Nativity of the Lord – Proper I (December 24, 2022)
People felt amazed, Luke’s Christmas story says, when the shepherds told them the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem. And it seems to have been exactly that point that people found amazing. The angel, the blinding glory, the spectacle of heaven’s hosts singing in the night sky – maybe the shepherds described all of that, too, and maybe people found it impressive. But what really got everyone excited, Luke seems to say, was the news that the Messiah had finally come.
Perhaps I would have felt amazed then, too, had I been around. But amazement simply isn’t among the emotions the Christmas story stirs in me. It never has been, as far as I can remember. The nearest thing I feel to amazement is a hopeful longing that the story of Jesus really did mean everything the Gospels say it meant. What gets in the way of amazement, for me, is all the evidence to the contrary. I may be full of hope and longing, but I also read the papers.
For having been visited by its savior, the world still looks very much in need of saving tonight. Violence, disease, hunger, injustice and suffering seem everywhere. Our Messiah may have come. But what did he accomplish while he was here, where is he now, and why isn’t he doing anything about the mess we are in? I believe he can clean things up, and I fervently hope he will. But his performance to date seems far from amazing.
When I admit to myself that I have these questions, I discover something else I feel in addition to hope and longing. I feel anger. I feel angry that this Messiah of ours seems absent without leave when the world desperately needs him on the job, and no amount of Christmas sentimentality is going to keep me from demanding to know just where in the hell of this world he is, or whether he even is at all.
But as I lay these thoughts before my Messiah tonight – why try to hide them from the likes of Him? – I think I hear an answer I have heard before, but never quite so clearly:
“I am where I always am: among the poor, sick and discarded people you accuse me of ignoring. But where, my child, are you?”
