Christmas Day
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"While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn." -Luke 2:6-7
Prayer
God of Promise,
you fill the world with the love of Mary,
the peace of Joseph, the wonder of the shepherds,
the praise of the angels, and the delight of the Magi.
Give us grace, as we celebrate Emmanuel's birth,
to answer yes to your extraordinary love breaking into the
ordinariness of our world; we ask this through Christ our incarnate Savior.
Amen.
Reflection: YES
Yes! One word. Three letters. One syllable. A world transformed. Mary said yes to God. Mary said yes to the dream of what God could do when love is the way. Mary said yes to the possibilities of what could be, she said yes to the injustices being made right, she said yes to the poor and the outcast being brought to the center. She said yes to a dream, a pipe dream that God can and will transform our world with a simple yes.
Nine months earlier an angel had suddenly shown up on her doorstep asking her to do the impossible. Nine months earlier Mary had been living a rather plain ho-hum life in Nazareth and now she was giving birth to God-made flesh.
"And she gave birth to her firstborn son." That's it! That is all that Luke gives us. Before the angels, before the wandering shepherds, before the arrival of the Magi with three very impractical gifts. Luke gives us a simple picture of a family giving birth. I imagine that Mary was in labor for 15 hours and reminded Jesus of that when he started to get on her last nerve.
We often make this into a Hallmark scene replete with cute fluffy sheep and angels singing heavenly above. But I think that misses the point. God comes into our world in the midst of messiness, in the middle of too much to do and too little time. God comes into our world when we have miles to go before we sleep and no time to stop.
God continues to care for the world through the small, easily overlooked gestures of love and fidelity, whether the helping hand of a neighbor, a meal offered with love, the sacrifice of a congregation's traditions for public safety, or the meager words of the preacher. In all these ways, God is at work, still changing, loving, and blessing the world. And at a time when it feels like so many of the grand gestures of Christmas have been taken away, perhaps we might find both comfort and courage that God is at work in the many, many small gestures we offer.
Love lives here when we answer God's call with a simple yes. We are continually saying yes to God. We say yes to hope when the world around us seems to be spinning out of control. We say yes to wonder when everyone seems to have complete certainty.
We say yes to justice when our siblings are accorded as nothing. We say yes to love when the world seems bent on division and hate.
When was the last time you said, yes? Seems like an odd question to be asking on Christmas Day but Christmas Day is an odd sort of celebration. In the Child of Bethlehem, we hear and see and experience God's own yes to us in love. The thing is that we are continually invited by God, over and over and over again, to change and transform this world in love and it all began with a peasant girl in a backwater town, three doors down from Nowhereville.
May we continue in our own time to say yes to God. Yes to hope, yes to justice, yes to love lives here. And may we join with Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and angels and all the people of God and joyfully proclaim, "Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace to those whom God favors." Merry Christmas! Amen.
Action
The Work of Christmas by Howard Thurman
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music from the heart.
Tags: Advent 2023