Advent and Christmas
Luke 2:1-14
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Reflection
It’s a very human scene Luke paints in his Christmas story: population movement due to a political edict, crowded town, pregnant, unmarried young woman, all rooms booked out, animal pen, birth emergency.
The trouble with some of the more ‘religious’ Christmas cards and some of the carols and hymns associated with the season is that they’re all too ‘clean’, too neat and tidy and too ‘out there’. For example, Away in a Manger has the verse: “...the little Lord Jesus no crying he makes”, crying is associated with weakness, or being a troublesome baby or maybe it’s too much of a human thing for the Son of God to be crying!
This probably sounds like nit-picking but we sing this stuff without really taking in what it all means!
As one writer, Ron Rolheiser puts it: “What Christmas (the Incarnation) teaches us is that God is as much domestic as monastic, a God of the body as well of the soul, a God who is found in shopping malls as well as in churches, in kitchens as well as in cathedrals. Among the many things we celebrate is the sacredness of our own lives, in all their physicality.”
All that is good and life-giving where we live, where we work can be called holy. It simply means that the earth and all that is in it is sacred.
But it seems, as Christians, a lot of us have trouble believing all that – it’s bit too much to take in, a little too close to the bone. If we really began to comprehend the incarnation - God becoming human - we would have to let go of some cherished understandings that keep us comfortable and entrenched in our own belief systems and prejudices.
The Incarnation breaks down our dualistic thinking – spirit/body, clean/messy, ‘good guys/bad guys’. It’s a long list!
The Incarnation is a very challenging and in some ways a very disturbing thing!
A Christmas thought:
God has become what we are, what I am, so that I/we might become what God is. (Irenaeus, 130 – 202 AD, Church Father and Apologist).
Article written by Fr Jack Evans who is a member of the Columban Mission Institute, Centre for Peace Ecology and Justice in Sydney.
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