My homily for Christmas Midnight Mass

Homily – Christmas Midnight Mass

Readings

            Isaiah 9: 1-6

            Psalm 96

            Titus 2:11-14

            Luke 2:1-14

            Well, it’s finally here. After all of the planning, and the running around and preparations and paying attention to all kinds of details, Christmas has arrived. So what do you think? Is it what you expected? Doesn’t it seem that every Christmas there is some new and unexpected event or wrinkle or wondrous surprise? Sometimes it is unexpected bad news or difficulties like an illness or losing a loved one. Sometimes it is a joyful surprise like someone announcing their engagement or that they are expecting a baby. But Christmas always seems to have something unexpected attached to it.

            We have spent Advent preparing to remember the coming of the Lord – the Advent of our God to earth. And we have prayed for him to come again, and to come into our hearts. All of Advent has been focused on Christ’s coming – the arrival of the Messiah.

            Now imagine for a moment that you had been waiting for thousands of years for the Messiah like the Jewish people were – waiting for the one who was going to save you from the “yoke that burdens you, the pole on your shoulder and the rod of your taskmaster” as Isaiah promised. And then the day arrives – and it’s a baby! Born helpless, poor, hungry – in a state of complete dependence. Not at all what you expected. It always seems that God defies what we expect. Why would God choose to come to us that way?

            Maybe it’s because as much as we have wanted Christ to come to us, Christ even more wants us to come to him. And he wants us to come to him because he has a message of God’s hope, God’s mercy, God’s salvation. Rather than approaching God with fear and trepidation, we can come to the Christ child in wonder, and in awe, and without fear. Our God is approachable…in fact, God wants us to come as comfortably as we come to a newborn baby: without fear, without pretensions, without apprehension.

            The angels say as much to the shepherds – do not be afraid. Come – come to Bethlehem, come to see the Christ child. Come to see God’s advent among the people. And our Christmas hymns emphasize this too – “Rise Up, Shepherd, and follow”; “O Come, Little Children, come one and come all”; and probably the best known:

[Singing] O come let us adore him

[Singing together] O come let us adore him

O come let us adore him…

Christ the Lord

            Christ’s birth was the beginning of the life of the one who called us – each of us and all of us – to come to him. “Come”, he said, “leave your boats and your customs post, and whatever else you’re doing, and come follow me”. “Come”, he said, “come out of your grave and live again, come down from up there in the tree and have dinner with me”.  “Come”, he said, “come and eat my body and drink my blood and have life”. “Come”, he said, “come to me all of you who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest”. “Come”

            In the rest of the year before us, there will be plenty of time to think about our responsibilities, to consider what it means to be a follower of this Christ, the Messiah, God-with-us. There will be time to learn and to grow in this Year of Faith, and there will be time to reflect on our discipleship. But for tonight, for right now, let’s just be at peace with each other and be in communion with God and those around us. Let’s bask in the feeling of warmth that comes from a God who loves us so desperately and calls us to come near. Let’s sing and be joyful and celebrate this prayerful time together.

O come, let us adore him

O come, let us adore him

O come let us adore him

Christ, the Lord.

Merry Christmas!

Homily – Third Sunday of Advent – Year C (12/16/12)

            I don’t have any answers. I don’t think anyone does. We look at a tragedy like the events in Newtown and we can wonder why, we can wonder where God was, we can wonder if there really is any goodness in the world.

            And it is especially difficult to try to reconcile what has happened with the celebration of the Third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, a Sunday when our readings are calling for us to rejoice. “Shout for joy!” our first reading says, “sing joyfully”. Paul tells the Philippians, “Rejoice in the Lord always – I’ll say it again, Rejoice!” And the Gospel says that John preached “good news”. On most days, and especially on this past Friday, the news seems to be anything other than “good”.

            With so much pain in the world, and with such spectacular tragedies as Sandy Hook Elementary, what could be the cause for rejoicing? Zephaniah tells the people to rejoice because the Lord is in their midst. Isaiah tells us that God is among us and Paul tells the Philippians that the Lord is near. But it sure doesn’t feel like the Lord is among us or near us or in our midst when we experience tragedy and sorrow. And yet we are called to rejoice – regardless of how we FEEL. Because our joy is not a religious sentiment or an emotional happiness, but rather a confidence in God’s care no matter what comes our way.

            Our joy is grounded in the conviction that Jesus came and did, in fact, redeem humanity – even in the face of evidence to the contrary. And so we are told to fear not. Paul tells us, have no anxiety. Because our Advent joy comes from our realization, our confidence, our belief that God is, in fact, in our midst, and that God’s presence can so transform our lives that the promises of peace and security and harmony will one day be fulfilled. Our Advent joy comes from our insistence on celebrating this Paschal Mystery – the commemoration of Jesus’ own suffering as redemptive and as our salvation. And we sing “Alleluia” at the raising of the Gospel as an act of defiance in the face of evil. Our Advent joy comes from our conviction that because of the incarnation, because of Jesus taking on our humanity, because God is truly with us, is Emmanuel, that we can look at tragedy and know that humanity is more than the evil and wickedness that we see.

            We will continue to be confronted by sorrow and sadness in our lives – it is sometimes close to us like unemployment or sickness or loss of loved ones, and it is sometimes far away - but still touching us deeply - like Newtown, CT. If we are to be people of Advent joy, we might ask, like the people in today’s Gospel, “What are we to do?” Paul’s answer is to lead lives of kindness, to be people of gentleness, to forego any retaliation. John the Baptist’s answer is to be who you are called to be – to find goodness and right living and care for others in the ordinary circumstances of our lives.

            There are no answers to our “why?” in the face of such incomprehensible tragedy. All we can do, if we are truly intent on Christ’s “advent”, is to bring a different way of living into these situations. All we can do is to take hold of God’s hand so that there is some effect of God’s love in our surroundings. All we can do is to bring our own reflection of Jesus’ presence to our own circumstances so that at least a few areas of the world are made receptive to God’s truth and justice and made ready to receive Jesus when he comes again.