Christmas
At Christmas, we remember the Incarnation. “Incarnation” means “to be made flesh”. It is when we remember that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, took into himself human nature and became Jesus the Christ, the Messiah. He became a human being. The Creator became a creature. The God who has no image, took on an image. … He grew within the Virgin Mary’s body, through the Holy Spirit, becoming flesh by drawing from her flesh. … This glorious event is announced by a heavenly host of angels, and a star (Stars are often associated with angels in the Bible). God enters into human history- birthed as a human being. …
And this is not a moment that comes out of the blue. It is, arguably, the culmination of the Biblical story. … The story begins with an intimate relationship between God and Adam and Eve. They knew God in the garden. They heard His voice. They knew the sound of him moving through Eden. …
But that relationship was fractured. … There is division between them and God, and between one another. … Sin, like a blood-thirsty creature, stalks the human beings, and one of their sons kills his brother.
The rest of the Bible is the winding story of God seeking to restore human beings to a loving relationship with him. To restore them to the glorious calling God always planned for them. To rescue us from the dark powers that have deceived and trapped us in our own sin.
Century after century God works with humanity to draw us away from all that would destroy us. But our response to Him is half-hearted and mixed. … Sometimes it’s blatant rejection and rebellion. He sends us his messengers, the prophets, and we ridicule them and kill them.
And on Christmas, we remember that God came to us, as one of us, to help us back to the true path that leads to Himself. It is hard to imagine a more important moment in human history. It makes sense to adorn that image so as to reflect the unimaginable profundity of that moment.
So, we have many pieces of art where the Christ-child is surrounded by streaks of gold, showing divine grace emanating from him. Golden halos encircle the heads of the Holy Family, who are wearing regal robes, to show their heavenly royalty. Angels break through from eternity to border the scene and witness the place where heaven and earth are entwined together in human flesh, and mark a new era in the story of heaven and earth. And a gold frame encases the image to show that it is a holy treasure.
We see something similar at ‘The Basilica of the Nativity’ in Bethlehem, which is believed to be built on the place were Jesus was born. The church is full of beautiful lamps, and an intricately carved and decorated iconostasis. … Under the altar, the precise spot Christ was believed to be born is marked by a silver star, and surrounded by ornate lamps. … It is beautiful, and it was all done to show honour to God, who came to be a human being among us. To mark this amazing moment that changed human history.
These are the devoted works of artists, doing their best to show love and honour to God, and to show us the importance of this story. …
But something can be lost in that loving adornment. It can create a distance. The scene can become alien. We don’t see halos around people’s heads. We don’t see grace as streaks of gold. We can feel (subtly) that this is not for ordinary people like us.
Some of us have seen a live nativity, that includes real animals, and actors to play the holy family. St. Francis of Assisi began this tradition in 1223. And this also led to the popularization of the nativity scenes that we put in our homes and churches. We saw a beautiful selection of them in our church at the beginning of Advent. In St. Bonaventure’s biography of St. Francis we read,
“It happened in the third year before his death that he decided, in order to arouse devotion, to celebrate at Greccio (with the greatest possible solemnity) the memory of the birth of the Child Jesus. So that this would not be considered a type of novelty, he petitioned for and obtained permission from the [Pope]. He had a crib prepared, hay carried in and an ox and a [donkey] led to the place. The friars were summoned, the people came, the forest resounded with their voices and that venerable night was rendered brilliant and solemn by a multitude of bright lights and by resonant and harmonious hymns of praise. The man of God stood before the crib, filled with affection, bathed in tears and overflowing with joy. A solemn Mass was celebrated over the crib, with Francis as deacon chanting the holy gospel. Then he preached to the people standing about concerning the birth of the poor King…”.[1]
Francis wanted to show the people the poverty and humility of Christ’s birth. He wanted them to see the animals- animals they were used to- animals who smelled and left piles of manure. … He wanted them to see the hay, and the animals’ feeding trough used as a crib. … Francis wanted them to see that when God chose to come to us, he didn’t go to a palace. … Very few people are allowed in palaces. He went to the lowest place. Everyone is allowed where the animals go, but few would want to go there. But it is accessible. It is the kind of place that the poor would know and have access to.
And when God chose to come to us as a human being, he chooses an unwed woman to be his mother. By social standards, she was an ordinary girl who would have been forgotten by history. The father he chose was a carpenter. He too would have disappeared to the memory of history, even while being one of the numerous descendants of King David. (Remember that David’s son, Solomon had 1000 wives and concubines, and that was 1000 years earlier. No doubt being a descendent of King David wasn’t that unusual.)
When the heavenly host announced this birth, they didn’t announce it to kings or scholars, they announced it to shepherds. Shepherds were among the most despised in their society. They were the lowest of the low in the eyes of their people. They were poorly paid, and considered unsafe. Most people would cross the street if they saw a shepherd walking towards them. They were so untrusted that they were not considered valid witnesses in courts of law. … But these shepherds get a special invitation to this incredible event.
And so, on this holy night, we remember that the God who spun galaxies and breathed life into Adam did not wait for us to climb up to Him. He came down to us. He came all the way down- into the rough straw, into the cold night air, into the arms of a poor girl and a bewildered carpenter, into a world that had often rejected Him, into a humanity that could not save itself. He came in a way that he would be accessible by all.
In the manger, the highest and the lowest meet: heaven and earth. The Infinite enters the finite, not to overwhelm it, but to transform it from within. The manger, a feeding trough for animals, becomes the first altar of the new creation, where the body of Christ is found and offered to humanity. The shepherds (those who lived on the margins) become the first witnesses of the restoration of the cosmos.
St. Francis understood this. He wanted people to see that the Incarnation is not an abstraction. It is not a gilded painting placed in a palace beyond our reach. The incarnation is God entering the very place where we are most vulnerable, most forgotten, most animal, most human. He wanted us to see that the straw, the cold, the smell, the poverty- these are not obstacles to God’s presence. They are the very place where God chooses to dwell.
And He came in this way so that no one could say, “This is not meant for me.” And if they did, it would be because of their pride, their unwillingness to go to the low place, not because of their low estate. The incarnation is God saying, “I will not be distant from you. I will not be unreachable. I will not be a palace you cannot enter. I will be with you. I will be one of you. I will be for you.” Amen.
[1] Bonaventure,
“The Life of Francis”, p.110 (Harper Collins Spiritual Classics)
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