We need the Christmas story more than ever. And not just for the 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: “she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” A story with a quiet beginning, but one that didn’t last long.
Almost immediately we are told about heavenly visitors bearing a startling message. Words of the angel came out of the dark to a group of shepherds who could not have been more surprised at receiving a message that moved them from fear to joy. It can do the same for us: “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. This savior is also the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the one long awaited. He is also Lord, a name used for God, thereby proclaiming Jesus son of God. 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 and to take to heart the proclamation of this story: “A savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.” While we may desire salvation on the theoretical level, on the feeling level it is different. On the feeling level it is humiliating and embarrassing to be saved.
Many of us do not want to be helped. We try to do things for ourselves. We do not want another to save us, whether it be Christ, or the Church or another Christian acting in Christ’s name. We resist what is life-giving because it involves recognizing that life comes to us from outside and that within us there is death. There is no alternative. We cannot save ourselves, no matter how creative our imagination. Salvation does not yield itself to high achievement and sustained effort. We need the intervention of God to attain everlasting life.
When we think about it, our most beloved Christmas stories are about being saved. And we have been given a Christmas story, not for our entertainment, but for our salvation. Each Christmas we are called to affirm our acceptance of the One born long ago who came to be our Savior. In accepting him today, we can find joy for ourselves and for all the world.
We continue needing to be saved: from despair that drags us into believing life 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 seductive invitations of death, beckoning us again and again, whispering into our ears 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. The God of creation sends the Spirit upon us again and again, so we might be instruments of salvation in the world. 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.
It is the image of a child that Christmas presents to us and that image turns our thoughts to the children of our world today and their future. It focuses our attention on the holiness and goodness of human flesh. God has taken 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 we are to be about: being saved by a gracious God and brought to new birth again and again and again.
May this Christmas season be a time of new birth for each of us, for our loved ones, our downtown community, and our world. God continues to send us angels to sing us across the darkness toward the light coming from an infant lying in a manger. Be still and listen to the words: “Do not be afraid…. I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.”
Paul Magnano
Pastor