Christmas  2024

Isaiah 9:2-7; Ps 96 Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

The Rev’d Dr. Deborah Meister, ODM

“And Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger.” (Luke 2:7)

And after all that, does it matter? Is what we have heard something real, something to hang our life on, or is it just a story, a comforting fable to safeguard us against the darkness of this world?

All year long, the wrong portions of this story have been marching across our screens. Rapacious rulers, eager for gold, plundering the scant riches of the poor. Men, women, and children traveling from place to place, seeking a refuge willing to take them in. Scant food, thin clothing, the most tenuous of shelters, and always, hunger in the belly and fear at the throat. And so we have to ask, does the birth of Christ matter?

I think it does. I believe that it matters supremely, that it is what redeems our world.

I have heard tell a beautiful story about the landscape painter, John Constable. Constable’s son, also named John, wrote with great tenderness of a day when Constable had arranged to have a special exhibition of his works at the family home. Many important critics had come to see them, and also to witness the unveiling of a new masterpiece: a large canvas upon which Constable had labored for a long time. The critics circulated among the lesser paintings, gazing and commenting, awaiting the time when the new painting would be unveiled, probably sipping their wine. But when Constable pulled the cord to draw back the cover from his masterwork, there was an audible gasp: the great canvas had been torn from top to bottom.

Later, after all the guests had gone home, Constable was left sitting in his home with his torn painting. All of his children were there except John, and when little John returned home, he appeared very frightened, as if he had something to hide. Constable pulled the small boy aside and asked him, “John, did you do this?” The child replied, “Yes.”  At that, the great painter looked his son straight in the eyes and asked him, “How shall we mend it, my dear?”[1]

“How shall we mend it, my dear?” No rage, no bitterness, just the simple tenderness of a father with a wayward but much beloved son. John the son remembered it all his days as an unexpected mercy, an offering of love when something very different had been expected. It was a miniature Christmas, a moment of sheer grace.

“How shall we mend it, my dear?” That is what God asks us this Christmas, looking out at the gorgeous canvas that is this world, God’s masterpiece that we have torn and blackened. Where God painted life, we wrote in death. Where God drew fruitfulness, we wrote in waste. Where God asked only for kindness, we invented class and race and scorn and bitterness and hunger and war. And when God looked upon God’s ravished creation, God did not come to us in wrath, but in tenderness. Where we looked for a fiery serpent, a punishment out of nightmare, God offered us, instead, a child: an innocent sign of God’s abiding love for us.

It is so very simple, and yet, it takes a lifetime to understand. To see that child — really to see that child — is to see the heart of God. It requires us to lay down our broken ways of seeing each other, and to accept that, in God, the tenderness is all. It asks us to lay down our shame, our guilt, our self-will, even our knowledge that we have done wrong, and to let it all be subsumed in God’s abiding love. St. Paul writes, “from now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view…If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:16-17)

To see that Child — Jesus, God with us — is to see nothing else. To know that all the brokenness is real, that the destruction is real, that the damage is real — but to know that, by God’s grace, they do not hold any ultimate power. St. John of the Cross wrote, “in the evening, we will be judged on love.” I would add, “because love is what will remain.”

John Constable remembered his father’s forbearance to the end of his days, because it showed him that great as his father’s love was for the beauty of his work, the painter loved his children more. When the chips were down, he cared less for the marring of the painting than for the marring of his son’s spirit. Just so, when God looks at God’s shattered creation, at all the damage, all the loss, what stands out most clearly is the pain that we bear, we who are made in God’s own image.

That is the love God reveals to us this night, and the love God shows again in the face of every newborn child. Before a newborn child, even the most hardened of us is caught up in reverence, in joy, in wonder that something so beautiful and so vulnerable should be entrusted into our hands. Why should we believe that we are any less wonderful in the sight of God, who made us so that God could cherish us?

Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Matt 13:45-6) That is what is happening tonight: God has sold everything: strength and glory and immortality and eternity and the joy of heaven in order to come among us in order that God might live with us forever.

In the last few years, I have been drawn towards one image in particular: an ancient icon, called the Virgin of Tenderness. The image does not show much: the Virgin, head modestly covered, gazing out at us, holding the baby Jesus, whose face presses up against her own, one hand patting her cheek or curling around her neck. It is a simple image, just the love of a child for his mother, and the tenderness she holds for him and for us.

That tenderness is a mirror of God. With the birth of Christ, God whispers a new word into this world, gently but insistently: a word of tenderness, of mercy, of hope. A word that crosses out all our corrupted fantasies of God, and brings in the God of truth.  God’s answer does not meet our questions, but slips past them unnoticed. God answers us on God’s terms, not on ours, and leaves it to us to notice and to listen.

And so today we gaze on the face of Jesus, for only in pondering that divine love, only in letting it seep into our hearts, do we begin to understand the mystery and the beauty of God. The broken things of this world, the things which rend your heart, can never bring you to the place of peace. Never. But “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things… and the God of peace will be with you,” this Christmas and always. (Phil 4:8-9)

I wish you a blessed, holy, and joyful Christmas!

[1] I first heard this story in a sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. George Councell, Feb 29, 2008.