Nativity of the Lord – Year A

What are we celebrating? Why is everything still so messed up? What impact does what we’re celebrating have on your life and mine right now, tonight? And how should we respond?

Those are the questions that are on my mind this Christmas Eve.

First, what are we celebrating? This should be obvious but I don’t think it is. I’m struck, actually, by how many people don’t really seem to know the basic message of the Gospel.

Let me offer you an image that has been particularly helpful to me.

Imagine that you and I are not Americans; that we’re French. And it’s not 2022, it’s 1944. Since June 14, 1940, our country has been occupied by a tyrannical, demonic regime. Our life has been totally overturned: deportations, executions, concentration camps; and these things are dayto-day realities. Then one day, June 7, 1944 to be exact, as you and I are sitting at our kitchen table, the newspaper boy rides by on his bicycle and excitedly throws a newspaper through the front window, smashing the glass to the floor, and we pick up the paper.

This is what we read: INVASION ON!! ALLIES LAND AT NORMANDY!! HITLER’S SEAWALL IS BREECHED!!

Now, if that’s you and me and we’re sitting there that day, reading the newspaper, do we just kinda go: “Hmm, wonder what else happened yesterday.” Would that be ordinary news or would that be extraordinary, life changing news? We need to answer that, right?

Let me frame it another way: Why did the Allies land at Normandy? It’s not like visiting the beaches of Normandy was on all their bucket lists. No, the answer is obvious; they’re there to fight! They’re there to go to battle. They’re there to liberate, to rescue, to save a people that are in the grip of a tyrant.

Ah, so why is he (points to the child Jesus in manger) there? Why did God become man? Why did he land, if you will?

The answer to that is supposed to be, as readily apparent as the answer to the Allies landing at Normandy but tragically, it’s not. Somehow, someway, Jesus has become some figure that came to teach us to be kind and to love. Somehow, someway, Jesus has become some figure that told stories and taught by parables. Somehow, someway, Jesus has been reduced to someone who did miracles and castigated religious leaders.

Now, to be sure. Jesus did teach us to be kind, and to love. He did do miracles and he taught by stories because that’s an effective way to teach. And he did at times castigate religious leaders. But those things are not the reason why he came. God became a human, a man, for the same reason the Allies landed at Normandy.

God became man to fight, to rescue, to liberate, to deliver a people in the grips of a tyrant infinitely worse than Adolf Hitler. Europe woke up June 7, 1944 and everything was different because someone had come. The people were suddenly filled with hope, because the landing, the invasion of the Allies was a message they were worth fighting for; they were worth rescuing. And that is what God wants you and me to leave here with this evening. The confidence, the joy, the hope that comes from knowing that the one who made everything that is, thinks you and me, for some reason, I don’t know why, are worth rescuing and fighting for.

That’s not my imagination, listen again to the words from Scripture we just heard: “For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster,” more literally: “the rod of their slave driver, you, Lord, have smashed!” Our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us, to rescue us, to free us. “For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.”

Here’s how another passage puts it in the Old Testament, from the book of Wisdom: “For when peaceful stillness encompassed everything and the night in its swift course was half spent, your all-powerful word from heaven’s royal throne leapt into a world doomed to die.”

I’m increasingly convinced that the only way you and I can fully understand the Gospel, the good news, is to more deeply appreciate and embed ourselves in what we might call the bad news.

As tempting as it is, especially for us Americans, Christmas is not a time for nostalgia. It’s not a time to look back on the good ol’ days, there were no good ol’ days, not ever since that fateful day in Eden.

Think to that Christmas carol that we sing, many of us anyway, year after year: “God rest ye merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, Remember Christ our Savior, Was born on Christmas Day.” Why? “To save us all from Satan’s pow’r, When we were gone astray, Oh tidings of comfort and joy.”

See, way back at the beginning of our race, our first parents were deceived by a creature who was himself once good, but who out of envy, not of God but of us and the plan that God has for us, those parents were deceived and unknowingly, they sold us, their decedents, into slavery to powers we can’t compete against.

Ours is a race that’s in bondage. Bondage to sin, bondage to death and bondage to the devil.

This is no fantasy, no careless product of wild imagination. The proof, I think is rather easy. Many of us, as I look out here, mindful of what it is that you’ve gone through in your lives and with your loved ones and me, with my life and my loved ones, we know, we are absolutely impotent in the face of death.

You can fight all you want, but you and I are going into the ground one day in a box. Such is the power of death.

Or how about this one: anybody here do things they hate doing, that they don’t want to do but they end up doing anyway? Am I alone in that? Have you ever wondered why? The biblical answer to the question why is because sin is a power that is continually trying to exert control over us. Simply put, the world is not benign and in despite all of our advances in technology and science, they can’t fix us. But God can.

Here’s how Jesus describes the situations that he comes into: “How can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, then he may plunder his house.” Who’s the strong man? The devil. What’s his house? The world. Who are his goods? Us. Who is the one that ties him up that’s stronger than him? That would be Jesus.

Here’s how the catechism puts it: “Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again…captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator.” One of the great preachers in the early Church put it this way: “Christ declared war against our enemy, crushed him who at the beginning had taken us captive in Adam, and trampled on his head,” so that he might destroy sin, overcome death and give life to man again. That is why he came, why he landed, that is why God became a man. He invaded a land that was doomed to die, a land held under a tyrant whose power is far worse than your worst nightmare and mine and to free you and me from that tyrant’s grip. The fight reached its culmination on a cross, when in a most extraordinary and creative way, Jesus drew the enemy close to him so as to destroy him but we will leave that for another night.

Now this all sounds wonderful. If this is the case, how come everything is still so obviously messed up?

Let me offer another analogy that has been helpful for me.

D-Day is when? June 6, 1944. The moment the Allies land and get inland the war in Europe is effectively over, the Allies know that, the Nazis know that, the people in Europe know that. But the war didn’t end in June of 1944. In fact, for the next 11 months, some of the battles that raged were fiercer than any of the other battles that came before that.

V-E Day, the end of the war in Europe wasn’t until May of 1945.

That’s how I think of Jesus’ work oftentimes. From the moment of his Resurrection from the dead, the war was won—God knows it and Satan knows it too. But he’s still prowling around, and he’s still fiercely fighting for your life and for mine and he will do so until the end of your life or until Jesus comes back, whichever comes first. But I am and you are no longer under his control. Which brings me to the third question.

How does all this which we are celebrating tonight, genuinely impact my life right now and your life right now? Death no longer holds me under its power.

I’ve lost family members I miss dearly. And sometimes the holidays can be the most difficult because I’m reminded once again how much I miss them. I miss them beyond words.

I remember all the Christmases we celebrated together so it leaves an indescribable hole in my heart. And I know some of you have similar holes in your hearts, especially this Christmas.

But here’s the truth: because of what it is that Jesus has done, death no longer has power over them. God has raised them. That is why he became a man, to destroy the one who has the power of death and to free us from the fear of death. And so, we can miss and we can mourn, and we do, I do, miss and mourn those who no longer walk with us right now but I can live my life in confidence assurance that I will see them again one day and that they are, really, somewhere right now, very much with us, in our midst. Hopefully, either on their way home or already home, cheering us on.

Finally, what should you and I do in response to all that God has done for us?

Let me offer two more real quick things.

First: we should praise and thank like no one we have ever praised and thanked: the rescuer. How did the people of Europe thank their liberators? Oftentimes you see pictures of the people in the streets of Rome or people in the streets of Paris or some other formally occupied city and they’re just throwing themselves at the Allies, thanking them profusely.

It’s just one giant festival of thanksgiving. They were overwhelmed and filled with joy over the fact that someone thought they were worth rescuing and fighting for.

So how should you and I respond to the one who has rescued us from death and from hell and from Satan?

Second: I heard it put recently that “those who have been rescued, rescue.” That’s a great line.

We end every mass with, “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.”

What does “Gospel” mean? Not “news,” but “Good News.” What kind of good news? Extraordinary good news. Life changing good news.

What is the good news? Simply this: that you matter. You are worth fighting for to the God who made everything that is, visible and invisible. You’re worth rescuing, you’re worth dying for, your worth him becoming a man. And so, we have been rescued to tell others about the one who has done this for us.

We’ve been rescued so as to do our best to witness to others the difference that Jesus and he alone, can make in our lives. And we’ve been rescued so as to transform everything we can that’s still somehow in the grip of the enemy of our race.

Tonight is not about trees, it’s not about presents, it’s not about eggnog, it’s not about mistletoe, it’s not even about family, great as all those things are, especially family. Tonight is about God. God has acted for us. He has become a man for us. He has rescued us, all because you matter. “God rest ye merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay, Remember Christ our Savior, Was born on Christmas Day, To save us all from Satan’s pow’r, When we were gone astray, Oh tidings of comfort and joy.” Merry Christmas.