Christmas Midnight 2014
Robert VerEecke, S.J.
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas. (sung)
Well, dream all you want… it’s not a white Christmas, it’s a wet
Christmas. “Have yourself a messy little Christmas.” That’s more
like the day it has been today. Wet, not white—messy, not merry.
Today’s weather may be closer to the experience of Mary and
Joseph on their journey to Bethlehem. It would have been very rare
for them to have snow at this time of the year. I don’t know about
rain, but mild weather is much more likely.
We do have our Christmas fantasies. What it’s supposed to look
like (a fresh snowfall)… What it’s supposed to feel like (joyful,
merry)… What it’s supposed to be like (peaceful, with friends and
family gathered around the table for a wonderful Christmas dinner
after opening the present that you’ve always wanted)…
In our imagination, Christmas is the perfect blend of beauty
outside and that loving feeling inside. But dream on. That’s not
what the reality is for most of us. It certainly wasn’t for a young
couple in great distress who faced the birthing of a child into a
world that was anything but calm and bright.
But that’s the Really Good News of Christmas. God chooses to
enter a world that is broken yet beautiful, sinful yet save-able, lost
yet love-able.
That is why even when we imagine our “perfect” Christmas scene,
there will be something or someone “missing”. Who is missing
from your Christmas Dinner table? The aged parent or friend with
Alzehimer’s tucked away in a nursing home, a loved one who is no
longer with you, an estranged family member or friend with whom
you’ve never reconciled?
And who’s missing from the Lord’s Christmas table? A family
member or friend who has stopped coming to church, one who
does not feel welcomed or accepted? And what will be missing in a
world where justice and peace rarely embrace?
That is why we chose the symbol of the empty crèche during the
advent season, as a reminder of what is so often missing in our
lives. It’s not the “baby Jesus” who is missing (although we’ve
been in a search for him all day).
The empty crèche is not empty because we wait for another birth.
It’s empty because it cannot contain all that God has become in our
world through the Word made flesh. Once upon a time, God
entered the world that he created in an inconceivable way, as a
newborn, vulnerable human being.
Jesus, himself, becomes the crèche that holds all of human
existence within himself. And now, for all time, God in Christ is
enfleshed in us. We have become the crèche. The risen Jesus lives
in the crèche of our flesh and blood, in our lives with our hopes
and dreams.
And so on this wet and messy Christmas midnight, the question for
all of us is twofold:
Will we let God “crèche”—not crush—us with his infinite love and
mercy?
Will we let ourselves be the crèche that holds that infinite love and
mercy in trust for others?
Yes, a wet and wild and messy Christmas, but still we stand in awe
and wonder that the Word became flesh in our broken yet
beautiful, sinful yet save-able, lost yet love-able world? After all,
for a God who is love what other way could there be?