Christmas Eve 2007

Christmas Eve 2007
Gathered by Christ Episcopal Mission
Buckeystown, MD

I’ve been listening to some tracks from a band called Over the Rhine. I’d never heard of this band until I read about them on the blogger site RevGalBlogPals. Evidently, this duet has quite a local following in their native town of Cincinnati, Ohio (“Over the Rhine” is a reference to a downtown neighborhood in Cincinnati founded by German immigrants). OTR, as the band is known by their fans, has a new Christmas CD out called Snow Angels, which you can hear through their web site. In it, they reinterpret the classic carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem. Their version opens with the familiar first verse of the carol, but continues on in a very different tone:

The lamp lit streets of Bethlehem,
we walk now through the night.
There is no peace in Bethlehem,
there is no peace in sight.
The wounds of generations
are most too deep to heal
a scarlet timeworn miracle
and make it seem surreal.

This is the stark reality of Bethlehem, isn’t it? “How still we see thee lie” seems to be more of a wish for this town than the reality it ever has known. Bethlehem, and Palestine for that matter, has always been caught at a cross road. In the ancient world, it was bound on the north by the great empires of Greece and Rome, to the south by Egypt, and to the east by the empires of Assyria, Babylon and Persia. At one time or another, Palestine and Bethlehem were overrun by the occupying forces of these major world powers. Bethlehem has always known conflict.

That was certainly the case 2,000 years ago when a dirt poor, unwed teenage mother and her fiancé entered the town on the order of an occupying force’s unfunded government mandate to be counted in a census … no doubt so the government could raise their taxes. They arrive in Bethlehem only to find they can’t get a decent room. Obviously they didn’t have the shekels to grease the palm of the local innkeeper for better digs, so they end up in the barn loft with the animals and the other poor people who couldn’t get into the inn either. Oh sure, they might have been able to stay with relatives, but the shame of sticking by his pregnant girlfriend likely put some stress between Joseph and his extended family – would you want to have to explain the situation to your relatives?

Yet, as the prophet Isaiah had predicted, God was going to do a new thing. Oh sure, God was … well … God. This God who formed the foundations of the world could have come in great glory and light and power and special effects which would make Hollywood seem pale in comparison. But instead of doing the predictable thing, God came in a new way – as a helpless, powerless, poor, marginalized baby. And over 2,000 years later, we are still trying to understand what this means.

What does it mean that Christ was born 2,000 years ago? What relevance does this have for us, right here, in Adamstown, Buckeystown, Urbana, and all the other little towns where we live? If we freeze this story in time, we can be tempted to turn it into something that seems surreal and disconnected from us. So what does it mean for us?

Ironically, one of the best responses to this question comes to us from our past too. From the 13th century to be exact, in the words of a German Christian mystic named Johannes Eckhart – Meister Eckhart. I was introduced to Meister Eckhart by the priest at the church I attended in college. Eckhart was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Boneventure. But Eckhart was not exactly a “party line” kind of guy. He dared to speak of God in terms which rocked the establishment and even caused him to be tried by the Inquisition as a heretic (he died before receiving the results of the judgment which acquitted him of the charges). He dared to image God as a woman, a fertile woman – a woman giving birth to all creation! Those terms might even shock some people in our own day who cling to a uniquely masculine image of God.

Meister Eckhart addressed the relevance of Jesus’ birth in his own day. He said to the congregation in Erfurt, Germany one Christmas:

“We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity.... But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me.”

And to paraphrase another quote:

“What does it matter that the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago if I do not give birth to Christ in my own day?”

This is the essence of Christmas. It was not just the birth of one child 2,000 years ago far away and removed from us. It is the ongoing birth of Jesus in each and every one of us which is the continuation of the Christmas story here and now. Giving birth to Christ in our own time, in our own hearts, in our own lives, is the essence of why Christmas is still relevant today. Giving birth to Jesus in our hearts means living lives grounded in Christ’s teachings, giving to others, reaching out to the last, lost, little, least and lifeless among us, and being the people of God even as we live in an imperfect and wounded world.

The baby in the manger
grew to a man one day,
and still we try to listen now
to what he had to say:
“Put up your swords forever,”
“Forgive your enemies,”
“Love your neighbor as yourself,”
“Let your little children come to me.”

This is our call at Christmas: to make Christ born anew in our lives and in our world through our faith and deeds.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin and enter in
be born in us today.

Amen.