As the Christmas song goes, “It’s a won…, wonderful time of the year.” There is so much seasonal excitement. Stores are ringing with seasonal songs. Trees big and small are decorated with sparkling lights. Shoppers busy bustling around to find the perfect present for family members. Rush, rush, rush. Too often all the excitement misses the most important about the season. Too often it all misses the reason for the season.
Above everything else Christmas is about the incarnation of Christ in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The message is that the God of Israel, the one who held all the terrible power of the creation, the one who raised the mountains, who dug out the depths of the sea, who stills the storms and makes the earth quake this horrible divine power has now drawn near in a human child and is called Emmanuel, God with us.
The divine presence that is behind all the order and power of the universe has donned swaddling and accepted the humblest of beginning just like you and me. He is the king the magi seek and who is promised to the shepherd high in the fields working and caring for their charges.
Ebola, ISIS, political division and anything else that makes our knees quiver and shake in this world, everything that scares and unnerves us is nothing compared to the power resting gently in Mary’s arms. This child shielded from the threats of this world like Herod, poverty, and an itinerant life is so powerful that even death will not hold him in the grave.
It is because of this power captured in the promise of a child that we need not fear cancer or any illness, that we can celebrate everyday easy or hard, that we whistle in the face of darkness and the grave because God is with us. Faith and trust that God is present in the child of Bethlehem and in the promise of the Eucharistic table is all the real hope we can pray to hold.
As we moved through Advent and watched each week for the coming celebration of the Christ child I pray we kept our ears and our hearts open so that Christ may be truly present in our celebrations. This Christmas please invite friends and family to join in the glorious festival of lights in our Candlelight Christmas service at 10:00pm on Christmas Eve.
Please, “Go Tell It on the Mountain that Jesus Christ is Born.”