HAVE YOU heard any good news lately? I mean, really good news, something that just happened changing all that we feared or loathed into a happy outcome? The Chilean miners gave us something to root for and a reason to cheer, when they all emerged from their darkness alive, and in great spirits. Someone is rescued, a war is won with few casualties, the economy takes a dramatic upswing, evil is averted: we long for such news. There is real news that is good, but it is a maxim in the news business that people grow impatient and even bored with happy tidings but will watch or read for hours on end the sordid details of a horrible auto accident or the outcome of the trial of a particularly heinous criminal. “Good news doesn’t sell,” the papers, radio and television inform us. That says, perhaps, more about us than about our news sources.
Good news tends to fade quickly and the outcome of an election we were happy about, or some peace accord in Israel, or the end of a natural disaster often give way to more corruption scandals, further violence in the Holy Land, or another earthquake, volcano or the perfect storm. Good news has a short shelf life, even when we receive it with interest.
And frankly, if you were to hear nothing but great and happy news all your life, and all things fell your way, your stocks soared, your baseball team won every World Series, the girl did fall in love and stayed in love with you, and your dental exam went perfectly: there is an end of life and a reckoning. All good things end, if we mean the money, or the house, or the job, or the pleasure cruises. Those last only so long, even if you’re Donald Trump. His hair didn’t last. Look who’s talking.
So, imagine a world where everyone did just about what they figured they would do, and some would make their own rules and break them, others just suffered and had no hope of a better life. Nobody talked about death because there was nothing there but the grave, if they were lucky. And if they weren’t, then there was a God and He was certainly mad at them. They couldn’t figure out how to solve that, though there were always some who posed their own solutions and created elaborate religious pursuits and rituals, spun tales about who on earth had the power to get you past the gate keepers of death, to a place that was happy, and filled with better people than the run of the mill that were down here. Such a world was this one just over 2,000 years ago. Then something changed.
The moment in our Lord’s life that most Western Christians focus on is His crucifixion and the atonement His great sacrifice paid for our souls’ salvation. It was indeed a moment where our destiny shifted dramatically. But it is also true that the entry of such a Being as the Son of God into His own creation, as part of that creation, was revolutionary and shattering great and wonderful news. The Savior is born, and we are transformed just to know that great and impossible fact.
From the moment of our creation, each of us has been a thing of this earth. We are formed of its elements—science even tells us that—scratched out of the native soil. We die and go back to the clay. But in our first coming alive, the breath of life given to us even in cellular form, we are made immortal souls, persons who will pass beyond this dirt, this dust, to a greater destiny. That destiny was once marred past mending, and no one on earth had the means to regain what we had fallen from. So, we needed a new man, an ambassador from God, a bridge made for us to be able to restore that passage from earth to God’s throne, and not just for judgment. There was no other way. We needed a new man.
An angel appeared to frightened a young woman, just a girl really, in her humble home in the hilly country west of Galilee. In that exchange, he heralded the conception of the Son of God in the womb of a woman. Nine months later, this night, He is born. The Incarnate God, in the flesh and being of a human man, redeems mankind in Himself. As He assumes human flesh, human flesh is no longer all just a sad waste, the worm food it had been, just common clay. He glorifies Himself and with Himself, He glorifies His creatures. Jesus, Lord of life and of all creation, gives honor to the human form by adopting it as His own. That’s how He loves you and how He loves me. We bear His likeness, as it was once meant to be, because He now bears our likeness, coming as one of us for our rescue.
The miners in Chile emerged from a rocky grave, miraculously unharmed. That was a modern miracle we witnessed this year. The followers and lovers of Jesus, who obey Him and worship Him, who are baptized and receive His Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament, who turn away from their sins, and who pray to the God who is Three and is One, will emerge from this dying planet one day miraculously unharmed, and that is a miracle we have witnessed every year since Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
That year, an old man cried out that he could finally die in peace, for his eyes had seen the Savior, as the Spirit of God had promised him. Foreign priest-scientist-astronomers, the magi, returned safely home to the Persian side of the Tigris River, escaping a wicked Judean ruler. It was happening. Mankind was being restored. All that little baby had to do was be. Shepherds couldn’t hold their peace, but shouted it all over town.
Now, if you’re out in the wild, sitting around a campfire that’s died down from its earlier blaze and the coals are just snapping out sparks, an occasional flare up showing the smoke still rising straight up, and sleep is overtaking you in the soothing, rhythmic insect sounds of the night—then a door in heaven flies open, flooding the sheepfold with light that is not of this world, and you jump. Oh, my goodness, you jump out of your skin! All you can think is, “I’m about to die!” You glance around you and all your fellow shepherds have heard it, seen it, and are as terrified as you are, when a voice comes from the brilliance and fixes your eyes on a being so filled with light his garments can’t hold it in. Earthly sounds are silenced, the crickets go still as this voice signifies that its owner sees you and knows what you’re feeling. “Fear not!” But you’re still in shock. “Don’t be afraid. Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, meant to be proclaimed to all people everywhere. For your sakes today the Savior has been born in David’s hometown, the Anointed One, the Lord. Look for this, a baby lying in a manger, wrapped in his swaddling clothes. There is no other to be found like that in Bethlehem on this night.”
The shepherds know about mangers, feeding troughs for livestock. A baby lying in that? It’s an odd thing for the Savior, for Messiah to do: lie in a feeding trough, but that should narrow down the search. There is one stable in town which has such a feature, they remember. Their thoughts are again interrupted as the entire sky fills with rank upon rank of these heavenly beings, and they are now sure these must be angels. Echoes of hundreds of fair voices they hear coming from a great distance, then the chorus is taken up by the ones closest to them. The song swells as “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,” is sung in Aramaic, and the shepherds understand. This is great news. The Savior is born. We’re saved. The land is spared. Our people can live forever. Death is not to be feared. Good tidings of great joy, indeed. Great joy. Everlasting joy.
No earthly source is able to generate joy of that kind for you or me, not everlasting joy. The coolest toy I ever got for Christmas, a working model submarine that dove in the pool and shot a missile, eventually sank and was thrown away. My Honda 90 trail bike got sold some years later, for $300 I think. The clothes and hairbrushes and Wii sets, the tinsel and chocolate oranges, all fun, all very worthwhile for their own brief moments, get eaten or boring or used up. Things on earth get old and can’t last. None of this lasts. And still, there is reason for joy, even here, even with such fine fleeting times, in gift-giving, in feasting and singing and rolling around in piles of bows and bags and foil wrapping. Sightseeing gaily decorated streets. It’s all great, and no word of discouragement in this zany and jubilant celebration will you hear from this pulpit. Let the checker say “Happy Holidays” and just smile and give him your best “Merry Christmas” and do not get upset if he can’t return the code words to you. The world, as far gone as it is, tonight celebrates, if even it does so imperfectly, the Birth.
We may focus on the stuff. We may concentrate on menus and recipes and tables groaning with steaming and elaborate food. We may fuss about the mess in the living room, or the stupid instructions for assembly that don’t make any sense to us. But I say, let it go for a minute. Take one big step back from the noise and the traffic and the gift return lines and the stuffed trash cans and the dropped pine needles and take this one very big thing in. It’s good news. It’s great news. It’s the news you were always meant to hear. This is the best news anyone could hear. Are you ready for it? Here it is.
Jesus, son of Mary, adopted son of Joseph the carpenter, is born in Bethlehem, King David’s hometown. Oh, and did I mention: He is the Son of God from eternity without any beginning, the only Person, the only Being who is able to enter our world as a part of this world that He Himself made, to bring us back from the dismal endless trackless darkness we were in to the glorious shining light beaming through a crack in the doorway of heaven. It all begins tonight. The Savior is born. And you are here for Him, and Him alone. Nothing else brought you here but this glorious, great and joyful news.
Good tidings of great joy. Jesus is born this night, and we have our Savior. The Mass of Christ, Christmas, is served for you. O come let us adore Him.
PFH+