Christmas - Homily 9

Homily 9 - 2014

Children need to know the Christmas story. You could take that for granted some time ago, though you cannot any longer. Children, of course, grow up and become adults – and that is where we are at. What matters for adults is to know the story, certainly, not, however, to believe the story but to understand it.

It is a bit like with a good film. What can I learn from it? What I can learn from it now may not be the same as what I learnt from it when I saw it five or ten years ago. What you would learn from it may not be what I learn from it. But if it is a good film, a good story, we can learn something – more than just enjoy the camera work, the action, the characterisation or the dialogue.

The point of Luke’s Christmas story is not to believe the story-line but to sensitise us to important issues about ourselves, about life and, perhaps more importantly, about God, that will be addressed more fully in the later story of the adult Jesus. As we listen to the story tonight, what is there to understand? What can we learn? I cannot tell you. And you cannot tell me. We have to do the homework ourselves. 

I would like to suggest a couple of the many issues raised by Luke that invite my further reflection. Luke situates the story by mentioning Caesar Augustus, with Quirinius his deputy in Syria, taking a census of what they liked to regard as the whole world. And the whole world registered and duly paid up. With Caesar Augustus and Quirinius being the strong men that they were, there was little alternative.

The event that Luke situates is that of a child being born. I have never seen a child being born; though some of you are quite experienced. At least I know that every child is born naked, messy and totally defenceless. Yet their powerlessness can be incredibly powerful. And this child - the revelation of God – powerful? powerless? It raises the question: What is power ultimately? Who has it?

Another point … Apart from the explosive message given by what Luke calls an angel and a heavenly host, the story gives not a word from anyone. Thank God there was no TV journalist intrusively poking a microphone into the faces of the main protagonists, Mary and Joseph, and asking them how they were feeling. Just silence! There is not much silence these days. For some people, silence seems a waste of time. For many, it can be unbearable, even frightening. Those of you living closer to nature may be luckier. I wonder if we learn anything without silence.

It is so hard really to listen to a story we have heard a hundred times before. Yet, as each of us listens to the story once more tonight, what can I, what can you, learn from it? Not just in theory, but in relation to what is going on in our individual and personal lives now.

We need silence. We need time. Together they can make all the difference between being wished a Happy Christmas and experiencing a Happy Christmas.