A reflection for Christmas: on the place of Christmas, pandemic separation, and how we might be inspired to look forward.
For Christmas
O God, you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our Redeemer, may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Luke 2:1-20
“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.””
Reflection
We get the word Christmas from our practice of faith. Christmas is not a word that describes an event two millennia ago, but the church’s celebration of that event. When people of faith gathered for the Christ Mass. We gather to celebrate a principle feast of the church, one we often call the Feast of the Incarnation or the Feast of the Nativity. We celebrate that with a mass: a service of Holy Eucharist.
At the root of these celebrations is a very particular thing: incarnation. That God has been enfleshed in the world.
Not just that God has shown up and done things. But that God has come as part of the world.
Last week, we wrestled with the idea that Mary put herself below God – that her human relationship with God was as one subordinate to God. And yet God turns around and is born from her. To be her son. The tension in all of this is the most revealing part!
So much of what our last two years has been about is the very challenge of our fleshy existence. Our mortality, our capacity to spread viruses by being together, longing to be in each other’s presence, how to create presence virtually, and even how to ChristMass without a Eucharist…
Perhaps this time we look at the shepherds for inspiration. Shepherds who heard and went and shared and returned full of joy. I suspect they weren’t disrupted by protocols or a sense of inconvenience.
At the root was an encounter and a need to participate.
As we look into our future as followers of Christ–the one who was incarnate in the world, lifted up disciples and led them on the way, who was abused, crucified, and was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven–we continue to strive, like those shepherds, to participate – not in those events then, but in them now. With this world.
That is a source of joy and inspiration. To be loved and trusted, invited and hoped for, by a God who wants us. All of us.
As we continue to redefine presence in new and creative ways. May you have the merriest of Christmases.