The Octave Day of the Nativity of the Lord

Eight days have passed since we celebrated Christ’s birth on Christmas.

And St Luke paints a picture of the shepherds making their way to the stable cave at Bethlehem and there are three verbs that describe the shepherds’ actions are not mere coincidence – they are the inspired pattern of how every Christian should live out the message of Christmas.
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First, St Luke tells us that the shepherds “went in haste” to find Christ, to seek him out amid his family. They were eager to meet the Saviour, to spend time with him, to get to know him, to receive his blessing.

That’s why Jesus came to earth in the first place – so that we could more easily find him. The history of humanity is the history of a people lost in darkness and searching for meaning, forgiveness, grace, and light. Jesus is the source of all those things. He is our salvation. That’s the significance of the name “Jesus”, which means “God saves.”

The Jews traditionally had their boys circumcised on the eighth day after their birth. During the ceremony, the child would also be given his name. St Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary followed this tradition with Jesus.

Circumcision was the sign of God’s covenant with ancient Israel, and the most important thing about that covenant was God’s promise to send a Saviour. Receiving one’s name at the same time that the boy was circumcised was a symbolic way of emphasizing that the boy’s life, his very identity, was now tied up with that promise. And performing the ceremony on the eighth day was also significant. God had created the universe in seven days. But that creation was wrecked by original sin. The eighth day is a symbol of the redemption – the first day of the new creation in Christ.
God’s promise of blessing, our identity, redemption and everlasting life – this is what Christ comes to give us, therefore we, like the shepherds, should be eager to go and look for Christ, to find him each day in prayer, the Bible, and the sacraments.
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Second, the shepherds “repeated what they had been told about him.” The news the angels announced to them was too good to keep to themselves. They felt a need to share it, to tell others about the Saviour. That is always a sign of an authentic encounter with God.

Even on a merely human level – if you find a great book or Web site, you tell your friends about it. When we truly experience Christ, even just a little bit, something similar happens. Our hearts automatically overflow with a desire to share that experience. And if we don’t feel that desire, it probably means that our friendship with Christ needs some maintenance.

Being committed Christians doesn’t make us immune to temptation. If we are not careful, we can fall into routine. We can come to Mass, say our prayers, keep up appearances – but underneath it all, we can be falling into spiritual mediocrity.

An excellent thermometer for mediocrity is precisely this: if we feel an inner urge to spread Christ’s Kingdom, to bring others into Christ’s friendship, to share our experience of Christ – as the shepherds did, then we know we are spiritually healthy.

But if we don’t feel that urge – it is a warning sign that our friendship with Christ is growing cold, and that we need to “make haste” to Bethlehem to take a fresh look at our Saviour.
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The third verb that Mary used to describe this scene to St Luke is a double verb. St Luke tells us that after the shepherds made haste to come and see Jesus, and after they told their amazing story to everyone who would listen, they ” went back glorifying and praising God for all they had seen ” When we seek Christ and share Christ, he fills our hearts with a deep, inner joy.

The shepherds were so full of this joy that they couldn’t hold it in. Materially and economically nothing had changed. They didn’t have more money, a better job, a nicer house, or even a few more Christmas presents. And yet, if while they were walking back to their flocks someone had asked them, “What did you get for Christmas,” they would have had a ready answer.

They would have said, “We have seen God, our Saviour, and we have seen his Mother. And now we know that God loves us more than we could ever have imagined.” Their bank accounts weren’t affected by their encounter with the newborn Christ, but they were immeasurably richer on Christmas Day than they had been the day before. And if we follow in the shepherds’ footsteps this year, actively seeking Christ in prayer, the Bible, and the sacraments, and bringing Christ’s grace and presence to those around us, we too will experience the true joy of Christmas – all year round.
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The shepherds are models for every Christian. They clarify what’s most important in life: seeking Christ, sharing Christ, and rejoicing in Christ. But life for the shepherds didn’t end on Christmas. They had to return to the humdrum of the daily grind. And after today, we will too.

How can we keep the meaning and lessons of Christmas shining in our hearts even after we take down the Christmas lights?

Mary, whose motherhood we remember in a special way today, gives us the secret.

Mary didn’t let life’s hustle and bustle drown out the beauty and wonder of Christmas. St Luke tells us that “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” God did not tell Mary his entire plan. We know much more than she did about how everything was going to work out. She had to walk in the dim light of faith, one step at a time, trusting in God, witnessing his action, and seconding it whenever she could. But she paid attention. She pondered in her heart all of God’s gifts to her, all of his words and deeds. Today in Holy Communion we will receive the Body of Christ, which was formed in the womb of Mary.
When we do, let’s ask our spiritual Mother, the Mother of God and of all Christians, to teach us how to take care of the precious faith we have received and renewed during these days, just as she took care of the baby Jesus.
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FEAST OF THE HOLY FAMILY

Why did Jesus choose to become a baby born of a mother and father and to spend all but His last years living in an ordinary human family? In part, to reveal God’s plan to make all people live as one “holy family” in His Church .In the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, God reveals our true home. We’re to live as His children, “chosen ones, holy and beloved,” as the First Reading puts it.

This feast is part of the Christmas season, and we should place today’s Gospel in the context of what Luke’s Gospel tells us about the birth of Jesus. Luke has been answering the question “Who is Jesus?” through his stories of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus. Today’s Gospel reading continues this theme. It has no parallel in the other Gospels and is the conclusion of Luke’s Infancy Narrative.

Mary, Joseph, and Jesus are presented in this Gospel as a faithful Jewish family. They are participating in the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, an event shared each year with family and friends. When Jesus is found, Luke describes him as seated in the Temple in the midst of the Jewish teachers. Although he is young, Jesus seems not to need teaching about his Jewish tradition. In his dialogue with these learned teachers, Jesus astounds them with his insight and understanding. Jesus is a child of Israel. His Father is God.

The dialogue between Mary and Jesus contains many references to family relationships. In fact, in this Gospel reading Mary and Joseph are never identified by name. Instead they are referred to by their relationship to Jesus. Ultimately, this emphasizes Luke’s point about the identity of Jesus.

When Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple, they question Jesus and express their anxiety. Jesus replies in words that many have thought to be disrespectful. Jesus says that he was never lost; he was at home. Jesus is God’s Son, and he is in his Father’s house. Luke will continue to suggest that faith in Jesus establishes new family relationships as he describes Jesus’ public ministry.

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary’s importance is even greater than her role as Jesus’ mother. Mary is the first disciple and will be present with Jesus’ disciples after his Resurrection at Pentecost.

The Incarnation, Christmas, is about Jesus pitching his tent in the messiness of the human condition, coming to understand our struggle, our messiness, our finitude, our sin, our truth, and then redeeming it all by assuring us that we are worthy of being Jesus’ brother, or sister, of being adopted children of God. Emmanuel, God-with-us, full of grace and truth, so full, in fact, that we can’t help but receive that fullness, grace upon grace. God-with-us, so intimately, that in our quiet moments, when we tune down the law, the fear of intimacy, the running from our imperfections, we can hear Jesus’ spirit in our own hearts, crying out, “Abba!” And Abba saying to each of us, “This is my son, my daughter, with whom I am well-pleased.”

When we encounter Jesus at the manger, we meet God who has come in human form. And God wants a place in our hearts. The fact that God has come to us is good news, news that needs to be celebrated and proclaimed. But the question that remains for us is whether or not we have been changed by the news of Christmas.

Our church is here to cultivate life-changing relationships with God, with one another, and with our community. We welcome Christ into our hearts, and the seed of faith is planted. We may meet Jesus as a baby, but he grows up. Time will tell if our faith will grow as well.

As we approach the New Year, we have the opportunity to allow the good news of Christmas to fill our hearts so that the grace of God can change our lives and our world. That’s why Jesus came. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD (CHRISTMAS)

Mary didn’t have a choice about being on the road when she went into labour. Joseph had to register for the census and that meant traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Joseph didn’t have a choice about the fact that this child was not biologically his own. It was a done deal by the time he found out about it. Neither of them had a choice about the fact that Jesus would be born in a stable. There was no room at the inn, so it was either the barn or a ditch by the side of the road. They were made vulnerable by their circumstances: vulnerable to gossip about Jesus’ parentage, vulnerable to physical pain and danger in Mary’s case, vulnerable to a feeling of failing to provide for his family in Joseph’s case.

The shepherds didn’t have a choice about being out in the fields with their sheep in the dark and the cold. The sheep needed tending and guarding, and the sheep were the shepherds’ livelihood, their means of economic survival. The shepherds were vulnerable to the weather and the terrain. They also didn’t have a choice about the visiting angels. The heavenly host descended on them out of nowhere, and suddenly Glorias were filling the air. They were terrified and had no defence against their fear.

As you think about your life this year, where do you feel like you didn’t have a choice? It’s likely that many things come to mind. You don’t have a choice about your own struggles with health or relationships or any of the myriad of things, or the fight to make good choices that you seem to lose over and over.

Christmas is all about God giving us a choice. God places the power in our hands. God comes into our insane world and says to us, “Do you want me? Will you allow me to be born among you? Will you accept this tiny infant as your saviour and your friend and your hope?”

And we’re free to say no. Because underneath that choice is another choice, and that is the true choice of Christmas.

Despair and cynicism and even hatred are actually the paths of least resistance. When something offends us or frightens us, the easiest response is to lash out in anger and self-defence. And with the difficult situations in our lives compounded by the conflicts in our society, our walls are very, very high right now. We will not be caught defenceless. We will not be left unaware. And how does God answer our minds and hearts and communities bristling with self-defence so aggressive that it actually seems to be offense? God gives Godself to us in the most vulnerable form possible: a fragile human baby.

We have to set down our weapons, take off our armour, lay aside our power and control, in order to even see the infant Christ in each other.

But the choice of Christmas that we make is in answer to the choice that God made, the choice to come to us utterly reliant on us humans for his survival in the world. And God took joy in giving Godself to us in this way. So, if we can take the same risk that God did, we can feel the same joy God feels.

And what happens when we do take off the armour? What happens when we stop trying to be right all the time, safe all the time, in control all the time? What happens when we let the light radiating from that small face in the manger penetrate our hearts? Joy. Joy is deeper than happiness or celebration or exuberance. Joy is a force that knocks down all the walls around our hearts and levels us with the goodness, the grace, the unearned and unending love and healing that is our newly arrived Jesus. Joy remakes us, tears down our cynical and fearful identities and gives birth to a self that is trusting, patient, believing, knowing that all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Joy is the reward of the long-nurtured faith that got us here. Joy is a quiet and lasting foundation that endures while the currents of happiness and grief wash back and forth over the surface of our hearts.

That is what awaits us behind the choice of Christmas. That is what being vulnerable to joy feels like. That is what joy can do to us if we let it—if we have the courage to let go into the miracle.

It’s all up to us. What choice will you make?

 

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Advent is here to remind us that we cannot save ourselves, but that there is yet hope. Today, with four candles lit on this the last Sunday before Christmas, our Gospel reading prepares us to witness Christ’s birth by showing us how Jesus was recognized as Israel’s long-awaited Messiah even before his birth. Everything — the very shape of human history — is about to change.

Our Gospel reading recalls Mary’s actions after the announcement of Jesus’ birth by the angel Gabriel. Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, her cousin, who is also with child. Elizabeth greets Mary with full recognition of the roles that they and their unborn children will play in God’s plan for salvation. If we were to continue to read the verses that follow in Luke’s Gospel, we would hear Mary respond to Elizabeth’s greeting with her song of praise, the Magnificat. Both women recall and echo God’s history of showing favour upon the people of Israel.

The new dawn is on the way. The weight lessens; hope is born. Hope is more than optimism. In the Annunciation, Mary’s doesn’t initially greet the news of her pregnancy with her song and blazing hope. As she’s absorbing the news from the angel Gabriel that she will conceive and bear a child, he tells her, perhaps to console her: Elizabeth, your relative, is pregnant too, even in her old age! Gabriel doesn’t actually tell Mary to go to Elizabeth, but Luke says she still “made haste” to go to the Judean town in the hill country to see her.

Mary wants to be near someone who understands. Elizabeth, Mary knows, won’t think she’s crazy. And here, with another human being who understands that God works in really weird and unexpected and direct ways, Mary is able to find hope. Not ordinary optimism, but great hope. The kind that catches fire.

Today, Mary invites us to hope big. Optimism looks behind us to find comfort in what we’ve experienced before. Hope — the big, world-shaking, hope of Mary — looks ahead, knowing that we cannot imagine what God is able to do.
The world is too broken, too violent, and too divided, and we alone cannot fix it. Our one spark of hope is that God has spoken and told us that someday, all things — all things — from our personal struggles to the weight of the world’s pain, shall be made right. That hope is why Mary sings.

Today, the Gospel story invites us, like Mary, to seek out others in order to find our hope. It wasn’t until Mary was with Elizabeth in the Judean hills that her hope burst into song. And maybe, whether we know it or not, that’s what we’ve done today, too. We have made haste to gather together so that we, too, can sing songs of hope.

Our song is one of extraordinary hope. Hope that has seen the broken and divided state of the world and knows that it cannot afford to hope too small because we cannot repair the world on our own. Only God can, and only God will. In the meantime, we are called to make our corner of the world that God so loves a less divided, more trustworthy, more hopeful place. We are called to sing.

The best part about Mary’s hope is that it is never hope unfulfilled. Every year, we remember her to remind ourselves that God has already broken through. Even in the darkness, even in the deepest disappointments, even when we are betrayed, and even when the world looks most broken, we keep this crazy hope alive that God has, and God will break through.

We long, hope, wait, anticipate, and we are never let down at the last minute. Every year, Christmas always arrives. Even if we are exhausted or broken hearted, the Light of Christ always comes to the Church. Always. The final candle is always lit.

Advent and Christmas are here every year to remind us that God has already broken through. Despite the world’s pain, the dawn is well on the way.

 

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

This Sunday’s Gospel continues last week’s focus on John the Baptist and his role in preparing the way for Christ. In today’s Gospel reading, the crowds ask John the Baptist for specifics. What evidence of repentance is required? John replies by naming concrete actions: crowds should share their food and cloaks; tax collectors should be just; soldiers should act fairly.

John the Baptist knows his place and role in God’s plan of salvation. By encouraging the crowd to act in accordance with their stations in life, John’s teaching suggests that each person has a role to play in God’s salvation. It is the great mystery of our salvation that God permits and even asks for human cooperation in his divine plans.

This passage shows the diversity of the group. The crowd seems to represent the Jews who have enough; the tax collectors, the outcasts; and the soldiers, the gentiles. They all seek to change their lives. Even though John is harsh in the beginning, he gives advice to them all. John’s advice is not dramatic, he just asks them to turn from what they are doing their own way, and instead to start doing things the right way—God’s way.

The people want to change and are waiting for their Messiah to come. With John’s urgent teaching, they suspect him to be that Messiah, but he knows his call is to clear the way for the real one to come. John is to introduce the coming of Jesus, guiding people to see God’s way. He tells the people that the Messiah, the Christ, is coming with the Holy Spirit and fire. Jesus the Christ will come with the power and great might of God to be among us. The great fire is to cleanse us from our wrongdoings.

John the Baptist is teaching us to care for those in need, to seek justice, and to have integrity. Actually, those are part of what following Jesus the Christ is about. With true repentance to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, rejoice!

John the Baptist is preaching in the wilderness, a place where one may get lost, a barren place that seems to have no life or hope. Wilderness is a good metaphor for us right now. We are in a world bombarded by media, especially social media. We are certainly bewildered by news and fake news, truth and alternate truth. There seems to be no peace in the world. Natural disasters seem to be occurring more often than usual. Hope seems to be dwindling in the world. We Christians need to ask a question: “What should we do?”

We should carry the prophetic voice of John the Baptist. We should change our way of life. The gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” is increasing in society; are we willing to share with those with less? Or are we to continue taking more from others who are already struggling to fill their pockets? Are we to continue to benefit ourselves? Are we to elevate our status at the expense of hurting others? Are we to offer false accusations by telling half-truths or even totally lying? Are we willing to call out ourselves and those who do these things?

John the Baptist has given us the direction to be prepared for the coming of Christ. Are we willing to turn around? Are we courageous enough to hear and heed his prophetic voice?

As a result of John’s preaching, the people were “filled with expectation.” Do we have this effect on the people that we encounter. In our spiritual lives, we are called to confident hope, which is not wishful thinking; it is the rock-solid belief that God’s grace is available to us and will not let us down as long as we take advantage of it. We are called to share this confident hope and joy with others and to let our actions speak loudly of the joy we find in Christ our Saviour.

And as we approach the Christmas season, think of someone in your own life who is sad, or lonely, or hurting, and pledge to say or do something to help bring God’s healing love into their lives. Invite them for a coffee, or a meal. Pay them a visit. Phone them. Show them that they are not alone.

Bear God’s love on your lips and in your lives – and let it overflow into the lives of others, that they, too, may be drawn to God’s love, in Jesus’ name.

 

SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

This week and next, our Gospel readings invite us to consider John the Baptist and his relationship to Jesus. John the Baptist appears in the tradition of the great prophets, preaching repentance and reform to the people of Israel. To affirm this, Luke quotes at length from the prophet Isaiah. John baptizes for repentance and for forgiveness of sins, preparing the way for God’s salvation. In this Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 3:1-6), Saint Luke begins his account of John the Baptist by giving us the time and place of his ministry. Luke tells us the names of those holding power and the names of those serving as high priests. That information lets us know that the ministry of John the Baptist began around the year 28 AD. Besides giving us the time, Luke gives us the place. He tells us, “John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan.”

Luke gives us those details to make it clear that he is telling us about a real person, actual places, and true events. He describes how God acted in the life of John the Baptist.

We need prophets. The people who sit in darkness, in deep despair, need prophets. The people who look around and see destruction and desolation, need prophets. The people who have no voice, no rights, no hope need prophets, because prophets proclaim a new and better way. Prophets are truth-tellers to a world longing and praying and looking for glimpses of hope.

The message foretold by John breaks into our world and shatters the dark of despair with the light of love.

Rachel Held Evans reminds us, “Biblically speaking, a prophet isn’t a fortune-teller or soothsayer who predicts the future, but rather a truth-teller who sees things as they really are—past, present, and future—and who challenges their community to both accept that reality and imagine a better one.”

We need prophets especially when we have grown so full of ourselves that we neglect to see the orphan, the refugee, the migrant, the widow, and the stranger. We need prophets to call us back to God, back to a place where hope is found not only in church, but in the world around us—in the interaction of strangers, the joys of difference, and love.

Like Jesus and John, we are tasked to be open to a hope-filled future to which God calls us. Now more than ever, our communities, our nation, and our world are in desperate need of the glimmer of hope found in Jesus Christ. Now more than ever, we, as the church, the people of God, the followers of Jesus, are called to claim our prophetic birthright and be the voice of the voiceless, the hope of the hopeless, the love of the loveless.

Often in the church, we can feel small and powerless, wondering how we will survive, being concerned about ourselves rather than those in need. But God’s prophetic grace often falls not on the powerful or the mighty, but on extraordinarily ordinary people who turn the world right-side-up. We are called to remember that we are not a group of people who believe all the same things; we are a group of people caught up in God’s plan of redemption and salvation with Jesus in the centre.

The question facing us as Christians, who seek to follow where Jesus leads and to heed the call of John is “Are we willing to be prophets?” Are we willing to let God’s light shine through us so much so that we can show the world a new and better way? Are we willing to be prophetic enough to walk out in faith and break bread with people who may not look like us, or talk like us, or vote like us or speak like us? Because that is the Good News that we have to share; that is the prophetic vision that has the power to transform our world.

There is still darkness and despair and shattered dreams. There are still sins to be forgiven and enemies to turn into friends. It may not look like it, it may not sound like it, it may not feel like it, but in Jesus Christ, love has already won. The light of love and the glimmer of hope has broken through the gloom. Look and you will see the salvation of our God breaking through in a thousand pinpricks of light.

So, be the prophet who points to Jesus coming once more into our world.

 

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (YEAR C)

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which is also the first Sunday of the new liturgical year. The Advent season includes the four Sundays that precede Christmas. Advent is a time of preparation for the coming of the Lord. In this season, we recall two central elements of our faith: the final coming of the Lord in glory and the incarnation of the Lord in the birth of Jesus. The key themes of the Advent season are watchful waiting, preparation, and hope.

In most of Australia, the stores have unleashed a frenzy of sales events, special promotions, and cheery ads featuring Santa and his reindeer.

And all of this is not about the birth of a Saviour, it’s about spending, spending, spending. And spending a lot.

And in the midst of all this, the church offers the season of Advent, which is definitely not about shopping for presents. As we heard in today’s gospel story, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.”

This Jesus we follow was born as a homeless traveller, whose family struggled to find welcome, he lived and ministered in poverty, at the mercy of the generosity of others. This Jesus we follow offered no exceptions to his table of hospitality. This Jesus we follow held more power than anyone on the planet—before or since—yet never once used the force of that power in the face of oppression, or violence, or even his own torture and execution.

Jesus showed an unquenchable, confident optimism—even in seemingly dire situations. And he commanded us not to fear but live in hope. And we need a little hopefulness. Because horrors run non-stop through our news feeds, fanning our fear. Because merchandise is offered to make us feel better, but really only increases that fear. Because we fill up our lives with mostly meaningless activities, because it somehow is less frightening to keep busy. And then faith leaks out bit by bit, more and more fear seeps in, and we start sinking.

Once fear becomes the dominant force in our religion and our lives, we end up even more terrified, more desperate, more jittery. So, we seek more and more stuff, we fill up more of our time with entertainment and events, and we grow more hostile to others, more contemptible of those who are different, more drawn to self-protection, mimetic violence, and even aggression. In other words: we become less and less like Jesus. So, we seriously need a little hopefulness.

The very heart of Christianity is inclusion and welcome and invitation. It is trust and contentment and hope that cannot be overtaken. It is serving and yielding and sacrificing. It is not a scared narcissism that vilifies the other, relentlessly accumulates material goods and wealth, and seeks power or prestige.

And Advent tells we can and will live in hope, not fear. Because you see, Jesus will come in glory to judge the living and the dead. Adolph Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, every tyrant that ever was will one day stand before the judgment seat. So, we need not fret about judging them—or anyone else.

Now, there’s a little hopefulness: The Last Judgment will put things right. And, remember: we will stand before the judgment seat, as well. Christ the King will know everything we’ve done or left undone. Everyone we’ve hurt. Every evil intent, every neglectful moment, every time we gave in to fear.

And he will say, “I forgive you. Welcome into paradise.” Now, that’s more than a little hopefulness: that’s comfort, reassurance, glad tidings of great joy.

So, let us not be afraid. Let us prepare to celebrate the birth of our Saviour. Let us strive to emulate Jesus, who offers not fear but forgiveness, who offers not hate but sacrificial love, who offers not condemnation but life eternal. But even more importantly, Advent reminds us to look for the Lord as he shows himself in our world and to look forward to his return in glory.

Advent is not just a matter of counting off four Sundays, it is a matter of making sure we are not so caught up with the cares of life that we are unprepared for the return of the Lord.