
Mass readings for the Nativity of the Lord:
Isaiah 52. 7-10 Psalm 98.1-6 Hebrews 1.1-6 John 1.1-5, 9-14
Through Advent, especially in the most recent weeks, we read the Christmas story, all that precedes the momentous event of Jesus’ birth; the visit of the angel to a doubting Zechariah, whose wife Elizabeth will give birth to John the Baptist, there’s of course the story of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, the famous annunciation; and so on.
In the night we read about the birth, how the inns of Bethlehem were all filled, and the visit of the shepherds. We can, insofar as imagination allows, picture it in our minds, but we can also rely upon the many images our civilization has created based upon the story, to illustrate it all. We have here our nativity scene.
And then we come to Christmas Day, and the proper reading is not a further chapter in the saga, but something quite removed from this world; it’s philosophical, it’s theological, it speaks not of men and women, emperors or shepherds, or for that matter, babies, but rather of the coming of the Word; the Word becoming flesh.
I said last night that what happened that first Christmas, in the night, was quite uncanny, unsettling, strange, even weird; the kind of thing that were you and I to have been there, standing behind the shepherds perhaps, we likely would not have understood, but we would have been aware of something truly awesome happening even as outwardly this was just the birth of a child; like so many other births, and yet, something distinct about it, that again, unsettles, disturbs.
It’s disturbing because it should not be possible in our limited thinking: you can’t take the transcendent and limit it to one place; you can’t take eternity and put it in time; you can’t take the universal and make it so particular; you can’t take the creative power that birthed all that is and then birth it as a helpless child.
And yet, here it is; or rather, here he is.
I think that as a child I had that realization, and so, in all the wonder that children have, especially around the celebration of Christmas, I believe they have that capacity to simply take it all in, not worry about the impossibilities of it all but rather take on faith that, indeed, with God, nothing is impossible.
And so, the awesomeness of this event had its impact on me as young altar boy who sat in the sanctuary, overtired from the long day of excitement that was Christmas Eve that ended with a midnight liturgy, and then in the morning that came too soon, half-asleep for the morning services; distraction was too easy. But the distraction turned to contemplation as to how this poetic yet profound theology of the Word made flesh fit with the story of the nativity, with the manger scene. I didn’t figure it out then, I really don’t think I’ve made much progress even up to today, but I have learned one thing – to rest in the mystery of it.
So many cannot do that. They can’t be reconciled to the incarnation, and so make of Jesus an important historical figure, and they won’t dispute his impact on world history. But then, in that limited understanding, Jesus cannot be the Christ, the Saviour, and so he cannot save them.
Others will tend to the sentimental. They will reject to a great extent the deep theological meaning, and so the profundity of the incarnation with regard to what it means for humanity. There was a comedy movie from a few years ago in which a family at a table begins to say the grace, and the father chooses to address the prayer to “little baby Jesus” because, well, he likes to think of him that way – and it’s a naïve understanding of Jesus as a magical figure, as someone who grants wishes, of a kind of year-round Santa Claus, thinking of Santa entirely in his corrupted, commercialized form.
But I can see how this happens.
It’s hard to put it all together because, well, to do so is unsettling.
And I’d say even a little weird.

The great English martyr and saint, Robert Southwell, wrote poetry that is remembered to this day. His famous piece, “the Burning Babe” has stayed with me ever since I first encountered it as an undergrad. Southwell describes this bizarre image of a baby floating in mid-air in flames: he gives us “little baby Jesus” but has him speak as a man; he gives us the Word made flesh, and allows the infant Christ to explain himself. And so, he writes of this encounter,
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.
How strange and wonderful Christmas is.
Merry Christmas. Amen.