December 25, 2024 at Saint Agnes and Saint Peter Churches in Naples, FL
Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Psalm 96 + Titus 2: 11-14 + Luke 2: 1-14
From the Square in front of Saint Peter in Rome to this church here in Naples, with precious statues fashioned by great artists to cardboard figures, in my home and probably in your home as well some image of a baby in a manger presents a great mystery that can stir hope in us and lead us to Joy. There is something almost magical and certainly mystical about that baby lying there far from home, powerless, poor, and helpless. It easy to simply look at that baby with romantic Christmas Carols going through our head and just continue to muddle through this season without a serious thought about why and what it means for there to be a baby at the center of it all. There is a question that must be asked as we look at that baby. Failing to do so reduces that baby to little more than a scene printed on a Christmas Card headed for the trash.
I have always wondered about those shepherds and what they saw when they looked at that baby. I want to believe that they asked, “What does this mean?” Something turned their fear into joy. Something sent them back to their fields with a different spirit. What I suspect is that they looked at that baby and saw themselves lying there vulnerable, helpless, poor, and powerless. I want to think that having heard Good News from those heavenly visitors, they understood that if their longed-for Messiah could look like them, homeless, helpless, and poor, they were no longer alone. Now God was with them just as they were.
It might be good for us to take long look at that baby and see what they saw asking what that baby means. When we do, its truth may break into our hearts, for we are all as helpless as that baby. In the face of our own suffering and the suffering all around us we are as powerless as that baby. We are homeless too because no matter where we are, it’s never quite right and never lasts for long. Like that baby, we live in times of oppression, trapped and oppressed by economic conditions or oppressed simply by the great demands on our time and resources, often leaving us feeling very much alone.
Those Shepherds looked at that baby and were filled with joyful hope not because everything was suddenly made right, but because they remembered the Good News they had heard. They realized that God had come to them and was intimately and physically sharing their existence.
That baby can mean something to any of us who look, wonder, and remember the Good News we have heard. We can discover what it means for God to be found as a baby. For anyone ever feeling alone, misunderstood or helpless, betrayed by friends, abandoned when most in need, or misjudged and accused of things we never did just like the man that baby became, there is something powerful to see in that baby when that question is asked. God is with us. God is Emmanuel.