God Does Not Cheat: Christmas 2020 Series

Christmas 2020: God Does Not Cheat

Every Christmas, especially in troubled times, we are naturally tempted to see images of the little Christ Child in the manger, surrounded by His mother and father and shepherds and lambs and calves and we try to imagine ourselves in our own infancy, hopefully all warm and cozy and swaddled in family love. After nearly a year of being battered by a succession of government warnings and edicts, fearing for our jobs, and those of family members, maybe in danger of losing homes and going hungry, we really covet that comfort, don’t we? And the unprecedented political climate has not made things better, either. It seems like the entire country is full of fear and even hatred. Christmas? It seems almost hypocritical or cynical to celebrate.

Maybe this crisis is new to many of us, but it wouldn’t have been for our ancestors. Yes, in the year Jesus was born the Western world was at a kind of peace–the pax Romana. But it was imposed by arrogant Roman authorities. Mary and Joseph and Jesus were in Bethlehem to pay a census tax required to keep the greedy Roman machine running. It was a peace enforced by fear and hatred, and soon conflict with the infant Christian community. The Church has faced such crises throughout her history. We are always as Christians in the world but not of the world; there is a lasting struggle.

So I’d like to look at two of the Scriptures relevant to having hope in this difficulty, because there does not seem to be much secular cause for hope. After all, the presumptive national administration has promised they will actively promote the murder of babies before birth and make us pay for it. That in itself should be troubling enough for Christians of all types, if that were all to fear, but it is not.

Something most Christians don’t encounter is the very first psalm of the Divine Office today, which clergy and religious sing or recite, Psalm 2. It begins “Why this tumult among nations, among people this useless murmuring?” It goes on to describe a conspiracy among the kingdoms of the earth to “cast off the yoke” of the Lord and His Messiah, who we know is Jesus Christ. That sounds a great deal like the agenda of political leaders all over the world, who want to promote policies that ruin the natural human family, the basis of society, and encourage the breaking of God’s laws about life, human relationships, especially marriage, and procreating and educating children. But what is God’s response, according to the psalm? “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord is laughing them to scorn.” God laughs because political leaders think they are in charge, that they can remake society in any way they want. But that’s a lie. Our Lord is the ruler, and only a fool thinks that a culture built on scorn of all ten of His commandments, and Jesus’s law of love of God and neighbor, can stand. The psalm ends with a word of encouragement for all of us: “Blessed are they who put their trust in God.”

In his letter to Titus, St. Paul gives us advice that fleshes out that admonition to put our trust in God. He reminds us that God’s grace, given to us through our baptismal faith, trains us to reject godless ways and worldly desires, and to live temperately, devoutly and justly in this age as we await the glorious return of Jesus. That’s the opposite of what the culture wants to impose on us and our children. We pray that Jesus delivers us from all lawlessness, and keeps us eager to do good.

The last Scripture I’d like to share is not in any of the readings from today’s Solemnity. It is Paul’s encouraging second chapter of the letter to the Philippians, where he tells us to assume the same mind, the same attitude of Jesus. We should imitate the constant thought of Jesus to look first at what others need. The early Church came from Hebrew stock, but very rapidly became a Greek-speaking assembly all over the empire. So Paul says Jesus was divine, but He “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” But the Greek word harpagmon, translated “grasped” or even “exploited” literally means “retained by force.” There’s a feeling of violence, even cheating, about his divine being that Jesus didn’t want to show. We were enslaved by sin, that of Adam and Eve and those committed by us, people whom God had loved into existence. The whole culture was mired in sin–trapped and condemned. So the Son of God emptied Himself of all privilege, all glory, all power, and became human. Became a little baby born in a poor family, laid in a feed box for cattle so that by his passion, death and Resurrection He could become food for the journey, the very Bread of Life we share. And because of that, He became manifest as what He always was–the very God and Lord of the Universe. His revealed and always true divine status was not–in contemporary language–“ripped off.” He earned it by paying the ultimate price, performing the ultimate work of redemption.