Prior, Fr. Joel Macul, OSB - celebrant
Isaiah 9:1–6
Titus 2:11–14
Luke 2:1–14
It all comes down to this, to littleness, to a tiny child, a son, to be exact, but small nevertheless. Yes, it all comes down to vulnerability, to poverty, to utter simplicity. Yes, tonight is all about fragility, about being on the edge of society, of being reduced to essentials. That is the drama that our God is all about this night: becoming small, becoming weak, becoming truly human—no grandeur, nothing great, just a child, and an infant at that.
Isaiah seems to have intuited this child. He saw the child in grand terms. He pictured him as great. To be honest, he seems to have military language at hand to describe the expected one. Yes, someone who could smash oppression, cut through slavery and human trafficking, take away the yoke that made domination, discrimination and force the face of authority and power. It would have to be someone great, someone who came from a family of greatness. A hero Isaiah calls him, a father to the community, a peacemaker. Isaiah envisioned a leader whose domain was in fact not just a small kingdom, but an empire seen as vast. This child, this son of David would set the world right; justice would be his name.
Isaiah was and is right. The vision is true. There is a victory, and the old order can be changed, can be conquered and a new order can and will be possible. There will be a way of living that means a vast kingdom of justice and peace. Tonight tells us that it has arrived but not on our terms. We liked to fill in the definitions of God-hero, Father-Forever, Wonder-Counselor, Prince of Peace—usually as some one great and powerful. And we take up these names in our songs and hymns. But tonight we hear that our God will give us this person—in his way.
We wait in Advent for someone to come, for God to break into our lives. Tonight God comes, he answers in a surprising way: what he gives us is a child, an infant. Could any human being be more powerless, more vulnerable, more fragile than a newborn child? And yet for all the great expectations and names and hopes and dreams, we are given a child. The answer to our prayers, our deepest longing to see the face of God, is someone wrapped in swaddling clothes, a newborn child. Or put in other words, we are given the gift of God become weak.
We need to understand that the child Isaiah saw was not of our making. It is a gift, “a child, a son is given to us.” We humans are helpless, weak and broken. It seems we cannot overcome that strain of acting as if we can do it ourselves. We can make things better on our own. But God knows our hearts. The only way out of the impasse of repeated self-centeredness of making ourselves great, is to offer us a gift, a gift from himself, the gift of his Son. The prophet saw this gift of a child as light in darkness. He saw in this child as the gift of wisdom and peace.
The gospel story makes it very clear that when God sends his gift it will come in what looks like insignificance; his gift will look like something powerless in the face of the task that lies ahead. And yet, this is our God’s way. To smash our yoke of pride and self-sufficiency, he offers us the gift of becoming vulnerable, of becoming weak, even of dying, of loosing everything human.
And yet we know that powerlessness and vulnerability, these qualities that are readily identified with a child, are what will mark this Son of God’s life. We believe that in the end the vast domain of peace will only come about through the cross and death of this Son. We believe that what will break oppression will be the willingness of God’s infant to walk into our messy, often chaotic and broken lives and touch them with a strength that is pure love and selflessness. We are not afraid to gather in the darkness this night to receive this gift of a child because we believe that hidden in powerlessness, in smallness is true greatness, faithful love and a God who is not afraid to come into this world to those who for a moment are homeless, on the move and without a bed.
Paul reminds us that the grace of God, the gift of God, has appeared; God’s ultimate gift to humanity has come among us. God’s gift was to walk our human path in such way that we would be drawn to accepting this gift, this favor of God so that our lives would again become human. And Jesus, he gave himself for us so that we would be free, our bonds and yokes would be broken, and we could, as the angel says to the shepherds, live without fear.
Tonight we are offered God’s greatest gift, we have found favor with God and he extends his peace to us. Will we accept this Christmas gift—finding strength through becoming weak, by accepting who we are so that we can grow into who we can become? For in the end, the good news of great joy is that tonight God gifts us with his child, so that in opening our arms to accept this gift, we in turn may become his daughters and sons.
Christ is born! Glorify him!