Christmas, 2011

         I’m sure that every priest who’s been at it very long, has many Christmas stories, most of them centering around children.  My favorite happened during my very first year as a priest, 37 years ago.  I remember being in a second grade classroom a week or so before Christmas.  And I asked the children in that class, “Why do you think God became a man?  Why didn’t he just stay up in heaven and take care of things down here from up there?  Why did he become a man?”  I will never forget the answer from one little boy in that class.  Amid thirty or so frantically waving arms, I called on him.  His face lit up with a smile, and he said, “God became a man so we wouldn’t be afraid of him.”

         That’s a much better answer than I would have given with all my years of schooling and theology.  That boy knew what the Incarnation is all about.  It’s all really so very simple—God loves us; he was pained because we did not return that love.  He wanted us back; and he did not want us to be afraid.

         God could have done all kinds of things.  He could have done nothing, just forget about us.  He could have come as a king more powerful than Caesar and Napoleon and Genghis Kahn put together.  But he did not.  He came as a baby, a child, a teenager, a young man who lived here—long enough to be known and loved, long enough to die for those he loved.

         It wasn’t at all what they expected.  Remember, those people  had been slaves for centuries—to Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome.  They waited and waited for a chance to be free, and probably for a bit of sweet revenge.  How could it be that a child born in absolute poverty from the most obscure part of the country would be this mighty one?

         What if all this happened today?  How do you suppose people would react if the Messiah was born of a street person, the poorest of our day? 

         It’s not very rational.  But God doesn’t often follow our reason.  The Psalmist wondered about that too.  In Psalm 8, one of my favorites, he wrote: “When I behold the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars which you set in place—what is man that you should be mindful of him, the son of man that you should care for him?”  God’s ways are not our ways!  That absolute, unconditional love is something we cannot begin to comprehend.

         Before Bethlehem, God may have been angry with us….  Thousands of years of lying and robbing and deception and greed and killing one another.  He may have felt that he had made a mistake.  But most of all, it seems that God felt sorry for us.  Instead of punishing us, as we deserved, he seemed to say, “They have forgotten.  They do not listen to my words.  I must show them how to live.”  But he did not send them an angel or another man.  That had not worked before, with Isaiah and Elijah and Jeremiah.  This time he came Himself.  This time God became a child so that we would not be afraid, so that we could see how to live, so we could watch that child grow into a man who knew how to love—who was love itself.

         Love and peace are such very simple things, but we have done so much to complicate them.  For peace today we need negotiators and round tables and compromises.  Look how many years, decades, the governments of North and South Korea have been negotiating, or Israel and Palestine; or look at how basketball players and owners fight over millions and billions of dollars!

         God needed none of that—only a child, so that we would not be afraid.  God must look at us today somewhat pleased that we are still seeking peace.  But he must also be shaking his head a little—why haven’t they learned where peace comes from?  Why are they still afraid?

         Some people tend to get a little cynical about the spirit of this season.  Tomorrow…  Well, perhaps on this night we do understand.  My prayer for all of us today is that we remember what we see and feel here, that the new year for you is one without fear, but only love.  Peace be with you!