The Nativity of the Lord (Christmas)

The ancients believed that at the first Christmas cattle in stables fell to their knees, birds sang all night, and trees and plants bowed in reverence toward Bethlehem.  Water in wells and fountains were said to be blessed by God with healing powers.  Animals were thought to be able to talk like humans – in Latin, no less! – while witches, evil spirits, and ghosts had their powers suspended and could work no harm on humans, beasts, or homes.

From this ancient awe, we moderns have spun a different version of Christmas.  We have commercialized this feast and sanitized it.  Take, for example, the Christmas card image of the nativity, a scene which is always presented with a choir of angels, a babe in a manger, Mary and Joseph in clean clothes, humble, sweet shepherds with well scrubbed and properly posed animals, and richly dressed wise men with fabulous gifts.  That scene may look like a holiday pageant, but it is not an accurate portrayal of the first Christmas.

To begin with, take the shepherds.  They were the dregs of the earth.  These were people who couldn’t find a better job.  On the whole, shepherds were conniving thieves, a rather nasty lot.  Then there were the magi, certainly wise men of a sort, but not Jews, not people of the prophecies or people of the promise; in a word, they were outsiders.  Mary and Joseph were but poor peasants who wore travel-worn, dusty, dirty clothes.  The stable animals were not sanitized, and one had to walk around their droppings.  Bethlehem was a scruffy village of no account.  And the manger?  We are talking about a feeding station for animals.

And what is the point?  It is that God came into and among human existence with all of its limitations and flaws.  Christmas is a potent sign of God’s desire to embrace our brokenness.  After all, Jesus is the Word made flesh who dwells among us.  Among us, nasty, untrustworthy people like the shepherds, outsiders like the magi, the different, the oddball, the out-of-step folk, the poor peasant parents who smelled from the journey.  And it is no accident that this God who desired to be with us as we are, with all of our flaws, was born in a feeding station.  Because that is why God came into our lives: to nourish our brokenness, to feed our hungry souls.

Let me tell you: this child of the manger grew up and didn’t change one bit.  He was criticized for hobnobbing with the marginal, the outcasts, and those outside the pale.  He broke bread to feed sinners and publicans and hypocrites, and had the audacity to say, “I have come to call sinners, not the just.”  He flirted with the Samaritan prostitute at the well, he gave a second chance to Zacchaeus, he actually touched an untouchable, a leper, and he died between two thieves.  From the cradle to the grave, the Word has dwelt among us.

The big question for Christmas is, why don’t we pay attention to all this?  God made incarnate in Jesus echoes the great Russian writer Dostoyevsky’s words: “Love is a harsh and dreadful thing.”  Harsh is being born among the scum of the earth, and dreadful is dying naked on a cross with holes in your body.  The truth is, God lives all year long among us.  But often, in practice, we deny it.  We think we are beyond God’s concern, God’s care, God’s love.  We think that God is removed from our shepherd lives, and so we do not experience God’s care and embrace.  How can we think this about a God who ached so badly to be among us that his first audience was the dregs of society?

It comes down to this.  We have to get close and find our rightful place among the shepherds, the wise men, the animals, and all the other outcasts Jesus came to save.  We have to go to the trough, to the feeding station.  Gathered in this parish community, where Jesus still humbly comes in the spoken word and in a small piece of bread, we know he is here for the shepherds, the outcasts.  In Christmas he has fulfilled his desire to be near us, to be with us.  Christmas is the celebration of the Word made flesh, our flesh.  It is the celebration of love in our human lives.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor