The picture is of the nativity silhouette in the snow in my front yard. It stands watch and witness in the bitter cold we have in Kentucky. There is black ice beneath the snow and the temperatures are too low for salt to work on roads. The last time I remember something like this was in the 1970s. There were massive power outages last night and enough accidents that interstates were closed. Christmas plans are changed or challenged in multiple ways for almost everyone. As I write, my family is deciding if we get together tonight or wait. Yet Christ comes–God comes–again this year.
Not the “white Christmas” we dream of. Or is it? Remember the movie, released on January 1, 1954 and seen every year since? At its core, the plot is about people helping people, developing relationships and enhanced conscience as they put the good of others ahead of self. It is the story of Love breaking into the world in the middle of ordinary problems. It is the story of Love making things better. Isn’t that why we love Christmas so much–it is the holiday of love spilling over.
How many thousands of instances of Love breaking through were there in the United States yesterday as people coped with storm, cold, and the necessity of changed plans?
Christmas is the Solemnity of the Incarnation. Incarnation—church word that means God, who is Spirit, took on human flesh. God came in person to earth to LIVE with us.
Every Sunday in the creed we say, “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ…God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven (we kneel at Christmas for these words) and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”
Put in simple English, in the creed we say we believe that God became a human person, the fully human Jesus, while remaining also fully God.
At Christmas we consider that not only did God become fully human, but God chose to do it in a way so unexpected that it was hard to believe, all through Jesus’ life, that this was really God. And still hard for many today.
The readings for Christmas do not follow the A, B, C patterns of other Sundays. They are the same each year, but vary by time of celebration. There are readings for Christmas Eve Vigil, mass during the night, mass at dawn, and mass during the day. Put together they tell the whole Christmas story.
This reflection will look at the Gospels for all four times.
Vigil Mass Gospel Matthew: 1:1-25 or 1:18-25
The shorter form of this Gospel is the same as the Gospel last Sunday. It is a bare-bones story of how Jesus came to be born, told from Joseph’s perspective: Mary conceived a child. St. Joseph was distressed, but still compassionate, and was going to “divorce her quietly” until an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him not to be afraid that Mary had been or would be unfaithful to him. Joseph trusted the angel, took Mary into his home, and “had no relations with her until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus.
The longer form traces the family lineage from Abraham to Joseph. There are a total of six times seven generations between Abraham and Joseph. Mary, also, was of Joseph’s general family, and so, the core of the lineage would have been the same for her.
Matthew was writing for people with a Jewish heritage. It was important to him to set Jesus in a context that would make his Messiahship believable. Seven was a perfect number, so six times seven generations, with key events in Hebrew history every fourteen generations, was important to note. We tend to glaze over such a recitation of names, but Jewish readers or listeners would nod their heads as they heard the list. Such recitations of generations were part of how they knew who they were and how they fit in Jewish history. It would be good that Jesus fit so well.
Matthew, in succinctly telling the story of how Joseph dealt with Mary’s pregnancy, further established Jesus’ credentials as “Son of God” and Joseph’s credentials as a good Jewish man, husband, and father. As we will see in a couple of Sundays, Matthew moves from this narrative straight into the story of the visit of the wise men, the slaughter of the innocents, and the escape to Egypt. He notes that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but says nothing of the census or no room at the inn. Those details are not so important to the story under his purpose. His purpose is to tie Jesus into Jewish history as the Messiah.
If you attend the vigil mass and hear this Gospel, perhaps a good question might be: How much do I believe Jesus’ credentials as true God and true man? Perhaps spend some time wondering about it or resting in the glory of it.
Mass in the Night: Luke 2: 1-14
Surely Luke spent time with Mary as he wrote his Gospel. There are so many beautiful stories from her point of view. Here we learn that Mary and Joseph did not live in Bethlehem (where the Messiah was to be born). They went there because of a Roman tax. The birth in Bethlehem would have been important to Jewish readers. That Jesus’ family paid the tax like everyone else would have been important to Gentile readers. All through Luke’s Gospel, he focuses on the humility and ordinariness of Jesus. In his description of Jesus’ birth, he lays the foundation. We learn Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger. We learn there was no room for him and his family in Bethlehem that night. Angels appear in Luke’s story, too—to shepherds, who were among the lowliest of the working class in Palestine culture. This detail (omitted by Matthew) sets the tone for a description of a Messiah who indeed brings good news to the poor—from literally the day of his birth.
Yet Luke does not rest in Jesus “a child of the poor.” Poor he was, but the heavens were filled with the glory of God at his birth. Luke begins his Gospel with this balance of God’s miracles and glory tied again and again to the lowly, the unnoticed. God’s choice of poverty was reason for the heavens to rejoice–for God came to earth in poverty to give us the message that all are important and welcome to God.
If you attend Midnight Mass, perhaps a question to ponder would be: How do I balance Jesus’ simplicity as human person with his power and glory as God? How do I see them mixing in my relationship with him, in how I pray to him and imitate him?
Mass at Dawn Luke 2:15-20
The mass at dawn continues the story from the night. The shepherds say, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”
Think about it, if Jesus had even been born in an inn, the shepherds couldn’t have visited and found him. With their smell, no one would let them in the front door. But in a stable—they could be perfectly at home.
Luke adds more details that show Jesus’ as “God with us”—he is wrapped with swaddling clothes, the way ordinary people dressed their infants, yet he is not in a bed, but lying in a manger. The shepherds become the first evangelists and tell of the wonder of the birth. There is great humility and simplicity—yet also wonder and glory.
A question to ponder if you attend mass at dawn: When you see the baby Jesus figure in the creche at church, where is your wonder? What brings you to awe?
Mass During the Day: John 1:1-18 or John 1:1-5, 9-14
For Christmas Day mass, the reading is from John. John, writing some years after Matthew and Luke, is less concerned with the details of Jesus’ birth—that would already have been known in Christian circles from Matthew and Luke’s Gospels—but more concerned about the Big Picture: the baby born is also God, the same God who made heavens and earth. John doesn’t always focus on Jesus’ divinity, but it is a strong thread at all times, and it is THE story in chapter one.
The second person of the Trinity did not begin with Jesus. The second person of the Trinity existed since before the world was created. John describes not the glory of angels, but the wonder and glory of God’s plan to come Himself to earth. Later John says “God sent his Son,” but in this preface to the Gospel John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word was Jesus. Word in this case may not be the best translation of the Greek “logos” used here. Logos means more “mind” or “design” than word as we use it. John is saying, “In the beginning was the Design of God, and that Design was with God and was God. That Design created the world—including that God would choose to come to earth to give humanity the opportunity for Eternal Life in God.
John can boggle your mind! A question for you at this mass: When I think of God creating the world with a plan to give me Eternal Life, that God the Divine became human to divinize me, what is my response?
Applications: Merry Christmas!
God came. God comes. God comes at every mass. God comes through every act of unselfish love we make. God comes to families and in families. Let this day, be it cold, troublsesomely white or not where you are, let this day be a day of celebration.
Reminder: If you would like to join a study group on Lumen Gentium, the Vatican II document about what it means to be church, on zoom Sundays 1:30-2:30 pm Eastern US time January 8, 15, 22, and 29, contact me at mary@skillswork.org.
Prayer:
Whenever we worship, however we worship, help us to see You, Lord, incarnate in Bethlehem, incarnate through church and Christian life today. Come, Lord Jesus, be incarnate in me.
