Wednesday, December 21, 2022 – Christmas
“And while they
were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her
firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a
manger, because there was no lodging available for them.” (Luke 2: 6 -7, New Living Translation)
Without the glitter, the coloured
lights, the fancy decorated tree, the pretty wrapping paper, the groaning board
of food, the Christmas parties and family celebrations.
So this is Christmas.
Plain, simple, raw, meagre, poor,
barely noticeable – tucked away in a manger.
So this is Christmas.
A fresh voice crying in the wilderness
of Bethlehem, of all places. A baby’s first cry meant to save the world. Meant
to begin a unique sacred initiative to bring us Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
Seems impossible, incredulous, presumptuous
for something so small to do so much. A wee, small voice to break the silence of
darkness and impose a divine, burgeoning Love in a world of shadows and monsters
under the bed.
So this is Christmas.
God’s sense of irony at work,
daring the Herods of politics, power, wealth and fame to come and take a
look. God’s spirit of audacious
enterprise matching such meagre beginnings with the false promises and empty
hopes and vain boasts of the world. God’s bold but preposterous Word made flesh
to rise above the din and cacophony of hate, war, prejudice, injustice and just
plain stupidity.
We celebrate Christmas – we need
to celebrate Christmas. But do we get Christmas? Or better yet, does Christmas
get us? Does it capture our imaginations, our hurts, our fears, our anxieties,
our wrongness and deliver us into God’s Love once more?
Will this Christmas remind us
again that in the face of raw beginnings that there will be New Life beating in
this child’s heart? Will this Christmas give
birth to our own New Life, born anew in
our remoteness and out-of-the-way circumstances to remind us that God is not stymied
nor disheartened by our human condition. God takes delight in showing us a New
Way, incarnating a New Look, lifting the most ordinary and mundane into Good
News.
So this is Christmas.
Plain and simple. Not much
glamour except for angel song. Nothing fancy. Nothing elaborate. Nothing ostentatious.
Nothing particularly newsworthy except it is the Good News which nestles into
straw and swaddled rags.
So this is Christmas
God at work turning the world upside
down and inside out. Using the least likely ingredients for establishing a new foothold
in a broken, divided, complicated world. Then and even now. Even still.
It is a long way from Bethlehem
to here and now. We, too, long to see that which has come to pass and know for
certain that it is truly of God and meant for us. We, too, ponder in our hearts
what all this means and does and how it applies to ourselves. We, too, grasp at
Mary and Joseph’s robes and see ourselves in their humble humanity and insert ourselves
to be part of this drama. To our
amazement – we are!
So this is Christmas. Jesus is
born!
Hallelujah! Yes, this is
Christmas!
Dale
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