The Feast of the Birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ
Christmas Day, 25 December, 2002
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
On the ABC News yesterday morning, we heard that some 90,000 letters had been written to Father Christmas, also known as Santa to some, this year. The Australia Post spokeswoman also told us about their content – usually requests for presents, but also expression of concern for the farmers in the present drought, or that a baby due might be a little girl; failing that a puppy dog or a cat would do ... What is your idea of God – a man (usually a man, NB) in a red suit with white trimmings? Someone who responds to my requests (prayers) positively? Or someone who lets tragedy happen, earthquakes, Bali etc, or within my family? That is, one who does nothing in the face of tragedy? Or is your idea of God able to comprehend God as a baby, in a stable? Because that is what Christmas is all about.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his Christmas letter, quotes an old Carol, "for in this Rose (our Lady) contained was Heaven and earth in a little space". The hymn writer Henry Ramsden Bramley says it in a very vivid way, "The great God of Heaven is come down to earth ... he sleeps in a manger; he reigns on the throne ... Lo, here is Emmanuel, here is the childe .... Behold him now wearing the likeness of man, weak, helpless and speechless, in measure a span." And this marvellous line, "The Ancient of days is an hour or two old; the Maker of all things is made of the earth." Bramley is exploring the wonder of the birth of Jesus to Our Lady Mary, the Incarnation, the Word made flesh.
So we celebrate this birth with great joy and solemnity, because it is God's answer to the human dilemma. I have referred not long ago to Pope John Paul's phrase, "the culture of death" This is the world's response to the human dilemma – above all to pain in all its manifestations. In response, St Leo the Great proclaims: "this is the birthday of Life – the Life which annihilates the fear of death, and energizes joy, promising as it does immortality."
St Luke in Chapter 2 of his Gospel, from which our Gospel Reading today is taken, weaves prophecy, history and symbolism together, to help us to comprehend the meaning of the birth of Jesus. He looks back to the prophet Micah. "But from you, Bethlehem, small as you are in Judah's clans, from you will come a king for me over Israel ... only until she who is pregnant has given birth ... for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth." (Mic 5:2-5)
St Luke notes that the prediction came true in the earthly sense, not through the acts of religious leaders, but because the pagan Roman Emperor decreed that there be a census. Further, St Luke notes the insignificance of Bethlehem among the clans of Judah; that the Saviour of the World, God's response to the human dilemma, was born in a stable. Jesus took the lowest place, just as, when the time came, Jesus the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head – Christ the King had not a throne but a Cross.
So God turns the ways of the world upside down, inside out, in the paradox of the birth of the Saviour of the world as a baby; of the death of the Saviour of the World in apparent disgrace, rejected by all but a few. Such was the Father's love for his children. And as our Second Reading (Titus 3:4-7) tells us, "When the kindness and love of God our saviour for mankind were revealed, it was not because he was concerned with any righteous actions we might have done ourselves; it was for no reason but his own compassion that he saved us, by means of the cleansing waters of rebirth and by renewing us with the Holy Spirit." The sign of our salvation and new birth is Holy Baptism, when we begin the life-long journey of turning our backs on sin, and venturing into new life.
It is a lonely road these days, because it calls us to die to what so many consider to be exciting and fulfilling – in fact only in self-centred way – in the end, death giving. The life we have in Jesus is a life for God, focussed on a love greater than ordinary love, which transforms ordinary love and desire which so easily become idolatry: worrying about what the world thinks of us. What we have to share is what God thinks of us and all people. He loves us so much that he entered our life, just as we begin life, as a helpless baby, in order to share our vulnerability, and to lead us to healing and freeedom.
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