Christmas All Year

Luke 2:1-20

Every year we celebrate Christmas on December 25^th.  Does anyone know how we came to pick this date to celebrate Christmas?   It was not picked because people actually believed Jesus was born on December 25^th.  We don’t know when Jesus was actually born, but the historical guesses range from spring to late fall.  We do know that the birth of Jesus is an important event and worth our celebration.  And we know that Advent, too, is a time worth our attention, a time of focus, preparation and waiting.  But December 25^th is a random date, picked originally to compete with the Winter Solstice celebration, and later this date was emphasized as an important time for the stimulation of our economies.  Because there are these other reasons for the December date, when we do celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25^th, the celebration is often confused and complicated by other factors vying for our attention – buying gifts, decorating our houses, planning parties, putting up lights.  And we therefore miss the true and focused celebration of this incredible and miraculous event of God coming to be with us, incarnate among us as a helpless baby.

The truth is, Christmas is a celebration that can take place any time of the year.  We should be able to celebrate the wonder and miracle of God incarnate with us all year round.  Just as we celebrate the resurrection of our Christ, the overcoming of death, every Sunday of the year, any time is a good time to remember the wonder and gift in God coming to be with us as one of us, as a helpless baby, as a vulnerable human being who lived and loved and celebrated and suffered just as we do. 

Even so, even so, we don’t want to forget or miss the fact that God coming to be with us incarnate is amazing and surprising every single time.  The gift of the good, arriving in the midst of the darkness – the gift of God showing up in unexpected ways and with unexpected gifts for us in the midst of despair, depression, and night – this is just a part of what Jesus’ birth means for us, but it is what I would like to focus on today.

I’d like to start by asking you to remember a time when you received a wonderful and unexpected gift. I encourage you to think about something that might not have seemed like a gift at the time that none the less brought you wisdom, growth, new friendships, greater insight: a gift that at first was not a gift, but has become one in hindsight.

Gifts in the unexpected:

I walked a mile with Pleasure;

She chatted all the way;

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she;

But oh! The things I learned from her,

When Sorrow walked with me.” – Robert Browning Hamilton

            Sometimes the greatest gifts we receive are things we don’t want, don’t like, don’t value at the time, but in hindsight they bring us the greatest learning, and the greatest growth.  They often bring other unexpected gifts too: friendships in unexpected ways, support in unexpected ways, insights into ourselves that we didn’t have before.  Jesus’ coming as a baby, to a poor and unwed mother in the middle of a time of chaos, the tax census, was such a gift.  Not looked for because all chaos was happening.  Not expected in this way because, well, we expect God to be among the mighty.  But within all of that this great gift came. 

The greatest gift of Christmas is the understanding that God loved us so much that God came to be with us, as one of us, walking with us, talking with us, taking time to be WITH us in this place, here and now.  That God loves us so much that this continues to be the case. 

From Tattoos on the Heart (Gregory Boyle. (New York: Free Press, 2010) p19)

“My touchstone image of God comes by way of my friend and spiritual director, Bill Cain, S.J.  Years ago he took a break from his own ministry to care for his father as he died of cancer.  His father had become a frail man, dependent on Bill to do everything for him.  Though he was physically not what he had been, and the disease was wasting him away, his mind remained alert and lively.  In the role reversal common to adult children who care for their dying parents, Bill would put his father to bed and then read him to sleep, exactly as his father had done for him in childhood.  Bill would read from some novel, and his father would lie there, staring at his son, smiling.  Bill was exhausted from the day’s care and work and would plead with his dad, ‘Look, here’s the idea.  I read to you, you fall asleep.’  Bill’s father would impishly apologize and dutifully close his eyes.  But his wouldn’t last long.  Soon enough, Bill’s father would pop one eye open and smile at his son.  Bill would catch him and whine, ‘Now, come on.’ The father would, again, oblige, until he couldn’t anymore, and the other eye would open to catch a glimpse of his son.  This went on and on, and after his father’s death, Bill knew that his evening ritual was really a story of a father who just couldn’t take his eyes off his kid.  How much more so God?  Anthony de Mello writes, “Behold the One beholding you, and smiling.’  God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take Her eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval.  What’s true of Jesus is true for us, and so this voice breaks through the clouds and comes straight at us.  ‘You are my Beloved, in whom I am wonderfully pleased.’  There is not much ‘tiny’ in that.”

God cannot take God’s eyes off of us.  The greatest gift anyone could ever give us is time.  

And God gives that eternally, endlessly, always.  The friend, Ben, didn’t want his dad to stay awake: and yet, the gift of that memory: of being loved so deeply and so dearly, that is a gift indeed. 

Richard Rohr, “The Lord comes to us disguised as ourselves.”

That is Christmas.  Christmas began with a hardship  – an unwed pregnant girl, forced to travel in this last stage of her pregnancy, finally going into labor with no place to stay or give birth except a stable.  There in the darkness, there in the tragedy, there in the unimaginable, Jesus is born.  God comes, incarnate among us, where it is least expected.  We encounter the miracle of incarnation, the gift out of the dark, the presence of God fully and vulnerably among us and as one of us when we look with eyes open, when we stay open to the unexpected and amazing, when we keep a true Christmas spirit within us.  Amen.