
It’s been a while since the Christmas celebration was stolen from the Church. We lost control of our Christian celebrations. These days, Commerce decides when Christmas will begin. For example, in Brazil, shops are decorated for Christmas in the middle of October because the major next event of the year will be Christmas. I have seen a similar thing here in United States after Halloween.
Society starts the celebration so early that when we get to Dec 26th we are totally saturated with Christmas decorations, TV commercials and shows, and carols. Some people are like: I’m done. Time to put away the Christmas decorations.
I have friends who are packing their Christmas decorations this weekend because, in their view, the Christmas celebration is on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
But in truth the Christmas season starts on Christmas Day and should be a joyful experience for twelve days.
We have basically two weeks to keep the ball up in this game. Two weeks means we have two Sundays to remind each other that Christmas belongs to us. We are the parents of this child. The Christmas celebration is ours and we have the right to insist on this mystery of God becoming flesh.
For many generations the historical churches were based on specific theologies. For example, the Roman Catholic Church was shaped by the Theology of the Resurrection, the Lutherans were based in the Theology of the Cross; and the Anglican Church was rooted in the Theology of the Incarnation.
There is no other religion where we will find a similar history, of a God who becomes frail, a God who needs to be fed by a young woman because God is hungry. And this God, if it is not fed, will die. God who needs love and protection.
The mystery of the Incarnation is that, for centuries, human beings looked to the skies seeking God or spiritual things; but God, to reveal himself, appears among us.
I am a proud Anglican because of this theology of Incarnation. I can see God as someone who is close to me. My God is someone who chooses to be like me and like you. Who chooses to experience what it is to be human. That’s why I can call Jesus FRIEND, BROTHER, companion pilgrim.
The Christmas story is about a God who feels hunger, who feels cold, who is thirsty, God who will cry if he doesn’t receive attention. It’s the baby God who needs to be embraced, and he needs a lullaby to forget the world and go to sleep. God who will smile if you play with him. It’s about a God with a face.
The mystery of the Incarnation is above all, Christ. There are some theologians who say the beauty of Christmas abides on three things: Prophecy, Poetry and Magic.
First, PROPHECY: because prophecy is a word full of hope. The person who prophesizes has words of transformation. In the Bible the prophets spoke during dark times. When everything is lost, they gave hope to the people of God. That’s why we have so many readings during Advent from prophets like Isaiah. Last Christmas Eve, we heard the promise of hope that says: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Isaiah 9:2
The Second word is POETRY. Poetry is writing when you find yourself in love, with desire, and you put these feelings into words. The theologians say: God is like a poet. God pronounce the word and things become. “And God said: Let there be light; and there was light.” Genesis 1:3
But the most perfect poem of God is his own Son, Jesus Christ. (Verbum Dei) “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” John 1:1
God got tired of seeing humanity suffer among such injustice and from the absence of peace. So God comes down to show us how to live.
Ancient theology calls us to think about which kind of God is this who leaves the condition of Spirit to become flesh, a material person. I would say, this is the God who wants to love in the same way the humans do: touching, being touched, hugging and being hugged, kissing and being kissed. This is God who wants to have a family, someone to call father and someone to call mother.
God was jealous of us because God didn’t know the meaning of “affection, joy, pain and sadness.”
Then POETRY gets mixed with MAGIC because now we don’t notice the limits of reason. All we have learned through life about God sounds crazy compared to the image of a fragile baby God. We always saw God as a triumphant and powerful divine being.
The magic of Christmas is that at least once a year we remember that God knows our humanity through his own body. All past Christmases and all Christmases to come must remind us of this reality. That God knows we are passing through different crises in life and he himself knows that suffering, fear, and pain. We are not alone in our darkness anymore, “one light has shined.” Isaiah 9:2
Today we perform for the first time in St. James, the ritual of Blessing of the Creche. The initial idea comes from a famous saint, St. Francis of Assisi, who was the first person to represent that Holy Night through the creation of a nativity scene. His intention was to make visible the wonder of that sacred night. Through the centuries, the Nativity Scene has made us aware of such humble birth, surrounded by the recognition of many that God has come to us, in a small village in Bethlehem. Among the poor and God’s creatures (here represented by the animals).
With the inspiration of this Crèche, I want to share with you a piece from the Brazilian prayer for the blessing of a Crèche. It’s a blessing based on the understanding that the first ones who heard the Good News of the Messiah were the poor, the humble ones, and the needy. To those the angels appeared and brought words of hope and joy.
The prayer says:
It was cold, Mary and Joseph were afraid.
They were poor and had no place to lay the child.
They didn’t understand fully what God wanted or expected from them.
But these things didn’t stop the birth.
Today, many times, we are cold or with fear,
And certainly, poor in several ways.
Many times, we don’t understand the plan of God for our lives.
But these things didn’t stop the birth of Jesus in the past and will not stop his birth today.”