The Nativity of our Lord: Christmas Day
Waiting Expectantly for Christmas Luke 2:22-38
12/25/2005
Christ is Born.
Good morning time travelers. At not quite 5am I awoke thinking of another Christmas at another time, another place.
Whether you gathered with others at a creche, or visited one in a Christmas card, or on the tablet of your mind, last night you made a journey back in time to your own childhood.
I can remember well a cedar tree, a Christmas tree my father harvested over 60 years ago from a hillside on Strait Creek in Brown County Ohio. I remember a blue ornament my mother placed on it that was concave on one side, and from deep within there was a silver star with long rays that shone to the edges of that little universe. My mother and sister put tinsel and ornaments on the tree and a silver and blue star at the top. With wonder in her voice my mother pointed and "said that is the Star of Bethlehem."
It was over a decade later that I learned that Bethlehem meant "house of bread" and that Jesus was the living bread come down from heaven.
Time travelers we are this day, visiting again the House of Bread.
Waking in the pre-dawn hours today, I read these lines from Karol Wojtyla, written perhaps in the 1980s. "Before the Crib, with adoring souls, let us reflect first of all on time that passes, flows on inexorably and bears our brief existences away with it. With his divine words, Jesus relieves us of the anxiety of senseless vacuity and tells us that, on the gigantic and mysterious curve of time, all human history is simply a return to the Father’s house, a return to the homeland. Therefore, every single existence forms part of this journey toward the Father. Living means covering a stretch of the way on the return home, every day and in every hour.
For a moment this morning, as I was waking, I thought of little Bethlehem, of a peasant girl and her child, of a Carpenter and his son and of shepherds and angels at the house of bread.
I thought of the Father who came out to meet the Prodigal Son and put loving arms around him. I thought of He who stepped out of eternity into time to meet us.
I thought of my childhood and my few steps on that "mysterious curve of time". Then I thought of you, my brothers and sisters, companions on the journey home. A brief prayer of thanks for fellow time travelers, then an attempt to return to sleep.
Duke the Beagle came to visit me as I drowsed. He wanted out. That done, back to bed.
One more attempt to sleep. Eyes closed, but sleep was gone. But it is too early to rise. Not ready yet for heavy reading, I reached for something that might tire my eyes and send me back to sleep. I reached for a book of meditations and read again from Karol Wojtyla who 20 years ago wrote, "Let us remember that the Christmas message affirms with absolute certainty that God is always present, even in the contradictions of human history. By creating man intelligent and free, He willed this history spangled with sublime peaks and tragic abysses, and He does not abandon mankind. The Nativity is the guaranty that we are loved by the Most High. . . ." John PaulII closed this meditation quoting from John Henry Cardinal Newman, "God’s hand is always upon those who belong to Him, and leads them by unknown paths. The most they can do is to believe what they cannot yet manage to see but will see later on, and remaining firm in their faith, work with God in that direction."
Then I hear the Church bells. It was time to wake and go meet the day and say Merry Christmas to Virginia, and then to Church, to celebrate the Eucharist and deliver this message.
Christmas means waiting. And its not just the children who wait, it is also the adults, waiting to renew relationships with friends and family. Waiting to see if this year’s celebration will be more satisfying than the last. I suspect many of you wakened early, in anticipation of the day
What Are You Waiting For?
What are you waiting for this Christmas? Are you longing for anything? What are you expecting to receive? Are you looking forward to anything special this Christmas?
From the Gospel of Luke, consider three characters who make their appearance in the Christmas drama. One is Simeon; another is the Prophetess Anna, and the third is Mary. Anna and Simeon don’t appear in any nativity scenes or in many Christmas cards, but they are significant players in the first Christmas pageant. Both of these individuals were waiting for something --actually, they were waiting for someone. Mary was expecting great things as the Angel Gabriel told her. She was expecting the Messiah, a baby who would be the anointed King of a rejuvenated nation.
Luke uses a Greek word of anticipation that identifies them as waiting with expectation for the coming of the Messiah, or Savior. It literally means that they were “alert to His appearance, and ready to welcome Him.” We see this word in Luke 2:25 in reference to Simeon where we read that “He was waiting...” and in 2:38 to describe a woman named Anna who was, “...looking forward ...”
Simeon was waiting For Comfort. We are introduced to Simeon in Luke 2:25. “Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon Him.” Simeon was righteous before people, and he was devout in His relationship with God.
Things weren’t going well for the nation of Israel. They hadn’t heard from God for many years and were under Roman rule. They had lost their political independence and were living in fear of the capable, crafty, and cruel King Herod, and many were wondering if the Messiah would ever come.
Verse 26 shows us that Simeon had good reason for his hope and anticipation: “It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.”
Simeon’s expectation focused on the comfort that Christ would bring. Remember the words of Isaiah? Comfort ye, Comfort Ye my people. These words are part of our Advent reading. Read again Isaiah 40. “Comfort, comfort my people; it is the voice of your God; speak tenderly to Jerusalem and tell her this, that she has fulfilled her term of bondage, that her pealty is paid. . . .There is a voice that cries: Prepare a road for the Lord through the wilderness, clear a highway across the desert for our God.”
You see, when Jesus promised, “Another Comforter” after his parting from the Disciples, he was not saying something new. Isaiah had proclaimed that when the Lord’s anointed would come, he would “bring the gospel to the humble, and comfort the broken hearted.” (Isaiah 61:2) Isaiah looking to the future reign of God’s Messiah also said, “the Lord has indeed comforted Zion.” Hundreds of years before the Son of God came to earth, Isaiah looked forward to the day and was singing “tidings of Comfort and Joy.”
The desire to be comforted is a universal human need. We all struggle with loneliness, emptiness, insecurity, even desperation. In fact, the Christmas season is one of the major crisis times of the year for depression and suicide.
The Holy Spirit prompted Simeon to go to the temple courts at just the right time on just the right day that Joseph and Mary were bringing their infant to the Temple. When Simeon looked at the baby Jesus, now about 6 weeks old, he knew that God’s promise had been kept. Here was Immanuel, “God With Us,” to make everything right, to provide significance by His presence, and to eliminate rejection, fear, and loneliness. Verse 28 of Luke 2 says that Simeon reached down and took Jesus out of Mary’s arms and began to praise God. As he broke out into praise, he acknowledged that God had not only fulfilled the individual promise to him, but also the promises of the prophets to send the Anointed One to comfort both Jews and Gentiles.
Anna -- Waiting for Forgiveness
Another Christmas Character waiting with anticipation was Anna. After her husband had died, she had dedicated herself to fasting and praying in the temple. In fact, the Bible says that she never left the temple but worshipped day and night.
She was looking forward to the same person as Simeon was, but with a different orientation. Instead of looking for comfort, Anna was looking for vindication of her faith. Take a look at verse 38: “Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.” As Jesus later affirmed, men who had lost faith ruled the temple. They were vassals of Rome and more interested in keeping power and wealth than in the welfare of their people. Anna waited on God to keep his promise to send a leader who would be a prophetic teacher of righteousness, who as a priest would bring Israel back to the Father and as anointed ruler would bring in the Kingdom of righteousness and peace.
The word redemption is related to the idea of captivity. The Old Testament Passover and the release of Israel from Egyptian slavery stood in Anna’s day as the ultimate redemption and the symbol of God’s power to release captives. Passover pointed ahead to that day when God would provide deliverance from the slavery to sin, delivery from separation from God and political deliverance.
When Anna saw Jesus, she gave thanks to God and spoke of Him to all who were waiting for redemption. Here, at last, was the One who would save His people from their sins.
We should think of redemption as more than escape from addictions, failures, and separation from our neighbors. Redemption is all of these things and more. Redemption is healing the rift between ourselves and the Heavenly Father that resulted from our sinfulness.
We should also think of it as vindication of God and of our faith in him. Every thinking human being goes through times of wondering, “Am I foolish for hanging on to hope? All the apparent evidence from the sorrow I am enduring is that God doesn’t notice or care. Is there really a God?
The coming of Jesus Christ into the world vindicated the faith of those who through the centuries waited on God to come. There are people in the world today who are in severe situations of pain and deprivation. Is there a God to save? The testimony to the goodness of God that you have to give, the cup of warm coffee or hot chocolate, the little remembrance that you have, the meal you can share, these things may be the very vindication that some soul needs to lift him or her out of despair and depression.
Perhaps after some kindness you do, someone may conclude, life is o.k. God is good.
MARY ALSO WAITED
Any Christian, seeing a picture of a mother and child cannot but think of Blessed Mary and Jesus. Also, looking at pictures of the Holy Family, we think of our own family. I have talked to Christian mothers with new babies, who have felt a strong identity with Mary. Christian Fathers think of themselves as protectors of the Holy Family and there are many good Joes in this world.
Such photographs speak powerfully about Mary as a presence in our world, a constant reminder that in the incarnation the omnipotent God chose to take on human vulnerability. And a vulnerability of the most extreme sort, a child born not to wealth and power but to an impoverished peasant woman and her uneasy husband in the rural backwater of a small, troubled, colonized country.
Many Protestants, if they think about Mary at all, get hung up on what they are supposed to believe about her. Mary doesn’t make it easy. It’s as if her calm visage belies our seeking after labels. It isn’t easy to put her in a category.
Is Mary a cultural artifact or a religious symbol? Is she a literary device or a theological tool? Is she an extra-biblical piety that Protestants, must avoid at all costs? Has she, by her personal power become a symbol of the liberation of women?
The point about Mary is that she is all these things, and more, always more. She unquestionably stands in the vanguard of women seeking a meaningful role in the world. As mother of our blessed Lord who treasured his thoughts, words and deeds in her heart, she reveals how critical it is that women fulfill the role of mother well.
She was also a leader in the early Church, mothering John who became an Apostle and great teacher and no doubt touched the lives of many in the Jerusalem Church of the first century. Luke, a Gentile said that he traveled to search out the events of the Gospel. He may have interviewed Mary to fill in the gaps of the tradition he heard from Paul. Mary’s simple obedience touches all of us who read the words of the Annunciation scene in Luke.
“Be joyful Mary, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.” These were the words of the Angel to Mary. Her response was not doubt, but honest and earnest inquiry to find out how this could be accomplished, since she, a maiden girl, had not a husband. How could she mother a King? How can this be? How does it happen? How can it happen?
Finally, after hearing that the Lord Himself would provide the means, she obediently says, “Be it done according to your word, even as you say. And then she launches into a Song of Praise.”
She is poor yet gloriously rich. She is blessed among women yet condemned to witness her son’s execution. She is human yet God-bearer, and the Word that she willingly bears is destined to pierce her soul. Had we a more elastic imagination, we might be less troubled by Mary’s air of serene contradiction. But ours is a skeptical and divisive age. We are more comfortable with appraisal than with praise, more adept at cogent analysis than meaningful synthesis.
Mary is useful to us as a corrective to our ordinary state of mind. Mary has a disarming way of challenging the polarities that so often bring human endeavors to impasse: the subjective and objective, the expansive and the parochial, the affective and the intellectual, our either/or way of seeing things. Mary’s designation as both virgin and mother, for example, no longer seems to be an impossible "model" for women that justifies their continued oppression within church and society. She opens up possibilities.
Indeed, Mary constitutes a challenge as to what is possible for us.
To what extent can we remain "virgin," one-in-myself, chaste, able to come to things with newness of heart, and in what sense must we become "mother," losing ourselves in the nurture and service of others and embracing life’s circumstances with the ripeness of maturity? This Mary is a gender-bender; she asks the same question of any Christian man as she does of women. What can be?
Mary points us beyond our traditional divisions. Ideologues of all persuasions: conservative and liberal, feminist and anti-feminist; have long attempted to use Mary to argue their causes, with varying degrees of success. But Mary ultimately resists all causes. Like our God, she is who she is.
As theotokos, Mary is also the mother of Wisdom. Unlike Zechariah, who responds to his annunciation concerning the birth of John the Baptist by inquiring of the angel, "How will I know that this is so?" Mary asks, simply, "How can this be?" It’s an existential question, not an intellectual one.
God responded to Zechariah’s question by striking him dumb for the entire gestation of his child. That is a nice touch providing stark contrast to Mary who finds her voice, making the ancient song of Hannah her own, and hence being able to proclaim the coming Good News.
The essential question is not what author placed Hannah’s words in Mary’s mouth, and with what theological intent. What is far more important is how to respond to this threading of salvation history from 1 Samuel to the Gospel of Luke. How do we answer when the mystery of God’s love breaks through our denseness? Do we dismiss the call of God?
When I hear for a moment a voice crying in the wilderness of my life, what do I do? Do I turn a deaf ear and reach for the TV remote control? Am I so intent on my own plans that I ignore the call, or do I dare to carry the biblical tradition into my own life’s journey? When I am called to answer "Yes" to God, not knowing where this commitment will lead me, what do I say? Mary gives me hope that it is enough to trust in God’s grace and promise of salvation.
"How can it be" that God troubles with one so wretched, self-centered, inconstant, and spiritually impoverished person as I? Who, after all, am I?
The correct answer, to paraphrase a line from a hymn, is that I am called to be a person whose soul, like Mary, can be God’s earthly sanctuary. Like Mary, I am invited each day to bring Christ into the world in my prayers, thoughts, and actions. And each evening, as I pray the Magnificat, I am asked to consider how I have done in this regard. Have I been so rich: so stuffed full of myself, my plans, and my possessions; that I have in effect denied Christ a rightful place on earth? Or am I poor and despairing, but in my failures, weakness, and emptiness more ready and willing to be filled with God’s purpose?
We drag Mary out at Christmas, along with the angels, and place her at center stage. Then we packed her safely in the decorations box for the rest of the year.
Sadly many Christians effectively deny Mary her place in Christian tradition and are disdainful of the reverence displayed for her, so public and emotional, by many millions of Catholics around the world.
We overlook the words in the Birth narratives where the heavenly messenger tells her that her Son was to be the means of “the rise and fall of many in Israel.” Also, we forget the words that “A sword would pierce her soul also.” That is the role of a Christian is it not, to take up the Cross and Follow our Lord. Mary was no doubt heart broken as she stood at the foot of the Cross. She suffered with her Son in that hour and in every minute afterwards through the rest of her life.
But she took up the Cross. Unlike the bulk of the disciples who fled, she remained at the place of humiliation and suffering. She who saw deeply into Jesus’ life and his role at the Wedding Feast of Cana, was with the disciples in the Upper Room praying for the Spirit of Christ to empower the community to live his life in an evil world.
This piercing of her soul was not a sentimental identification with her Son. It was real suffering. We are not to meditate on the Cross for the purpose of drumming up sentimentality and shedding crocodile tears. If we really take up our Cross and follow, there will be enough deprivation, sorrow, struggle, disappointment and suffering meeting us that we will come to understand what it means to be pierced to the heart and will shed real tears. The servant is not better than the Master who, “In the days of his earthly ife offered up prayers and petitions, with loud cries and tears, to God who was able to deliver him from the grave.. Because of his humble submission his prayer was heard: son though he was, he learned obedience in the school of suffering. . . .” (Hebrew 5:7-10)
Jesus Provides What We Need
Friends, when Jesus came, He provided the very things that Simeon and Anna were waiting for -- God’s comfort and His forgiveness. As he grew to manhood, doubtless Mary saw that her Son was the Lover of all souls, the Desire of all Nations as the Prophet had said centuries before.
What are you waiting for this Christmas? Whatever it is, if it is truly important, a matter of ultimate concern, Jesus can give it to you.
Some of us may identify with Simeon. Some are really hurting right now, feeling lonely, empty and afraid. We all need a fresh sense of God’s presence. Jesus came to console us right where we are, if that is our need.
Or are we more like Anna? Concerned about separation from God, looking for vindication and righteousness in the land. If we feel trapped in an evil world and in an evil life, Jesus can provide vindication of our hope and faith. He really is present here to vindicate our faith and to save us.
As we make progress in Christian life, We can emulate Blessed Mary, treasuring Jesus words and deeds in our heart, and fulfill the end for which we were made by being a Christ bearer, holding Him forth to others.
