The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

          What is Christmas about?  I mean, what is it really about?  There’s no shortage stories, movies and Christmas specials that attempt to answer this question, with more or less success.  Some of them miss by a mile; some of them come very close.  I think of “classics” like Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol or Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life.  These stories, and others like them, show the dignity of each human life; they show the importance of relationship with God and neighbor; they exalt the virtue of charity – as they seek to call forth the very best of our humanity in this holy season; they point to what is ultimately most important in this life.  But even these stories, as good as they are, don’t completely capture the “true meaning of Christmas.”  

My brothers and sisters, Christmas, at its heart, is about the Incarnation – that God became one of us; that the Son of God (the “Eternal Word of the Father”) took on flesh and became truly human, without ceasing to be God.  And this took place in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And this “God-become-human” has a name: Jesus, a name which means “God saves.” 

          If you think of it, this idea of God becoming man is something truly unique to Christianity.  No other religion that I am aware of goes quite this far.  Certainly there are stories in various mythologies of “gods” appearing as human beings, pretending to be human, and there are stories of human beings who are effectively “divinized” through a life well-lived, who become “gods” of sorts.  And so, yes, there are many stories of “divine beings” interacting in various ways with human beings, but there is nothing so radical as the idea of the Incarnation – that God became man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

          I once heard a speaker at a high school retreat I was helping out with use a very clever analogy for this, and since the patron saint of preaching is the “good thief,” I’m borrowing it: 

Imagine a comic strip – for example, one of my personal favorites, Calvin and Hobbes (created by Bill Watterson) which ran from 1985 until 1995, but is still very popular and known now even to younger generations through published books.    It is the story of a little boy, Calvin, and his fantastical adventures with this friend, Hobbes, who is a tiger – seen by everybody but Calvin as nothing more than his favorite stuffed animal. 

Now imagine if Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes oHowanted to somehow communicate with the characters he had created to let them know that he existed, that he loved them, and that he wanted what was truly best for them.  He might simply draw a “dialogue bubble” coming from the sky and write to them, “I made you and I love you and I want you to be happy now and forever.”  In other words, he could communicate with them directly or through his written word.  Or he might draw a new character who would serve as a messenger, and this character could go to Calvin and Hobbes and say, “Bill Watterson, who created you and this whole cartoon, wanted me to tell you that he made you and that he loves you and that he wants you to be happy now and forever.”  Or, Bill Watterson, could draw an image of himself; he could write himself into the comic strip and say to Calvin and Hobbes personally, “I am Bill Watterson and I want to let you know that I made you and I love you and I want you to be happy now and forever.”

Now, we know that no analogy is perfect (all analogies “limp,” as they say), but I think this one helps us to understand, a least a little better, what the Incarnation, and therefore what Christmas, is all about.  God communicated with the human race through various ways in the past, through direct revelation at times, through His inspired and written word, through various figures – patriarchs, prophets and kings.  But at a certain point in time, a little more than 2,000 years ago, God decided to “write” himself directly into our story.  He became one of us, in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the perfect image of the Father.  And He came to tell us in so many words and ways, “I made you; I love you; I want you to be happy now and forever.”

The Incarnation means that Jesus had a body; that, though He was eternal, He existed in time and space. He experienced scandal, poverty, hunger and thirst. He got tired. He felt anger and frustration at times (and yet without sin). He knew the blessings of family.  He knew joy and laughter.  But He also knew hardship, sadness, illness, loss and even death.  In fact, it was in this last experience, death, that our Lord showed the true power of the Incarnation and depths of His solidarity with us.  But it would be precisely through His death that we were freed from sin and death, and through His resurrection that we have the promise of life eternal.  Yes, the idea of the Incarnation – this idea of God becoming human – really is radical.  And this is what our celebration of Christmas is all about.

But it shouldn’t stop here!  It shouldn’t just stay as a concept, however “mind-blowing,” in our heads.  It wants to be lived.  I think one of the reasons we love so many of those great Christmas stories (whether it’s A Christmas Carol, or It’s a Wonderful Life, or the Grinch or Charlie Brown), is that they call us to deeper charity, that highest form of love – self-sacrificial love that stops at nothing for the sake of the other.  These stories invite us to step out of our private realities (our own comfortable, little worlds) and truly enter the reality of others out of love for them – friends, family, neighbors, certainly, but also the poor, the down-trodden, the sick, the sorrowful, even our enemies.

When we do this (and there are a millions ways we can do this), we are living the Incarnation.  In a sense, we can say God becomes flesh in us, the followers of His Son, who first became flesh for us all those many years ago.

The perfect reminder and the source of strength for this incarnational love is found right here, in our celebration of the Eucharist.  The God who once lowered Himself to take on our humanity, lowers Himself further by being made truly present here under the appearance of simple bread and wine. 

It is significant that Jesus was born in a town called Bethlehem, a name which means “House of Bread,” that He was placed in a feeding trough for his first crib.  He came to be our food.  He would later say of Himself, “I am the true bread come down from heaven…I am the bread of life,” and on the night before He died He would break bread with His disciples and say, “Take and eat, this is my body.”

Here at this table, then, we gather for the greatest and most perfect “Christmas Dinner.”  Here we encounter the Word made Flesh, the God made man, Jesus Christ.  Here we draw inspiration and strength to be the women and men, the children of God, that we are called to be.  Here we are reminded that the God who made us, who loves us and who wants us to be happy now and forever entered our reality to tell us, and more than this, to show us.

My brothers and sisters, as we gather here tonight around this altar to worship God and to celebrate His coming among us, let us each pledge to live what we celebrate here, so that others may know through us that God made them, that He loves them, that He wants them to be happy now and forever.  Then, and only then, will our Christmas truly be “Merry.”  And so, a truly merry Christmas to you all!