Something dawned on me the other day and it is probably not a very original observation, so you don’t need to get out a pen and write it down, unless you really want to in which case I don’t want to clip your wings. So this is my observation: society in general treats Christmas like it is an end when in fact it is really a beginning. Now the reasons for this vary. I think it is partly because of where Christmas falls on the calendar – that is it falls near the end of the year so it can be seen as the culmination of all that came previous before everything resets on January 1st. Another reason for why we tend to view Christmas as an end, and one that I discussed at length on Christmas Eve, is that Christmas has sort of become the only Christian holiday about which anyone pays any mind. As a result it has sort of inadvertently become the Amazon distribution center of Christian Days and now must sum up everything about the Christian faith. But that is really not what Christmas is, it is rather the beginning of the journey not the completion of it.
If you look at the readings we have today they all have an air of a new beginning. Isaiah says, “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” The Psalm says, “The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem; he gathers the exiles of Israel.” And if those two were not overt enough John’s Gospel start with the phrase, “In the beginning.” There is very much the sense that we are starting on a journey and in many ways we are. The question that I think today’s readings are asking and excuse me for putting it rather crudely is now that Jesus has been born what are you going to do about it? What are we going to do about the words we heard on Christmas Eve spoken by the angel of the Lord who said, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
For all of those that have had children I assume that at some point you realized that things were not finished when the doctor handed you the baby for the first time. My mother likes to tell the story about when I was younger and had some ailment and she was on the phone with the doctor. After he told her what needed to be done my mom asked when she should stop worrying to which he replied, “I guess when he graduates from college.” And not that I am saying that we need to commence worrying, but rather that we now need to make a decision about what we are going to do about the birth of Jesus, are we going to drop him off at the orphanage and stop by and see him next Christmas or are we going to bring him home and have our lives completely turned on their head and be changed forever. Because I know for those of you who are parents you realize just how much having children changes you.
The other day Amy and I were having a conversation and I said do you remember what idiots we were when Auggie was first born? What I meant by this is we had not yet learned the lesson that if we were going to be halfway decent parents we were going to have to change. We entered into it thinking that our will would be done at all times and all places but soon realized that like Helmuth von Moltke pointed out that, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” Not that Auggie was the enemy, but I think you know what I mean. Similarly, with the coming of Christ, if we are going to be halfway decent Christians we are going to have to change. As I hinted this first Sunday of Christmas is very similar to when you first take a child home from the hospital. We do not know exactly how things will be, but we know that they will never be the same. And I don’t want to beat this simile to death, but one of the ways that things will begin to change is that just as parent’s lives become more focused on their new child our lives should begin to be more focused on Christ. And so to make sure you have a thought to go home with let me make one suggestion of how we should change and focus more on Christ and that suggestion is to love him above all so that we may more fully love this world.
You have heard me discuss at length the divisiveness that is such a part of society these days. I have generally described it as everyone hates each other and it is the other person’s fault. Politics seems to be the main things that divide us, but there are certainly many other things. I mean people seem to get beat up or killed regularly by fans of other soccer teams – an Italian man died just this past Thursday because he was a Milan fan and the Napoli fans did not like that (which does not seem very amore’). However, the idea is that when Christ enters our lives our divisions are overshadowed by his lordship. Or as St. Paul implored in his letter to the Philippians, “make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.” So just as a newborn baby becomes our chief focus we should make our chief focus Christ, because he is the only thing large enough to overshadow and consume all of the hatred, division and animosity in this world.
Think about it like this. Let’s say you go to lunch with a friend. You order a Caesar salad and your friend orders a Cobb Salad. Now the question is will you get in a fight over this difference. I assume that unless a Cobb Salad killed your parents this would not be the case because hopefully you both realize that a difference in what you feel like for lunch is simply not that important when compared to the rest of life. But there is a point where differences in how we do things become dividing lines. If I had said that you go to the polling station and one of you votes Republican and the other votes Democrat then the divisions might start to emerge. But really differences of political opinion just like differences in lunch choices should not be occasions to hate one another. Certainly you can try to persuade the person to come over to your point of view, but it is certainly not as important as the love of Christ. Just like when we brought Auggie home from the hospital a lot of things that had previously been important became much smaller compared to what needed to be done for him. And when we bring Christ into our lives things that used to be important and divisive should become much less so. And making such a change in thought will not be easy because it takes two people to go down this path and the society in which we live seems pretty content with and also pretty proud of its divisions. Many people these days seem to define themselves by what they hate rather than by what they love. But as we start this journey of living with Christ we should be defined by whom we love and that is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
So as we begin our journey with Jesus through the year we need to ask what it changes.How will our lives be changed?After the shepherds went to the manger we read that they, “returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”Will we live lives like this?Not ones defined by hate and division but defined by the love of Christ.Will we be changed so that we may be God’s both now and forevermore?