Christmas and God's Love

            Christmas is certainly a beautiful time of the year.  I know that you have done a lot of shopping, decorating and getting ready for visits from relatives.  There is a wonderful sense of community that surrounds this day.  Certainly we think of Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward all people at this moment in our year.  It would be wonderful if we could extend this wonderful feeling to all of the rest of the year too.

            I have always been intrigued by God’s reasoning at Christmas.  In the beginning, God created humankind male and female.  God watched as we tangled with each other over every conceivable issue.  We fought over land, over wealth, over everything.  Our greed and our egos got in the way of our peace.  Even when we created religion, we built into it prejudices so that we could continue to harass each other.  When I read the scriptures, it is certainly apparent to me that our blindness to our selfishness continually got in the way of creating peace on earth and goodwill toward all people. 

            It isn’t possible to argue that we refrained from sin, even for a moment.  Continually, God worked to repair what we destroyed by our self-focused actions.  After a very long time of this, and after many, many destructive events, God decided to do something about our way of sin once and for all.  God decided that the only way to completely understand the human condition would be for God to come to earth in human form and live our lives the way that we lived them. 

            That decision by God produced the incredible occasion of the Angel Gabriel coming to Mary and giving her the news that she would be the bearer of the Son of God; that her child would be born    and live life with Mary and Joseph as parents.  It was astonishing news to Mary.  She was a virgin, a poor woman who was engaged to an older man, Joseph who was a carpenter and a man with not many prospects in this world. 

            The occasion of the birth came after the census was announced and Mary and Joseph travelled to Bethlehem, Joseph’s home city because he was of the lineage of the mighty King David.  The couple couldn’t find housing in Bethlehem and were given lodging in a stable.  On that evening, the child was born and laid in a manger with straw and the cattle and the goats watched.   .

            The story continues with an angel choir visiting shepherds, tending their sheep and telling them of the child’s birth.  The shepherds leave their flocks and travel to the city to see and to adore the child.  Shepherds are interesting as a part of the story because, like Mary and Joseph, they were people of little prospect, with no resources who were looked down upon by the rest of humanity.  Here, they are lifted up by God and given a first glimpse of a new creation and are able to see the Son of God at his birth. 

            Oh, the story has been disputed, called a fable and discounted.  But the essence of the story is that God has come to earth and to life as a human being to be able to understand exactly what it is that we go through in this life.  God came to experience poverty and being shunned so that by knowing that, a complete understanding of the human condition would be available to God.  Along the way, God would also encounter human arrogance and be able to see the source of this terrible condition.  Through all of Jesus’ life, he would encounter those who wished him ill, strangely the leaders of the religion were in the forefront of this effort.  It was the Pharisees and the Sadducees who finally conspired to bring Jesus before Pontius Pilate and condemn him to his death on the cross. 

            That is origin of this beautiful night.  The wise men come later, at Epiphany, but we bring gifts to each other in commemoration of the great gift that has been given to us in the birth of Jesus who became the Christ; the living presence of God on this earth and in our lives.  It is by that gift that we are forgiven our sins, our arrogance and our egotism and are given another chance to be the children that God created in the beginning.  That is a great reason for this holiday and all of the things that we do to celebrate it.  May you all have a wonderful celebration of our Lord’s birth and may God bless you richly.