A Christmas Message

I’m convinced more than ever this year that the real meaning of Christmas can easily be lost when we look up – up to a remote heavenly being who will magically shower us with peace and goodwill. We’re so used to the Christmas celebration our culture prescribes – the shopping, eating, drinking, decorating - that we lose touch with what we’re celebrating.

          What we celebrate is the birth of a human baby. This baby was born exactly the way all of us are born, and that couldn’t have been the pretty scene pictured on Christmas cards. Jesus was a fully human baby boy whose parents were refugees, far from home.

          Shepherds were his first visitors. I’ve been wondering this year about blonde-haired angels all pretty and dressed in white suddenly appearing in the sky above. Perhaps the messengers who told the shepherds about this birth were much quieter, much more earthy; messengers who call us to look down.

          Maybe the sheep were the messengers! Maybe one shepherd had a dream, or a thought gnawing at him. Who knows? One way or another, the shepherds knew deep down inside that God was at work and they set out, seeking. It’s not as if they had a GPS indicating the shortest route to the stable – they had to look around, down, looking not in heaven but right here on earth.

          In this humble seeking, they found the child and they were amazed. Here was a ordinary baby born in a cave and laying in an animal feeding trough. Yet this baby’s face reflected God’s unconditional love. In seeing this child born quietly on the margins of society, they understood they too were beloved children of God!

          Imagine that! Simple shepherds who weren’t welcome in the social, political and religious structures of their day were loved. In Jesus the ordinary, the despised were suddenly precious.  

          And that’s the message of Christmas. God’s love, so encompassing, longs to embrace us, to draw us in ever closer. Union with God is God’s will for all creation – something only God’s freely given grace can accomplish.

          And we can only do that by looking down. By paying attention to the material world, by casting aside our pretty notions and understanding that God is in and through all things.

          That means God encounters us right where we are. God’s love is at work in all places, all times, all things. God’s love works in us right here and right now. We can only understand that by letting go. By emptying ourselves so that God’s love can fill us. In so doing we are enfolded ever more deeply into the source of all being. And that makes a difference in how we live our lives.

          We begin to see God at work in all creation, in all people. We become less concerned with ascribing to the “correct” dogmas that will one day get us into heaven and more concerned with seeking God’s kingdom in the here and now. Hatred and fear will make less and less sense. A new honesty about ourselves and all the ways we put assumptions, prejudices and hierarchies ahead of God’s mission will emerge.

          We come to understand that love really is stronger than hate. That God is not a vengeful, angry God who requires blood sacrifice. God is pure, unconditional love and in this love all people, all creatures, all life are truly brothers and sisters. The more we live into this by engaging in both contemplation and active participation in the world, the more willing we’ll be to give voice to the voiceless and to insist on social structures that truly honor this reality.

          I share these Christmas reflections with a heartfelt prayer that you will truly feel and respond to God’s love this holy season and throughout the new year.