Well, y’all, Christmas is over.   Officially.   And before you start to think that I’ve finally lost my mind, lemme tell ya what I mean.  Today, 2 February, is the 40^th day of the liturgical Christmas/Epiphany season, and marks the presentation of Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem and the purification of Mary.  Way back then, and in many instances still today,   40 days after giving birth to a son is when a mother was blessed and gave thanks for safely making it through childbirth. This was called “purification.”  It was less about a mother being somehow impure and more about giving thanks and giving time for recovery from birth.

Today is the day that Jesus was presented in the temple. According to the law of Moses, presenting the firstborn male as an offering to God was done for all livestock animals. This was to remember and give thanks to God for delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt. The final plague in Egypt was the death of the firstborn, but the Israelites were saved at that first Passover with the sacrifice of a lamb. A firstborn son is dedicated to God and redeemed at the temple 40 days after birth with an offering.

Now, at the temple lived a priest who was very, very old.  His name was Simeon and he was very, very faithful to God, and God had told Simeon that he would not die before he had been able to meet the Savior.  Well, lo and behold, when Mary and Joseph got to the temple, Simeon KNEW that Jesus was the Savior he had been waiting a very, very long time to meet.  The Gospel according to St Luke tell us that Simeon took the baby into his arms and blessed God, saying: 

 “Now, Master, you may let your servant go 
        in peace, according to your word,
    for my eyes have seen your salvation,
        which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples:
    a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
        and glory for your people Israel.”

Well, you can imagine that Mary and Joseph were kinda tripped out, especially when Simeon continued to Mary:

“Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
-and you yourself a sword will pierce-
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Great story, huh?  But, you ask, “What in the world does this have to do with us today?”  Well, as is my custom, I’m gonna tell ya.  We all of us know that that baby that Simeon was very, very excited about grew up and, indeed, became the “light for revelation to the Gentiles,” and whilst he was at it, he gave us some very, very specific instructions.  He told us, no, commanded us, to go into the world and preach the gospel.  And reckon wonder how do we do that?  Jesus told us how to do that, too.  He told us, no, commanded us, to love.  Period.  He even said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)   

Now, you’ll notice that the scripture says, by this everyone will know that you are my DISCIPLES.  Today, there are SO SO SO many folks who claim to be “Christian,” but are nowhere near to being a “disciple.”   What’s the difference, you may ask?  My friend, Rainbow Joseph, explained it best when he wrote:

“You were called by Christ to be a disciple, not a Christian.  A disciple is an apprentice. A disciple learns from a teacher how to be like the teacher. A disciple learns by doing. A disciple practices the skill that is learned, over and over, improving a little more each day.  Jesus THE Christ has called you to be a christ to those around in your own personal Israel.  If you are not the Christ to those around you, then you do not serve THE Christ and you have learned nothing.  If you are not the Christ to those around you, then you are not a disciple, and if not a disciple, you are certainly not a Christian.”

Period.  Hands down.  Those who claim to be Christians, and who are not disciples, do a disservice to the gospel message by watering down his message to one of religious platitudes. We like to generalize the words of Jesus and transform his life into a one-size-fits-all model that can apply to all of humanity.  He intentionally, purposefully, and passionately addressed very specific causes. He radically addressed the diverse and complicated conflicts of the time and shattered the status quo.  Are we, as Christians, not called to do the same?  By addressing racism, immigration, gender equality, and a litany of other issues, we are following in the steps of Jesus.  By remembering that there is not one person on this planet that God does not love, that Jesus did not die for, and acting with that love that Jesus talks about, we are disciples.  By working for the change that would better the entire world, and each individual, we are disciples.  By asking for mercy, working toward that mercy, by loving those who are oppressed, by loving those who are hard to love, those who are opposed to everything that we (not necessarily Jesus) want, we are disciples.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)  

Amen.

In an era filled with trivial chatter, where tweets broadcast mundane activities, politicians lie without shame, and words like justice, love, and God are diluted by arrogance, we forget the power of words.

We mistrust each other and settle for superficial interactions, avoiding the risk of genuine loving. We distract ourselves with busyness, ignoring others’ needs. Words can deceive us, trapping us in falsehoods. The lie that deceived humanity continues to mislead us today. Our modern arrogance claims we can control the world with science and ingenuity. Are we smarter than Jesus?

Even in our pride, we know something is amiss. We yearn for eternal words full of meaning, spirit, and life—to hear them, break free from our falsehoods. The 5,000 who journeyed with Ezra from captivity heard the sweet truth, felt God’s word pierce their hearts, making them weep and washing away the lies that bound them.

Centuries later, people who heard the voice of a young man reading from the scroll likely desired freedom. The act of Christ reading the prophet’s text may have held significant power. His audience was attentive to his words. In the modern age, are people, are you still interested in hearing the words of the Galilean preacher. Every Sunday they are read and yet I see people not listening, they may hear but there is a difference,

Our emotions are similar to those who mourned with Ezra or experienced renewal through Christ. We want to cleanse falsehoods with our tears, but language fails us. Thus, we must rely on faith to lead us to the living Word.

St Paul sensed this reality, this consoling Gospel, and although his words at first seem mundane, they speak to us of a reality that breaks the chains of self-centered isolation and draws us into relation with one another. Listen without distraction! By Baptism and the Eucharist that we share, the Body of Christ speaks of our solidarity, our call to play an integral part in one another’s lives. It is the lie of this age that tells us that I am my own master, that the ego is absolute. We will never be free, never find true happiness locked as we are in the isolation of our self-absorption. No matter how many gadgets we have or how much we tell ourselves that we are socially networked, it is all a lie if we fail to be the mystical Body of Christ. Community and communion complete us, incorporate us into the Body of Christ.

Paul struggled to find a way to help us realize that our lives each play a unique role in the Body. He knew that we understand ourselves not in isolation but in relation with one another. We all take part in Christ, we all manifest God’s call, God’s Word made flesh dwelling among us. It shatters our deceptions and sets us into the drama of God’s saving act in history. By the waters of Baptism, we were given our Christian names and given a share in the divine name itself.

Words do have power to heal us, to set us free, to restore our sight, to give us comfort, if we but hear the Master’s voice. Listen. Put away your earbuds, turn off the noise, listen with an inner stillness and you will hear the Word of everlasting life. This mysterious Body is made real in our Eucharistic ‘Amen,’ a word that bids us to become what we receive. The power of the prophetic word hits us even today amid earthquakes and wars, amid poverty and neglect. Do you hear it? Does it speak to your soul and call you into caring? For there is its power, our being the Body of Christ.

Today is the story where we find out that Mother Mary is not Latina or Italian! Son of God or not, if I had told my mother or grandmother “woman,” they would still be finding pieces of my rear end.

‘On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee.’ (“What might “on the third day” stand for in John 2:1?”) In context, then, the third day after leaving Judaea, way down south, where Jesus had been involved in the movement associated with his cousin John the Baptist and had undergone the what we now know is baptism into the waters, with extraordinary effect, at John’s hands.

The journey on foot up the Jordan valley to Galilee takes about two days, so this makes sense. Cana – Khirbet Qana – is nine miles north of Nazareth on the road into the hills, west from the Sea of Galilee, so most likely there was time to stop and pick up our Mother Mary. As we read, ‘The mother of Jesus was there, and Jesus himself and his disciples had also been invited to the celebration’. In this period, it seems, Jewish weddings took place on Wednesdays and the celebrating lasted for seven days.

Naturally, the wine ran out (perhaps some of those invited, had not contributed anything), was about to cause humiliation, a minor disaster, for the newlyweds. Mary gets her Son’s attention to the redness of the groom’s face, an expression, we can suppose, of a natural response. ‘They have no wine.’ Her Son refuses to help with the issue at first. Was it for family situations such as this that he had been set apart for his mission as the Christ, the Lamb of God, the Suffering Servant who was to actualize the Messianic promises? His hour had not yet come, he tells her, replying with a seeming roughness, ‘Woman’.

Consider speaking from a son to a mother, that way of talking to her has no present parallel in Hebrew or Greek. That should alert us to the fact that something more is going on here than meets the eye. The phrase ‘my hour’ has in this Gospel-book a technical significance: it means the time of the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. In particular, it means the moment of the Crucifixion, the power and glory hidden in the Cross being manifested in the Resurrection. And at the Cross the Son will say the same word to his mother in the same way as he does at Cana. He will look down from the Cross and call out, ‘Woman’ – not just to gain her attention, but to tell her she will be the mother and protectress of the infant Church. She is the Mother of the Messiah, and her place now is in the struggle against the satanic serpent as prophesied in Genesis to the Mother of all the living: she whom the Fall narrative indeed calls ‘the Woman’, the first Eve. Mary appears at the Cross’s foot to be given new offspring in the shape of the beloved disciple who stands here for all Christians: it will be her task to protect these offspring in the ongoing contest between Satan and the followers of Christ.

So back to Cana, then: there is no rudeness here, but a revealing of the significance of an internal problem in the light of the destiny she is to share with her Son in the plan of God.

Yet, he agrees to do something. She says to the waiters, ‘Do whatever he tells you’. The spiritual assurance the grace of her Immaculate Conception gives her allows her to rely on a response. The generosity of God can embrace things as small as local disappointments as well as things as large as the salvation of the world, and in any case this little domestic drama is, as it happens, filled with symbolic possibilities which the Messiah now exploits in his first ‘sign’. The result is one hundred and twenty gallons of what an enthusiast found to call quite excellent wine.

The Church of course accepts the possibility of miracle. Creation, we say, is not a completely closed system, but is open to its Creator at a range of points. It should be said, however, that the miraculous element is not in itself the climax of this story. The climax is the disciples’ belief of what the miracle symbolizes. The abundance of this splendid wine symbolizes the unheard of, profuse, generosity of God that is now, in Jesus, to be crucified. This overwhelming generosity became incarnate in him, and the story marks the moment when the change began to drop. ‘What Jesus did at Cana in Galilee marked the beginning of his signs; thus, he revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.’

Today’s celebration is one of great significance, having many intense and important themes. It celebrates an end and a beginning, the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of the Church’s year, ordinary time.

The boundary between these two areas is not clearly drawn; the Baptism of the Lord has what has gone before, and points to what is to come. At the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, we can detect some of the themes which we shall meet in the course of the Church’s year.

During the Christmas liturgies we experienced once again the birth of Christ, ‘the fulfilment of prophecy and the pivotal point of history’, as theologians described it, in its two presentations in the Gospels. In the feast of the Nativity we witnessed the local presentation, witnessed by the Jewish people represented by Mary, Joseph and the lowly shepherds; in the feast of the Epiphany, we witnessed the wider, greater presentation, when Christ was presented to all the nations of the earth, in the persons of the Magi.

We also bring into our understanding of the feast the dark element found in the nativity descriptions, the killing of the innocents, a reminder that that the joy and peace associated with the birth of Christ, his mission, the mission of the Church, will always be opposed by sinful people. Today’s feast marks the end of the closed, private period of Christ’s life, and marks the beginning of the start, public ministry.

The two most important features in today’s Gospel reading, marking the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, are the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist, and the appearance of the Holy Spirit and the voice confirming the divine Son of Christ.

John’s voice was heard clearly during the Advent liturgy, proclaiming the coming of the Savior, and denying that he himself was the Messiah. John knew the limitations of his mission. He could proclaim and point the way only. John also knew the limitations of the baptism he advised:

I baptize you with water, but someone is coming who is more powerful than I am? He will baptize you with Holy Spirit and with fire.

The baptism presented by John was concerned with repentance and the forgiveness of sins. It was not necessary for the sinless Christ to be baptized; he accepted baptism from John to show himself as human, to be seen in the flesh like the people whom he had come to redeem.

The Father proclaimed the divine Sonship of Christ:

You are my beloved Son, in “whom I am well pleased”.

The Spirit then descended upon Christ, the final preparation for his mission When anointed by the Spirit he began his public ministry, the preaching and teaching of the kingdom.

Baptism confers life, but it is also connected with death; to gain new life, we must die to the old. The baptism of Christ foreshadowed his death. It was his mission to suffer, die and rise again.

When we received the sacrament of baptism, we are admitted into membership of the Church, the body of Christ, and became sharers in his mission. We were immersed in the waters, died and buried with him; we rise again because of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ.

The Church will explain to us the public ministry of Christ, the preaching of the kingdom, in the daily and Sunday readings. The divine, redemptive mission of Christ is still active. The kingdom will be preached and built up slowly and gently, often among the poor the outcasts, sinners, but whose poverty and weakness enabled them to grasp more easily divine truth. The mystery of the Trinity, present at the baptism of Christ, will be declared: all peoples will be welcomed into the kingdom.

As we begin the Church’s year, we do so in the knowledge of what has been placed on us by our baptism, that we, too, have been commanded to proclaim the kingdom in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who were present when Christ was baptized in the Jordan.

Today we mark the end of the Christmas season – the Day of Epiphany.  We celebrate this day to reflect on the visit of the Magi – the wise men – to Jesus and the giving of their gifts. We reflect on the meaning of this visit of those wise ones to see Jesus.

Epiphany is about Jesus and his message being available and relevant to people of every age and race. Jesus isn’t just a Jewish prophet with an exciting message, but God made present amongst us and available to all of us to worship and follow. God’s love reaches beyond the everyday barriers of race and class; something the Magi didn’t quite get at first.

So Who Were the Magi?

We don’t know much about the Magi from Scripture. All Saint Matthew tells us is that they were “Magi from the East”. Some translations have “Wise men from the East”. The word in Greek refers to priests of the Zoroastrian religion. They came from Persia, the countries now known as Iran and Iraq, and they saw meaning in the movement of the stars. Their visit fits an Eastern pattern of great births being accompanied by momentous events in the sky. Certainly we know of a comet in 11BCE in Gemini with its head towards Leo, seen by many as a symbol of Judah.  We also know of planetary conjunctions in both 7BCE and 6 BCE which would have added to a sense that momentous happenings were on the way. The Magi would have noticed these things and taken them seriously. But who were they?

One commentator, Brian Stoffregen puts it like this;

“Originally in Persia, Magi were dream- interpreters. By Jesus’ time, the term referred to astronomers, fortune-tellers, or star-gazers.   They were horoscope fanatics – a practice condemned by Jewish standards. We might compare them to people in fortune – telling booths, or people on the “psychic hotline” or other “occupations” that foretell the future by stars, tea leaves, Tarot cards etc. They were magicians, astronomers, star-gazers, pseudo-scientists, fortune tellers..”

Another writer, Nathan Nettleton, puts it like this;

“They were the speakers of the sacred words at the pagan sacrifices. At worst, the term referred to a magician or sorcerer, or even a deceiver. Magi were people whose activities were repeatedly condemned and prohibited throughout the scriptures and were completely anathema to the people of Israel.”

Whilst in English we get the words “magic” and “magician” from Magi, the Zoroastrian religion forbade sorcery. They clearly were looking for a new king and had found meaning in the movement of the planets and stars which led them to come to Israel to greet the new-born king. They journeyed from their homes in Persia to Bethlehem in search of this baby. Instead of angels and visions, we have the image of the Magi following a sign in the skies – in nature – and for a long period of time. The magi see the intentions of God in the skies. This is not new: Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens themselves declare who God is, and that his handiwork is seen in created nature.  “We observed his star at its rising”. The magi know that there is something significant happening.

When did they come?

The Gospel of Saint Luke doesn’t mention the Magi and holds that the Holy Family returned to Nazareth after the presentation of Jesus at the Temple where he was circumcised. It’s probable that Saint Luke didn’t know of this episode in Jesus’ early life. Saint Matthew seems to place the visit of the Magi some time after Jesus’ birth. The Holy Family are in a “house” not in the
stable of the inn.  Herod kills all the newborn boys under the age of two years. So it’s likely that the Holy Family had stayed for some time in Bethlehem and the Magi came some time after Jesus’ birth, perhaps as long as two years after.

WHY did they come?

Clearly, the Magi were searching.  The Magi recognized much of the truth of Jesus, who he was and what he would become.  The magi had a general idea of this God and this King of the Jews, but they didn’t really know who or what they were looking for.  Bono and U2 were criticized some years ago by some supposedly orthodox Christians when they produced a song entitled, “I still haven’t found what I am looking for.”  I can’t see the problem with that especially given the spiritual depths in many of their songs. You see, the example of the Magi was that they were searchers, not really knowing what or who they were looking for.  They didn’t claim to have it all but they saw their lives as a journey of discovery. And in that they are an example to us. We don’t know it all. But if we like them are prepared to be diligent seekers, then like them we may be graced by God’s light, by our Epiphany.  When the wise men finally found Jesus, we are told that their first response was joy – “they were overwhelmed with joy”. That is what happens when we find Jesus. This is what awaits us at the end of the journey. Next, they paid him homage – they worshiped him and acknowledged Him as King. After the joy comes the worship. That means acknowledging Jesus as King. Jesus as the center. Jesus as Lord. And then, after joy and after worship, comes offering of their gifts. In response to who Jesus is and the joy He gives, we offer ourselves and our gifts to Him.

So my message for today is to dare, like them, to take the risk of seeking, and God may well bless us with our own Epiphanies which transform us as doubtless the Magi were transformed by what must have been a surprising experience for them as they knelt before the infant Jesus.

So how do you find Jesus? Maybe you can start out like the Magi – with a general idea of God, and a general idea that He is guiding you. Like the Magi, we need to turn to the scriptures. If you don’t read them, you will never really get the specific directions that God is trying to give you. Approach them with the right spirit, the right purpose. Ask for help along the way – the church, God’s people, are meant to help you along that way. The wise men knew when they needed to ask someone else for help. And pray. Ask God. When you find Jesus, rejoice. After all, He is God. Put Him in the center of your life. Ask yourself whether what you are doing honors him a King. Offer to him what you have, who you are.

Where can this Jesus be found?  He is with you now.  Won’t you seek Him?  Won’t you recognize Him?  Won’t you let Him fill YOUR life with joy?  Amen. 

Today, we come together as churches and as children of the Lord to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family. The Holy family of the Blessed Mary, of Joseph her spouse, and of course of our Lord Jesus Christ together as a full family. Now, we all come from families and we know as about both the joys and issues and difficulties family life can bring.  Families are made of  individuals, and individuals often have crosses to bear.  Even as part of a family, even in  the church family, we all have our crosses in life to carry. The Holy family, though indeed very blessed and Holy, were also still human and had their crosses of life to carry.

The crosses that were borne by the Holy family come to mind when reading the scriptures. Now just imagine what it must’ve been like when Mary and Joseph had to tell others how Mary had been conceived by the Holy Spirit alone? I sincerely doubt many people at first sincerely believed and accepted the truth of the situation.  Yes, there was probably talking behind their backs, mocking, and those who would’ve just seen it as merely untruthful.  How misunderstood both Mary and Joseph indeed must have been!  Can you can you imagine how they would feel?  We have all been misunderstood or not believed at times and it isn’t a good feeling at all! Even Mary, at the beginning of her pregnancy, was misunderstood by Joseph who was considering putting her away quietly,  before an Angel intervened in a dream and reassured Joseph of the truth of the  situation.  At that time Mary’s pregnancy would have been seen as acceptable by others, and Joseph was concerned how it would be seen and how it would be taken. Can you imagine how this must have felt to both Mary, and indeed to Joseph?

When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem for Jesus’s birth, there was no room and all they could find was an animal’s shelter  because Bethlehem at that time was so crowded. Can you imagine not finding anywhere to give birth? Not nice at all! After the birth of Jesus, Both Mary and Joseph had to flee because Jesus’s life was in danger from King Herod, who was killing all newborn babies and those very young in an attempt to kill Jesus as Herod saw him as a very severe threat. How this must’ve felt to both Mary and to Joseph! The fear for their son’s safety, the sadness, the confusion…the suffering!!

Mary and Joseph suffered the awful experience of losing Jesus for three days when he was twelve years old and the only satisfaction they got from him was that he had to be about his Father’s business.

We do not hear of Joseph any more so we presume that before Jesus began his public ministry in Galilee Joseph had died – The Holy Family suffering the greatest pain of all families, the pain of bereavement and separation through death.

Jesus’ public ministry must have taken its toll on Mary. Simeon had predicted in the Temple that a sword of sorrow would pierce Mary’s soul. We can imagine one such occasion as we read in Mark 3:21 that when Jesus returned to Nazareth.  One day his relatives came to take him by force, convinced that he was out of his mind. Not a very pleasant experience for any family, no matter how holy.

There were so many other crosses this Holy family had to endure, but the saddest and the one which must’ve felt like Mary’s heart was being torn from her chest, was when Mary had to watch her only son die by crucifixion upon the cross for our salvation…oh what pain and sorrow!!!

All this suffering, pain and sadness this family has had to endure yet they stayed together and extremely strong throughout, and even kept their sanity…but how?

It was their sheer strength in their never-ending love both for God our Heavenly Father, and for each other, and for their endless faith and trust in God that enabled them to come through absolutely. So what holds us and our own families together in times of trauma, or suffering? We usually stay together because of our love and forgiveness of each other. We may at times have disagreements or words, but in the end true love keeps us in good stead. We should take notice always in the way we live our lives in the message that we get from the lives of the Holy Family, and that message is that no matter how hard we may feel our lives become, we must give all our love, faith, and trust to the Lord who will never ever fail us!! Let us pray to ask that we and all our families may live with the love, faith and true trust of the Lord in our lives!!

Let us pray:

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, teach us the sublime dignity and the vital duty of fostering vocations. Give us one heart and one soul. Give us the grace to be ever aware of our tremendous responsibility for setting a good example in our own relations so as to act as a magnet for drawing vocations.

We are eternally grateful for your numerous graces in the past, the present, and the future. Help us always to be aware of God’s presence within us.

Lord, Child of Nazareth, teach us!

Blessed Mother of Jesus, guide us!

Faithful guardian of Mary, protect us!

Holy Family of Nazareth, bless us all and our with numerous different but valuable vocations to do your work.

 Amen.

Today, we as a church remember The Holy Innocents, those infant boy martyrs all  aged 2 years and under. This liturgical season has such a huge contrast. Only 3 days ago, we were celebrating the joyous celebration of the birth of Our dear Lord and Saviour, Jesus. Then the very next day, our thoughts turn To st Stephen and his Martyrdom for Christ. Now, we are remembering these Innocent young child martyrs, and how they were slaughtered on the orders of King Herod.

Let us first look at The Gospel reading for today of  Mt 2:13-18:

When the magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search  for the child to destroy him.”

Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled,     Out of Egypt I called my son.

When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious.  He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.  Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet:

A voice was heard in Ramah,  sobbing and loud lamentation;  Rachel weeping for her children,  and she would not be consoled,  since they were no more.

It’s  extremely difficult to imagine that anyone could see a little baby as such a great threat, yet that is exactly what is  recounted in our gospel today. When Jesus was born, the shepherds and magi see in the Christ Child a Lord and  Saviour. King Herod, however, sees the baby Jesus as merely a rival that has to be feared and to be  eliminated. The “Holy Innocents” we celebrate today are all those little babies that Herod had murdered in Bethlehem in an attempt to kill this child Jesus. Sadly, this event is not the first such occurrence of this nature in the Scriptures. When the Israelites grew numerous in Egypt, Pharaoh also sensed a rival and thus ordered all the babies to be thrown into the river. Despite this attempt, Moses, like Jesus, escaped the plot against them. The important point in these stories is that we need to recognize that God’s plan was brought about even in spite of these murderous efforts to thwart it. Many babies died in Egypt and Bethlehem and yet Moses and Jesus remained safe and sound. God’s plan was accomplished.

The readings tell us today about  light and about darkness. The magi are in darkness, and yet they see the star and follow the guiding light it which it shines. They are willing to go out of their way, to change their lives to conform to God’s guidance. The magi find their way to that light. We too are often given the choice between being in  light or in  darkness.

This day which commemorates the sad slaughter of so many innocent children in Bethlehem is somewhat ironically also a feast day on which is for celebrating. Whilst we remember the horror of the deaths of these little babies, and the traumatic suffering their families obviously suffered by their slaughter, We also celebrate the fact that King Herod’s plan failed. Not only did Jesus survive, but the lives of the little babies were not snuffed out eternally  as Herod had planned. Rather, these children now live forever in God’s  heavenly Kingdom, where they intercede for us. Yes, we rejoice to see that God’s plan is triumphant even in the face of great opposition and evil. Light will always be triumphant over darkness. The only question that remains is, will we live in the darkness of this world, or will we follow the light and live in the Lord our God and Saviour, and he in us?

Let us pray:

We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod.  Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims;  and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the union of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

After 2000 years of Christmas sermons, in hundreds of languages, in different countries throughout the world, and by way of innumerable faith traditions, is there anything new or original left to be said about Christmas, and what it means, that hasn’t been said before?   Perhaps not.  However, like re-reading that favorite book for the 17^th time, or watching that favorite movie or television show for the 358^th time, even when you know exactly what comes next, what the very next word is going to be, often we find a new meaning or a new slant on something that is as tried and true as Christmas itself.

And so it is with me this year.  The author of St. Luke’s gospel  recalls the story of the angels bringing the news of Christ’s birth to the shepherds.  Now, we all know that story.  We’ve heard it many times over, and those of us who cherish “A Charlie Brown Christmas” will always, in some ways, always hear Linus quoting from Luke 2, no matter who is reading that passage of the Bible to us.   

⁸And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  ⁹And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

¹⁵And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.  ¹⁶And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

¹⁷And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.  ¹⁸And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

¹⁹But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.  ²⁰And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. Luke 2:8-20  King James Version (KJV)

We know the story.  We SEE the story in every Nativity scene we pass by.  There is almost always a shepherd near the manger carrying a lamb on his shoulders and another lamb or sheep to be seen somewhere hanging around.    It’s always seemed to me that the sheep and the shepherds were just THERE, minor players in a Christmas play, the “extras” assigned to the kids who didn’t quite measure up to the roles of Mary or Joseph;  they enter stage left, ooh and aah over the baby, and exit stage right, singing “Go tell it on the mountain”, singularly unimportant and taking secondary roles to the more illustrious wise men (who in reality weren’t there at all) and most definitely playing supporting roles to the Holy Family, or just standing around as so much scenery, contributing to the mood and filling up the bare spots in the Nativity scene.  I overheard a conversation recently that made me really think about the shepherds.  While visiting some friends, their cat jumped into the midst of the family crèche and knocked over the obligatory shepherd.  It was chipped.  The younger daughter of the family was somewhat distressed, and to make the little girl feel better, the mother said to her, “Don’t worry about it, Honey.  It’s just the shepherd.  He’s not all that important.”    I didn’t think much about it at the time, but when reading the Scripture appointed for today, it struck me.  Not all that important?  But weren’t they?  Who WERE these shepherds?  Why were they there in the first place?  Why did THEY get the news of Christ’s birth in such a spectacular way?  Who were they that they should be eyewitnesses of God’s glory and receive history’s greatest birth announcement? 

In Christ’s day, shepherds stood on the bottom rung of the Palestinian social ladder. They shared the same unenviable status as tax collectors and dung sweepers. Only Luke mentions them.  When the twelve tribes of Israel migrated to Egypt, they encountered a lifestyle foreign to them. The Egyptians were agriculturalists. As farmers, they despised shepherding because sheep and goats meant death to crops. Battles between farmers and shepherds are as old as they are fierce. The first murder in history erupted from a farmer’s resentment of a shepherd.  Smug religious leaders maintained a strict caste system at the expense of shepherds and other common folk. Shepherds were officially labeled “sinners”—a technical term for a class of despised people.

Into this social context of religious snobbery and class prejudice, God’s Son stepped forth. How surprising and significant that God the Father handpicked lowly, unpretentious shepherds to be the first to hear the joyous news: “It’s a boy, and He’s the Messiah!”  What an affront to the religious leaders who were so conspicuously absent from the divine mailing list.  Even from birth, Christ moved among the lowly.  It was the sinners, not the self-righteous, He came to save.  So is it  really all that surprising that the first announcement of Christ’s birth was to the lowly shepherds on Bethlehem’s hillsides?

Consider the events leading up to Christ’s birth.   Mary was barely 15.  Christ was born to an unwed mother, Mary, a servant girl; Mary the young woman who delivered while only betrothed to Joseph.  He was born in a stable, a cave!   A holy God being born to a couple no different than immigrants, far from home and in a strange city, in a place where animals were kept.  A couple who couldn’t even find a place to stay, turned out of every inn!  It’s all too bizarre. 

Yet this is the God we experience.  This is our claim;  This is the meaning of his very name: Immanuel, meaning “God with us” — with us not just in nice times, but most especially in the times of our lives when we are in the caves, and stables of our lives, when we are turned out of the places we’d like to be, when we are at the lowest of low points, when we are out in the dark, and in the cold like the shepherds.

Our God, the God who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ, is the God of the oppressed, the repressed, the depressed; the God of the sad, the grieving, the sorrowful; the God of the lonely, the lowly, the poor, the God of the Shepherds; the God of the despised, the destitute, the dejected. Our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who stood with the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, who led them out of Egypt to a promised land of freedom.  Our God is the God of widows and orphans and stranded travelers. Our God is the God who doesn’t stay neat and tidy and spotless, but comes and stands beside us in our times of deepest need, who comes among us as the child in the dirty manger and the God of the shepherds on the hillside.  The God we’re speaking of dares to join the unsuccessful, the failures, the dispossessed, and the downtrodden;  the God of the Shepherds.

Wherever there is suffering, our God is there. He stands with Zacchaeus, the despised tax collector, and with Bartimaeus, the blind beggar. He is with us when we face cancer, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments. He is with us when we face amputations, operations, loneliness, the loss of a loved one, or even death itself.  The God of the manger and the Shepherd is Immanuel, God with us. At our deepest times of loss and need, in the dirtiest and most embarrassing parts of our lives, God is with us, His rod and His staff, they comfort us.  It is God who glues us back together when we become, like that figure in my friends’ Nativity scene, chipped, flawed, and much less than perfect.

And it is up to us, to demonstrate the love of God, the God of the lowly, the downtrodden, to the world.  We, like the shepherds in the Christmas story, are to be the ones who are to proclaim the good news “which shall be to all people” to all the people of the world.   It is our responsibility as Christians to be the instruments through which God can work in this world.  As was  most famously stated more than four centuries ago by Saint Theresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

My very favorite Christmas carol, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” includes the lines, “What, then, shall I bring him, empty as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man I would do my part.  What can I give Him?  I can give Him my heart.” 

Won’t you, this Christmas, give Him your heart?  Won’t you, like the shepherds in the children’s plays of the Christmas story, be one to “go tell it on the mountain, over the fields and everywhere” that Jesus Christ is born?  Amen.