Christmas - December 25, 2024
Father Vincent Pizzuto, Ph.D.
St. Columba's Episcopal Church
Isaiah 9:2-7 + Psalm 96 + Titus 2:11-14 + Luke 2:1-20
“Nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn.” My sisters and brothers, I speak to you today + in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There is so much noise. So much adversity. So much chaos. So much fear.
If that sounds to you a lot like the world in which we live…take comfort. For this too is the world into which Christ was born in Bethlehem, and in which we are asked to give birth to him yet again today. Much like our own day and time, Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus proclaimed this evening, presents a bleak social context into which the quiet simplicity of Christ’s birth is cast, yet with a resounding message of hope:
“Do not be afraid; for behold—I bring you tidings of great joy for all people: for unto you this day is born in the city of David, a Savior, who is Messiah and Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” It is this quiet simplicity of “a child lying in a manger” that I believe speaks powerfully not to God’s greatness, but paradoxically to God’s smallness.
To a divine subtlety that can easily be overlooked, but which holds out for Christians, then and now, a promise of hope and a flicker of light in a world that can otherwise seem bereft of both.
Whatever differences we might find between the birth narratives of Luke and Matthew, neither are naïve or sentimental about the birth of Jesus in the world. And neither should we be. To project back into their gospels a kind of saccharine spirituality about “the little baby Jesus” dislocates them from the harsh realities of a world desperately in need of the birth of Christ, both then and now.
Take, for example, Luke’s narrative which, as we heard, begins with the announcement of a decree from Emperor Augustus inaugurating a universal census to be taken across the whole empire and its provinces, requiring each citizen to make their way to the city of their origins to be formally registered.
Undoubtedly, the purpose of such a census would have been to maximize taxation among the citizens of Rome, but no less so of the conquered peoples living in occupied provinces such as Palestine and Syria. It is precisely for this reason that Mary and Joseph were required to go to Bethlehem, his ancestral city, where Mary (already well into her third trimester) would ultimately give birth to her firstborn son.
We should not too quickly gloss over the chaos and mayhem that would have resulted from of a national policy whose aim was to determine, with calculated precision the legal status of every citizen in the empire? One can hardly begin to imagine how impossible it would be to carry out such a decree. One can hardly begin to imagine how costly? Think only of the pandemonium that would ensue as so many citizens of the empire traveled to their towns of origin? Who would be keeping the infrastructure of small businesses running in order to facilitate such an unprecedented swell of travelers? Who would be tending to the farms and cattle, much less the farm-stands in the market places to feed the hungry sojourners? What of the shoemakers needed to patch the holes in the sandals of weary travelers? And what of the innkeepers needed to shelter those making their way across such long and often treacherous distances? Who (in other words) would maintain the very trades and infrastructure upon which everyone else would depend as they traveled near and far to register their citizenship? Who, indeed?
Thus, it should come as no surprise that when the Holy Family arrived in Bethlehem, and Mary went into labor, they would find no room at the inn, lost as they would have been among the throngs of citizens seeking some central location in Bethlehem in which to register their land and possessions before returning home again.
These are the prevailing socio-political forces driving the birth narrative in Luke’s Gospel: The politics of citizenship, draconian governmental policies, and imperial taxation strategies that favor the privileged and powerful at the expense of the common citizen. As we too struggled with similar social and political crises, I implore you, take comfort. For this too is the very world into which Christ was born and in which we are asked to make room for him to be born yet again.
Indeed, Matthew’s birth narrative is no less sobering. For here we are told of Herod, who, in a fitful rage for having been thwarted by the Magi, slaughters all the male children under two years of age in Bethlehem and its surrounding districts.
Although we have heard this story proclaimed innumerable times from our pulpits, it is tempting to shield ourselves from its carnage by dismissing it as an event illustrative of an ancient, brutal, and uncivilized world. At the very least, a story of infanticide serves as an uneasy intrusion into the peaceful, silent nights of our celebrated Christmas traditions. But a truth more difficult to bear is that the slaughter of innocents is not limited to a distant or even a recent past but continues to unfold in our modern world before our very eyes.
These are the prevailing socio-political crises inseparable from the birth narrative in Matthew’s Gospel: The death of countless innocents carried out by unchecked military power, and the growing prevalence of national violence born of fear. Let us not forget that Matthew tells us “Herod was afraid, and so was the whole of Jerusalem.” (Mt. 2:3). And so too are we afraid. But again, I say, take comfort. For this too is the very world into which Christ was born and in which Christ seeks to be born yet again in us today.
I know what so many of you are grappling with. How easily the noise of the news cycle, the adversity we encounter in our domestic politics, the chaos we see unfolding abroad, and the fears we harbor in light of the existential crises we face. And I know how easily all this clamor – both exterior and interior – can steel our attention from the peace, the clarity and the resolve that comes when we attend to small, quiet simplicity of Christ in our midst. When we pause long enough to know what is our part to do, and what is not. When we return again to the silent creche of our own hearts and marvel at this thing that has come to pass, in which the Lord has been made known to us.
Perhaps the great 20th Century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, captures this essence of God’s smallness that lay at the heart of both Matthew and Luke in their telling of Christ birth. In his poem, Epiphany Carol, Merton writes this:
God’s glory, now is kindled
Greater than low candlelight under the rafters of a barn:
Eternal peace is sleeping in the hay,
And wisdom’s born in secret in a straw-roofed stable.
“God’s glory now is kindled greater than low candlelight.” What Merton sees in the ancient narratives of Christ’s birth is not the miracle of God’s greatness but the miracle of God’s smallness. And it is precisely God’s smallness that we gather together to celebrate on this Holy Night. The Birth of a God squeezed, as it were, from the vast expanse of eternity into the tiny space of a mother’s womb. The tiny space of human history.
This is God’s response to the clamor, and noise, and obscenities that litter human history, seeking to dissuade us from a Hope and clarity that can come to us only as a “noise of whispers,” as Merton says elsewhere in his poem.
The fact is, our hopelessness, our anxiety, our fear, does nothing but add to the “noise of chaos,” misinformation, and animosity upon which our conflicts thrive. As history has shown us, the temptation to make ourselves big – threatening – in the face of the existential threats we face only and ultimately worsens our crises. The Christ-Child summons us to a different path. A greatness born of smallness.
If I might paraphrase Frederick Buechner who reminded us: When Jesus was asked how one might become great in the Kingdom of Heaven, he plucked a little girl from the crowd with mud under her fingernails, snot running down her face, chewing gum and blowing bubbles as big as baseballs. And looking at her with all the love he could muster, Jesus said to the crowd standing before him, “Unless you can become like this, don’t even bother.” [Frederick Buechner. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977]
Perhaps, at the time, Jesus had in mind his own mother…thirty-some years earlier, hardly as yet a woman, little more than a teenage girl, when she too was plucked by God from the mass of humanity and asked to do the impossible. “Asked” is the key word here. Not forced or required…but requested by God to bring Christ into the world.
That the Almighty should bow so low as to ask one of his own small creatures, a young maiden, with no voice in society, no legal status, no protections in a punitive patriarchal system; That her God should bend so low as to ask her for permission is a startling revelation of the incomprehensible humility, the unfathomable smallness of the Christian God. Over against the incalculable military might of Rome, the oppression of her people, the real and present threat of being stoned to death for being misunderstood, it was Mary’s simple and courageous “yes” that changed the world forever: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; be it done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Two thousand years hence Christians throughout the world continue to gather around a tiny creche because of her simple and courageous “yes.” Yet beckoning across the centuries remains the question: “What is yours to say yes to?” It need not be big. But it will always take courage.
Whatever it is, let us not squander the power of this holy night on the pretense that it is about God’s greatness. But resolve instead to follow in the patient footsteps of shepherds and magi; to take heed of the courageous consent of the Virgin, that we too might learn what it means to make ourselves small enough for the vast expanse of divine love to squeeze into our world yet again.
May God bless you with his grace, Christ give you the joys of everlasting life, and unto the fellowship of the citizens above may the King of Angels bring you all.
Merry Christmas!
+ Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.