Christmas

The Christmas cards that move me the most are the photo cards with pictures of children.  If Christmas is not for kids, it certainly is a time to look at them and think about them.  I find myself wondering what kind of Christmas we will be giving these children.  We need the Christmas story more than ever.  And not just for children, but for all of us.

The Christmas story is, first of all, the story of a birth – the birth of a child and of a new world: “and she gave birth to her firstborn son.  She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there no room for them in the inn.”  It is a story with a quiet beginning.  A child born when his parents were away from home and in a place that provided no room.

A serene scene, but one that didn’t last long.  Almost immediately we are told about heavenly visitors bearing a startling message.  Even more urgent this year is to hear the words of the angel that came out of the dark, to a group of shepherds that could not have been more surprised at receiving a message that moved them from fear to joy.  It can do the same for us.

The Christmas message of the angel speaks as simply, as eloquently, and as profoundly as ever: “Do not be afraid….  I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.”  The child born and laid in a manger was destined to be our savior.

Luke is the only evangelist who habitually calls Jesus Savior.  He uses the word fourteen times in the Gospel and forty times in Acts.  This savior is also the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the one long awaited.  But it is the title Savior that deserves our reflection this year.  We need a savior now more than ever.  We need someone who helps us move again from fear to joy.

If we want to enter into the joy of Christmas, it means first entering into the awareness of our need for a savior, of the need we have to be saved and to take to heart the proclamation of this story: “A savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.”  Many of us do not want to be helped.  We try to do things for ourselves.  We do not want another to save us, even it be Christ himself.

When you think about it, this most beloved Christmas story is about being saved.  People are saved by a power outside themselves.  Each Christmas we are called to affirm our acceptance of the one born long ago and laid in a manger who came to be our Savior.  In accepting him this day, we can find joy for ourselves and for all people.

We continue needing to be saved: from despair that drags us into believing all is meaningless, from hatreds that become all consuming, from a misplaced faith in things and their power to satisfy, from a desire for vengeance that destroys peoples as well as individuals, and from yielding to the whispers that hope is an illusion, and running its cold finger across our hearts.

And it is not just that we are saved from terror, fear, despair, and inner darkness.  We are saved for something.  We are saved to bring life to others: to work to save this world from self-destruction; to reach out to the thirty million Americans living in poverty; to help build a new world of peace and justice and love, wherever that is most needed.

To be honest, I think Christmas is really a feast for adults.  God has taken on flesh in Jesus, born of Mary.   God has joined us, our human race, entering into our hopes and pains, joining in our efforts to build a new world.  We come here to remind ourselves what God is about and what we are to be about: being saved by a gracious God and brought to new birth again and again and again.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor