During this Advent I am trying to relocate myself in the reality of Christmas. I am trying to peal off all the sweet, folk-images that have crept around the story of the birth of Jesus.
Christmas is first and foremost the celebration of the birth day of the very Son of God among us. Like all birthdays, you do not tell sweet stories of childhood but you rejoice and celebrate the live of the person right now. If this is their eightieth birthday, you share the goodness of reaching this milestone with joy and thanksgiving. A birthday is always celebrating the person now, at whatever stage of life they are at today.
Birthdays are what this person is all about. We celebrate as the gift they are; today.
The very center of the life of Jesus is the great act of salvation: his sacrificial death and his resurrection. In these three days of salvation, Jesus, through the sacrificial gift of his death brings all humanity to God. In his resurrection we humans are given the very life and person of the Son of God. We are given the risen Christ so that we in turn might become the living extension of Christ’s salvation.
The celebration of Christmas comes late in the Christian experience. It is all about the birthday of the Son of God among us. This is God becoming flesh, a working man like you and I, to make the flesh of human beings divine. Simply put, the coming of the Son of God among us is the lived-out expression of God’s plan of redemption.
When we celebrate the birthday of Jesus, we are sharing in God’s great work of leading all human beings back to the life and heart of God. Christmas means sharing in the movement of Jesus to bring your relatives who are very biased and racist to see the people who are different from them (i.e., those with power in the society) with the eyes and heart of God. The adult Jesus alerts us that the very heart of God is quite different from the constricted heart of so many human beings. Christmas is all about God enlarging the arteries within our heart. The Son of God is working to expand your life
An adult Jesus at Christmas sees the first invitation to the birth of Jesus as the invitation to the forgotten ones of this world. There is nothing sweet about the shepherds hearing the announcement. They were the day labourers. Poor. Survivors and suffering from a reputation of being thieves (they were survivors). God calls the little ones, the excluded from society to come and recognize the birth of Jesus.
And now he calls us: ordinary people trying to make a go of their lives. We are being called to share and work in the great life and person of Jesus Christ. We are given the very life of the risen Christ. Now, Christ must come alive in our lives, in our own space and time.
The adult Jesus at Christmas time is both gift and challenge. We are called to a much greater life than just living for ourselves. The birthday of Jesus means the birth in us of the life, the love, the compassion of Jesus Christ. Christmas is all about having our lives expanded beyond our boundaries to become the living extension of Jesus Christ.
We can only say one thing about the Christmas story: what a challenge!
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