CHRISTMAS DAY

Introduction: God is so great that he can allow himself to become a little child.
He is strong that he can assume human weakness.
He is overwhelmingly attractive that he draws everyone to himself.
God is so free that he can bind himself to people and yet leave them free.
This is the God we celebrate today, born of a human mother into a human
family, into the world of real human beings. With hearts full of thanksgiving, and conscious of our frailty, we beg Immanuel to support our weakness as we ask pardon for our sins that he came to cleanse us of.

The Reflection: “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.”
That’s how one much-loved carol begins. Today we can make an imaginary journey to the Bethlehem that we sing about at Christmas. (It has to be imaginary, what with the risk of violence there these days). According to tradition, as you enter the town, you are greeted by a large banner across the road. In Hebrew it says: “BERUCHIM NABAIM”…”Blessed is he who comes.” And another banner in Arabic proclaims:
“AHALAN veSAHALAN”, which means, “My tent is yours.”
What a gracious welcome home, since this place is where our Christian family had its first beginning.
 Then there is the church of the Nativity with its peculiar doorway. The only way to enter the vast church is through a tiny postern gate. You have to bend almost double to avoid banging your head. It’s a sort of message that no one can come to see the place where Jesus was born without bowing low. In its own way the message also seems to say that you can no longer look for God where people usually look - up there, out yonder. No, the real truth is that he is here, in something as utterly human as the birth of a baby.
How odd that our way of thinking could be on the lines that God is power and awesomeness. Actually, when we reach down to the moment of truth, what we find is weakness, helplessness and dependency. For us, the birth of Christ means that the indescribable mystery we call God can only be found in someone as utterly human as you and me; and as utterly open to hurt, disappointment and failure. A new born baby is one of the weakest forms of animal life. It is so easy to kill a baby; mere neglect will do that. God forbid! And god has put himself into our hands. Today when we tell God, “I believe in you”, we can hear him replying, “And I depend upon you.”
 It is clear that God is asking to be included into humanity, our families, and our communities; and, on our part, we’ll do everything to see that he is.
 Wouldn’t it be daring to retell the real story of Christmas again? That story will speak to the loneliness, the routine, the deep alcoves of our hearts where we ache for some connection, some meaning, some hope, and some presence  -  for someone who will once again “bind up hearts that are broken” (Is. 61,1). That is the story of Christmas; that is the real joy of Christmas, which is noticing the presence of the Christ Child noticing us. Look, he’s looking at you and smiling and gurgling. Once we begin that noticing – however small and hesitant – we learn Presence. And that is precisely St. Luke’s point: Jesus comes to people whom no one thinks highly of. God comes, not to those who are perfectly worthy of receiving him, but to those whose lives are so messy that he practically has to come to them and be present with them if they are going to make it through the darkness. It’s to those who “have nothing to fear”, since they have nothing to lose. As Jesus will make clear when he has grown up and begun preaching, at the beginning of his Sermon on the Mount, it’s the powerless “on whom God’s favour rests.
 As we look back on history and consider all the remarkable advances  -  mass communication, supersonic flight, space travel, the Internet, cloning and stem cells, instant this and instant that  -  we can only marvel at the achievements. But more cause for wonderment is the fact that God chose to be born of a Virgin in a tiny nondescript hamlet in first century Palestine. He who created the earth on which we walk and launched the galaxies in space, was born in a manger.  The Christmas story makes it abundantly clear that God frequently chooses to work through flawed human beings. An awareness of this fact should alert us to the dangers of being too judgemental and too ready to write off those who do not easily fit into our own understanding of how things should be. Christmas is a time when the Church should try to regain a sense of the whole mystery and wonder of life; that we may look on life with a new freshness, and to accept people as we find them, with an openness of mind and heart.
 We can never exhaust the potential for reflecting on the birth of Jesus - there is so much to learn. Cardinal John Henry Newman suggested that even if human beings had not sinned, “the Son of God had it in mind to come on earth among innocent creatures to fill them with grace and receive their worship, enjoy their company and prepare them for heaven.” But God’s original plan was crossed out by our sin and rebellion. Listen once more to Cardinal Newman: “He once had meant to come on earth in heavenly glory, but we sinned; and then he could not safely visit us, except with shrouded radiance and a bedimmed majesty, for he was God. So he came himself in weakness, not is power.”
So let us look at the Child again. He comes into the world, dispossessed Infinity, naked and cold that we may restore him everything: the universe for his stable;
for his manger our hearts and their warmth.
“May the little hand of Christ bless our year,
And the great heart of Jesus hold us dear.
And all blessed and happy things
Which the love of Immanuel brings
Be ours until another Christmas is here.”

Christmas