Merry Christmas! Just want to wish a warm welcome to all visitors and guests, there’s really no better place to celebrate the Nativity of Jesus (our Savior) than at the Church of the Nativity, so thanks for being here to worship Him.
If you noticed in the music missal, you probably saw that each of our four Christmas Masses have different readings. Since I have been at Nativity, the usual is to just use the reading for the particular Mass, but this year we decided to change it up and use the same readings for each - the readings from the “Mass during the Night” - mostly because someone complained to me (they didn't like hearing the genealogy read at the 4pm Mass).
But it allows me to go a bit more in depth about these particular readings. I don’t want to write four different homilies, so when I have four different sets of readings like the last 4 years, I just write a homily on a general Christmas theme. This year I can focus more on the actual readings, go a little more in depth than I usually do.
Our first reading was from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah which contains many prophecies about the Birth of Jesus Christ. I heard recently that the early Church Fathers - the Saints that wrote and preached in the first centuries after the birth of Christ - they considered the Book of the Prophet Isaiah to be the “Fifth Gospel.”
Whenever someone asks how to read the Bible, I always say “just start with the New Testament, read that through, maybe read it again, and then go back to the Old Testament and read that, looking for the connections and foreshadowing of Jesus along the way.” But after hearing what our Church Fathers said, I might have to recommend reading Isaiah right away too.
Isaiah was writing about 700 years before the birth of Jesus, and it is so accurate that once a Christian was teaching in a Jewish school, and the parents of a Jewish child became irate because this Christian teacher was teaching their students about Jesus in a veiled sort of way, and the teacher said, “Wait, look, I am just teaching from the Prophet Isaiah.” And these Jewish parents made the jump to Jesus Christ themselves.
So then we get to this story of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke. Luke was a doctor by trade, he was very precise in his storytelling, and he situated this event very specifically in history noting it was at the time of “Caesar Augustus… when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”
Furthermore, Luke recalls the prophecies of Isaiah. All of the Jews knew that the Savior, the Messiah, the Christ, that He would come from the line of David. Listen again to Isaiah: “For a child is born to us, a son is given us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne.”
So Luke says very precisely that this child who was born was a rightful heir to David’s throne when he says, “And Joseph too went… to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.” (This was what Matthew's genealogy is intended to do to, to situate the child Jesus in the prophetic context and they royal line.)
They had been waiting almost a thousand years for this child, and what does the birth of this child bring? What does the birth of any child bring? This is a theme of these readings… a child brings joy. Abundant joy. Listen again:
Joy is what all babies bring their families, but Jesus brings even more joy than the usual, because the whole world celebrates His birthday. But why? What is special?
Last night, after the 100 year anniversary Mass with the Archbishop and the party, I was reading the newspaper and a story caught my attention, it was entitled: “'A joyful time': Area youth reflect on magic of Christmas” and I saw they had interviewed students from St. Columbkille. So I had to read it, and one of the first that caught my attention was from Marcus Mullen who is an 8 year old.
Marcus said: “It’s a joyful time when Jesus is born when you get to spend time with family and celebrate. … My favorite part is going to wake everyone up in the morning to say it’s Jesus’ birthday.”
Marcus hit on that joyful aspect, and brought the birthday piece of it, kids love birthdays. Celebrating their birthday, celebrating friends and families birthdays, birthdays are a big deal. But why is Marcus so concerned about celebrating the birthday of a guy he has, presumably, never met?
I kept reading. Here was what 10 year old Margaret Dodds had to say: “I like going to church on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family. It’s special because it’s on Jesus’ birthday when he became the savior of the world.”
Ah-ha, that’s it, Margaret is celebrating this guy’s birthday, the guy she has never met either, because He is Savior of the World! Jesus Christ our Savior, our Messiah, our Redeemer, our “Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace” came to bring us abundant joy as our Savior.
So I got to thinking about this concept of a “Savior.” Children can more readily, more easily accept the need for a Savior. For the most part, their lived experience is of them being helpless, needing someone to save them virtually all of the time. They depend on their Father and Mother and family for everything.
When the baby is hungry, or thirsty, or hot, or cold, or needs their diapers changed, they cry, they need saving. Sure they grow up and can begin to do some of those things, become independent to a degree, but then even as they grow up they still play games that require saving.
Last weekend I was with my nieces and nephews and the youngest are girls, Ellie Mae is 3 and Catherine is 2, they are inseparable cousins. And they come running to me, “Save us, Uncle Andy! The boys are trying to get us!”
As we get older though, maybe in Middle School, we become more independent, and that pride thing kicks in, and we begin to scoff at the idea of a savior. “I can save myself,” we might even think.
And that pride quickly bleeds into our spiritual life and our view of God. Our view of God gets skewed as a cruel judge, a military conqueror, a tyrannical king, a wicked father.
But this is precisely why God humbled Himself and became man in the form of Baby Jesus, so that our first impression would be of God as a little, peaceful child - a humble little baby that brings us joy and the free gift of Salvation (through His death and resurrection). And hopefully, when we look at the Baby Jesus, we can humble ourselves, recognizing Him as the Savior that we still need, and ultimately want.
If we are honest with ourselves, even us grown-ups, we want a savior, we want someone to rescue us from whatever we are struggling with: If we are sick, we want the doctor to save us; If we are poor, we want the lottery to come through for us;If we are sad, we want someone to cheer us up; If we are anxious, we want someone to put our mind at ease. We still desire a savior in some way. This is why we love Super-Hero stories, right?
Well I believe the Baby Jesus can help us with those, sure, the scripture we heard him called “God-Hero” after all, but those needs or desires are all of the body, and what Jesus really cares about is our soul, so what he really wants is to save us from our sins,our sins are what will ultimately keep us from spending eternity with Him in heaven.
Here is what Paul said in his letter to Titus said in our second reading regarding this birth of Jesus which clearly the Church wants us to reflect on today… St. Paul says:
“Beloved: / The grace of God has appeared, saving all / and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires / and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age, / as we await the blessed hope, / the appearance of the glory of our great God / and savior Jesus Christ, / who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness / and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, / eager to do what is good.”
This is the true joy of Christmas, knowing that we have a loving, humble savior, who is very patient with us, waiting for us to accept His invitation, figuring out we can’t save ourselves, but He can, and He will, if we allow Him. We have to choose to be trained by Him, and then He will cleanse us of our sins so we can spend eternity in Heaven.
For me personally, it was at the lowest point of my life, when I had succumbed to “godless ways and worldly desires” and found that it just wasn’t working, I knew I needed a savior, and when I turned to Him, I found one. I found joy and peace in His presence. When I expected justice, He gave me only mercy and love, and I have never forgotten that feeling, and I pray that if you haven’t, you can experience that too.
God wants our first impression of Him to be as a peaceful little child, not a just judge or a military conqueror. That is what many of the Jews expected. And rightly so, for Isaiah had prophesied that too, picking up where I left off earlier, saying, “His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgment and justice, both now and forever.”
This Baby Jesus is the Jesus we need to get to know first, and the joy and peace He brings.
Yes, He will grow up to be our judge, but we need to grow up right along with Him. God the Father looks at all of us as His little children, whom He created, and we act like kids quite often.
But God the Father does want us to grow up, you know, but it has to come in the right order, it has to be out of that place of deep love and trust that we have when we look at a baby, when we look at the Christ Child, not intimidated, not feeling guilty, not feeling shame for how we have ignored the love of Jesus from time to time. (It takes us putting away our pride and humbling ourselves to admit that.)
That’s one thing about children, they don’t have any pride, they know they are essentially helpless, they depend on their Father and Mother and family for everything. When they are in trouble, they need a Savior.
Don’t we need a Savior too?
Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus. Thank you for all you have done for me, for all of us. We look forward to what you will do in the future as our Savior.