Christmas

See commentary for Midnight Mass on Luke 2: 1-14 in Luke 2:1-21 Dawn Mass on Luke 2:15-20 in Luke 2:1-21 and Day Mass on John 1:1-18 in John 1:1-5, John 1:6-15 and John 1:16-18.

Homily 1 – 2005

When angels are brought on stage in the Gospels, the evangelists are tipping us off about something beyond our human capacity to know: we are stepping into the realm of mystery.  In tonight’s Gospel, an angel tells shepherds that a child over in the town – newly-born – is saviour, Christ, Lord.  An angel saying something in a gospel is an invitation to “stop the video”, to pause, and in silence to contemplate the mystery, to enter into the truth of it: let go, for the moment, of the storyline; let go of the tinsel; let go all the memories, nostalgic or otherwise, and stand before reality.

The claim is that Jesus is saviour, leader, lord – of the world, of our world; where good things happen, where unspeakably destructive things happen.  Is Jesus relevant to this world, essentially relevant, the bearer of the only approach that can save it?

In the story, the other choir of angels that took over from the first lone one proclaimed peace, though a peace conditional on keeping God clearly in the picture: Glory to God ... and peace to all who enjoy his favour.  Currently, the attainment of peace is painfully relevant to our world.

The reality we silently stand before is this: Jesus was born, he was killed, he was raised from death by the Father, and he is in the world today.  The burning question remains: Where do we find him today? and how do we recognise him?

This brings us back again to the storyline: The angel was prepared to give the shepherds a sign to indicate how Jesus - saviour, Christ, lord - could be recognised.  The angel said: He will look like any other newborn baby, wrapped in cloth.  He won’t be noticeably different, or, if he is, the difference will be the unexpected: he won’t be at home; he’ll be in an animal’s feed-trough in someone else’s home.

We need to learn to discern his voice.  Who are the prophets he speaks through today? It may sometimes be pretty hard to be certain it is his voice. But if he is saviour, Christ, lord, it is important that we go and look, and having gone and looked, that we listen and take note.  If only he were more obvious!

But we can learn to discern his voice amid the other voices that assail us.  We can get familiar with his voice.  Parents can easily detect the sound of their child’s voice.  People in love can pick each other out, no matter how crowded the room.  Older couples know how the other is feeling without their need to say a word.  To really know another takes time.  It takes love.  It is the way we come to recognise Christ – time spent together in love.  It’s what we call prayer.  Once known, Christ’s presence, his truth, his touch can be recognised easily enough.  He will be speaking the truth, and that truth will ‘sit right’ in our truest depths.  He might even be crying sometimes.  And sometimes he might simply be spreading incredible joy just by a smile.

As the shepherds said: Let’s go and see!  On that note, I wish you: Happy Christmas!

Homily 2 – 2007

Luke wrote his Gospel for adults - the whole of his Gospel, including what we call his Infancy Narrative, part of which we read tonight.  So, to see the narrative of Jesus’ birth as a sweet story meant for children is to misunderstand it.  The point of Luke’s Infancy Narrative was to sensitise his adult readers to issues that would become clearer in Jesus’ Public Ministry.  So what might be some of the issues raised by tonight’s story?

Jesus was born in a country that was under foreign occupation, Roman occupation.  The purpose of a Roman census - that had Joseph and Mary travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem - was not to gain statistical information but to administer the imperial taxation system and to ensure that no one was missed out.

Roman occupation and taxation had led to an impoverished peasantry, and poverty in its turn led to unemployment, hunger and widespread sickness.  As Luke would show later in his Gospel, Quirinius’s census would cast a long shadow: the adult Jesus would minister largely to the oppressed peasants of Galilee; and he was, himself, eventually executed by order of the Roman Governor.

The parents of Jesus were among the poorer level of society.  Jesus was born in poverty - probably in the house of peasants, since a manger, an animal’s feed trough, wherever they were, doubled as a cot for the child.

As Luke tells the story, the first ones to learn of Jesus’ birth were shepherds.  Of the various rural occupations, shepherding was the most despised.  Shepherds were seen as social misfits, assigned to the margins of society – uneducated, unsocialised, and often violent.

Right from the start of the narrative, Luke was making clear that the impact of Jesus on the world of his day would be radical reversal.  Later in the Gospel, the adult Jesus would proclaim: blessed are you who are poor; blessed are you who are hungry; blessed are you who weep; blessed are you whom society excludes and reviles.

The message of the angelic choir – the revelation of the unseen meaning of Jesus’ birth – was that, in Jesus, God would be glorified and people would know peace through their recognition that all were equally loved by God: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to all who enjoy God’s favour.  Consistently, especially in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus would reveal the merciful, compassionate, and forgiving God.  Through his own consistent behaviour, he would put a human face to the Mystery of Love that we call God.

Of particular interest to Luke would be the sign by which the shepherds would identify their saviour.  They would find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.  In other words, they would find a child no different from their own new-born children – whom they too would have wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in an empty feed trough in their own meagre dwellings. Jesus, the revelation of God, would himself be indistinguishable from the poor and the marginalised of the world, with whom he would identify.

The Infancy Narrative challenges all of us who are disciples of Jesus – as does the rest of the Gospel of Luke and particularly the Passion Narrative – to a radical change of mindset.  The values and priorities revealed through the story are not peripheral to the story but touch into the essence of discipleship.  To know the peace proclaimed by the angelic choir we need to be drawn into the heart and the mindset of God, and to discover and be transformed in and by the Mystery of Love.

On which note, I wish you all a Happy Christmas!

Homily 3 – 2008

Luke has his army of angels clarify for his readers the practical effects of the mystery that has occurred with the birth of Jesus: Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to men who enjoy his favour.  The birth of this child to Mary and Joseph will reveal the glory of God and make peace possible on earth.

The term glory refers to something that can be known or seen of God who is ultimately unknowable.  Through the birth of this child, it will become obvious that God is a God who loves people.  As the chorus sang: We are people who enjoy God’s favour.  To the extent that we accept God’s favour, God’s love, revealed in Jesus, then our world experiences peace, and the truth of God as the God who loves becomes visible to all.

So it’s all Good news.  God is known as the God who loves; and the world can know the peace it yearns for.  But there’s a catch.  It is of the nature of love that it is powerless until it is believed and accepted.  God’s love achieves nothing until the world accepts it and makes it its own.  This means that, until the world accepts and takes hold of God’s love, the peace we yearn for remains pure possibility, but never becomes reality.

You would think that it would be easy for the world to believe it’s loved.  It hungers for love; it cries out for love, but it is slow to believe it, to trust it, to surrender to it, and to let itself be transformed by it.  I wonder why …  I think there are two problems.  

The first comes from the fact that you can only believe love.  You can’t ultimately prove it.  You can only let it be.  And you can’t ultimately control it.  You have to let go of what seems secure (or at least familiar) to step beyond what you can control and take a risk.  Another way of putting it is to say you have to be humble.  The ego has to accept that it is out of its depth.  The insecure struggle to do that.

The other problem is that opening ourselves to be loved doesn’t simply stop there.  Being loved will change us.  It will change us into itself.  It will make us into people who love.  And that can be dangerous.  We only have to look at the outcome of Jesus’ loving to see that.  To love renders us vulnerable; and it opens us up to exploitation.  And we struggle with that.  

So the world still struggles to accept the peace that could be its experience … and the glory of God who loves is largely unrecognised.

The world won’t know peace – no matter how wonderful the world’s leaders (or how much people get carried away by Christmas) – until sufficient people believe in God’s love, surrender to it, let themselves be transformed by it and live their own lives courageously and consistently in love.

But, in the meantime, the wonderful thing is that each of us can have a real personal experience of peace irrespective of where others are at.  We don’t have to wait indefinitely.  To the extent that we let God love us, humbly and consistently, our lives are changed and we experience a true inner peace.  Jesus knew that peace, and he offers it to us.  Being loved, and loving, both take courage.  We struggle.  Let’s help each other.  That is what Church is about.

And, on that note, I wish you a truly Happy Christmas!

Homily 4 – 2009

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to men who enjoy his favour.  There’s not much peace in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, in Jesus’ own Land itself, Fiji, West Papua, even Palm Island.  What went wrong? And where is the ordinary person at? not just at the level of life’s general ups and downs but deep down?  Are people in our society at peace? What’s wrong? Perhaps we have trouble with God, or the way God sees things.  

As he tells his story, Luke makes a few significant emphases: Firstly, Jesus is born into poverty, in someone else’s house, his family obviously well down the list on society’s pecking order.  But it was OK with God.  It didn’t faze God!  It was irrelevant to God! Apparently, upper class/lower class, well off/not well off, don’t figure in God’s repertoire.

Secondly, those privileged to learn the wonder - the mystery - first were shepherds.  Mary and Joseph were poor – shepherds were something else!  In the mindset of the time, you could hardly get lower – right at the edges, thugs, non-conformists, ritually unclean – no way would they be allowed into the temple to worship.  But, they could worship here OK.  It was OK with God.  It didn’t faze God that angels let them in on the mystery first.  I don’t know if Joseph and Mary felt uneasy when they showed up; but they didn’t show them the door.  

Thirdly, if we haven’t got Luke’s point by now, he offers another clue.  The lone angel gives way to a chorus who sing about peace to men who enjoy God’s favour.  Is that specifying people, narrowing the reach? or describing all people? Is it peace only to those - perhaps few - who are favoured by God? or Is it peace to people, all of whom enjoy God’s favour? The first interpretation is hardly Good News – hardly worth singing about: business as usual – insiders/outsiders, welcome/unwelcome, us/them.  Jesus’ Good News is that God’s love is indiscriminate; God’s heart is big – God can love anyone.  No one can do anything that could stop God loving.  God’s love is unconditional.  In fact, unconditional love is the only love deserving to be called love.

What went wrong? People don’t like things God’s way.  People want to be special.  People can only cope with insiders/outsiders, welcome/unwelcome, us/them.  That’s why we fight – we always fight ‘them’, the ‘not us’.  We seem to love to categorise and to exclude.

Getting back to the crib... Should we make things at least look better? Should we sterilise the manger? Spray some air freshener? Dress the child in something suitable? Should we take the shepherds out of the crib? and, as for the wise men from the East, at least paint their faces white, straighten their noses, and remove any slant from their eyes.

There is enormous potential in the crib – but only if we can learn to be comfortable with less than perfect, with difference.  As we become comfortable with that, and as we learn to be comfortable indeed with ourselves, perhaps peace may spread to enwrap our earth.

Let’s take God’s way to heart so that Christmas can be really happy, and that everyone, whom God loves, can enjoy peace.  And that’s my Christmas wish for you!

Homily 5  –  2010

It’s good to tell the stories to the children.  Gather them around the crib – at home or in the Church.  Let it be hands-on.  Help them to say a prayer to Jesus, or Mary or Joseph.  Children need to know the stories of the tribe.  It helps them know who they are.

But they grow up – and so have you.  Then it’s time to take them more deeply into the Gospel – to cut loose from the way the story is constructed – and to encourage them to question: What was Luke hoping to tell us by the way he shaped his story – so different from Matthew’s?

I’ll share a few things that get me thinking.  The story started by saying that the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, took a census.  The point of his census was to assess the capacity of the district to pay taxes, Caesar Augustus prided himself on the peace that he had brought to the Empire.  So the context is power, wealth and peace - for some.

The story ended with another scenario – an angelic chorus promising peace to all who enjoy God’s favour.  So, there’s power – and power; peace, and there’s peace. And they could hardly be more different.  It seems to me that Luke constructed his story to redefine power, and to redefine peace, to say nothing of real wealth.  In the process, he set about redefining God.

A lot of our prayers at Mass address God as Almighty God, All-powerful God.  I think it is an unfortunate address, even though, from a certain point of view, it is true.  Caesar’s power was controlling power, which did not pull back from violence.  God’s power is more the empowering energy of love – which is power, but doesn’t control.  Even in the created world, I am not so sure that God pokes his nose into things to pull one string here, another string there.  There is mystery in how God’s providence works.

And then there’s peace.  Rome’s peace was enforced by the power of the sword.  And God’s peace? I was disappointed recently with Barack Obama’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize  – as though to secure peace you have to go to war.  That’s true only because people are not prepared to accept the powerlessness, the inconvenient price of love.  Jesus lived a life that deliberately tried to show that peace can only be secured by peaceful means.  Remember his saying: I am the way, the truth and the life.  The goal of fullness of life cannot be separated from the way to it.  The way of Jesus secures the goal of peace – even if at a price.

Look at the crib – utter powerlessness, releasing the incredibly powerful energy of love – certainly at a price.  Mary and Joseph pushed around, excluded, a totally dependent baby – and with God not pulling a string.  And, if we steal a glance at the last chapter of the Gospel, we see a Jesus brutalised, dehumanised and murdered because of his challenging life and message.  But, that’s not quite the last page.

Do we let Christmas redefine our ideas about God? It could be the way to a truly Happy Christmas – which keeps on going!

Homily 6 – 2011 

It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of your friends and acquaintances won’t be in church this Christmas.  I know some of mine won’t.  It leads me to ask why am I here?  Well, I’m often here.  

Why am I here tonight?  Basically, because I believe that Jesus is God.  I believe it quite strongly, even though I know I hardly understand what that means.  I’m here tonight because I also want to remember – to remember that 2000 years ago [which is just like yesterday, if I think of the billions of years that the world has been evolving since that primal Big Bang that was the start of the whole process] – just 2000 years ago, God came into this world in Jesus – looking for us, inviting us, calling us.  In Jesus, the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.  I believe that things have been different ever since.

But I want to remember more.  While he was among us, no one really recognised who he was, [though some, only a few, did think that he was special].  It took his mysterious resurrection, and its effect on them, for the insight to grow that he was truly God among us – Emmanuel.  God came among us and was largely unrecognised.  If God were to come among us today, as one of us, how would we recognise him? What would God be like?

It’s worth reflecting on tonight’s story as Luke put it together.  Luke was writing in the light of Jesus’ later death and resurrection.  He was making two points very clear from the start.

The parents of Jesus were no-bodies.  To the Roman power-brokers of the day, they were numbers, ordered about, just to be conveniently counted, so that they could be taxed accordingly.  Luke has Mary, Jesus’ heavily pregnant mother, away from home, giving birth where she could, and having to use an animals’ feed-trough as a make-shift cradle.  All this was after Luke had had an angel tell her that her son would be the long-awaited Christ, the Messiah to end all Messiahs.

Luke reinforced his message by having, as the first to know of the birth, a group of derelicts, shepherds, people right at the bottom of the social order – who were told that the new-born baby, poor, homeless, like them, was none other than the Lord – God.

In coming among us in this way, was God putting on an act? or does the life of Jesus reveal the way God is? Perhaps, we need to change our expectations of God – and of power, of God’s power.  We tend to think that God can do anything that God likes – but, perhaps, we don’t reflect enough precisely on “what God likes”.

God is about creating, giving being; and, as we move up the scale of beings, being opens up into living, and living into loving, and loving presupposes freedom.  When dealing with human persons, creatures able to love, called to love, who grow only by responding freely to love, God’s only power would have to be the power of love.  Use of any other kind of power would diminish human freedom and human dignity, rather than enhance them.  

When God became human in Jesus, the only power Jesus used was love.  There was never any coercion in Jesus, never any violence – just constant respect, care, love, and, necessarily [given the mess we make of ourselves and of society], a persistent offer of forgiveness.

With his story of the birth of Jesus, Luke was setting up his readers to recognise the face of God in the unfolding story of the adult Jesus, the story of his life and teaching, the story of his dehumanizing, degrading, and brutal death, and of the effect of that death – his resurrection.

Luke was telling his readers that the meaning of life is love, and that the way to life to the full is love.  We’re inconsistent, we struggle… but we know it and we want to do better.  It’s why we’re here tonight – to remember, to celebrate, and to renew our determination to keep learning.  We forget at our peril.

On which note, I wish you all a truly happy Christmas!

Homily 7 – 2012 

[It’s good to tell the stories to the children.  Gather them around the crib – at home or in the Church.  Let it be hands-on.  Help them to say a prayer to Jesus, or Mary or Joseph.  Children need to know the stories of the tribe.  It helps them know who they are.  But they grow up – and so have you.  Then it’s time to take them more deeply into the Gospel – and to encourage them to question: What was Luke hoping to tell us by the way he shaped his story?]

The angel had said to the shepherds: Here is a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.  Where would you start looking? Well, certainly somewhere in the nearby town, Bethlehem.  But hardly in the upper-class end of the town – a gang of shepherds would not be welcome there.  Pretty obviously, but unexpectedly, it would have to be somewhere among the town's poorer citizens.  After all, the child would be wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a feed trough usually reserved for animals.  That was the normal deal in poor families.

There was another sign, too, not for the original shepherds, but for Luke's readers.   It was not called a sign, though it was clearly intended as such.  The first people to be informed of the birth of Jesus were not the local mayor, or the resident priest, or anyone who mattered – but shepherds, men right at rock-bottom of the social scale.

We are used to the story.  We might even think it's cute.  But what are the signs signifying? What are they pointing to? There could be a lot of answers to that.  I'll suggest a few.  You might see some others.

They seem to be saying: God is not into the trappings of power.  Indeed, God seems to be open to being pushed around, profoundly inconvenienced and even exploited by those in power.  God seems to have a special interest in the nobodies, what we might call a "preferential option for the poor".  God is not into prestige, reputation or honour.  God is not fazed by chaos.  If we look at the other end of the child's life – his formal crucifixion – [executed by order of the State, under pressure from the religious authorities, aligned between a couple of bandits], the same agendas seem to be in operation there, too.  Put that way, the story doesn't seem quite so cute.

There are some perks in being disciples of Jesus, but there are some disturbing challenges as well.  It's a hard act to live up to.  Over the centuries, our Church has flirted with power and reputation and wealth – though, at least here in Australia, that might be beginning to unravel, and not by our deliberate choice, even if through our own fault.  I wonder if the Church will be a purer, simpler, more compassionate, more focussed and more aware Church as a result of the Royal Commission soon to get under way?

A wonderful thing about Christmas is that it reveals God right in the middle of mess, totally committed to helping us to sort ourselves out from our mess.  It reveals a God who doesn't withdraw as a result of the world's sin, or the Church's sin, but who chooses to get totally involved.

In the child whose birth we celebrate today, we see God's way of engaging with the world's sin, the world's violence and our instinctive hostility.  It's the way of vulnerability, and of the determined avoidance of power, wealth and prestige.

We might think twice about our own commitment to God's project, wondering if the price might be too high.  What on earth does it involve? a radical re-imagining of Church? It's easier to opt out, to let ourselves be disillusioned and to drift away.  And yet, there is something about the child – something about the crucified and disgraced Jesus – that touches a deeper chord within us, and resonates with what is our truest and best.  I can wonder about myself and my readiness to embrace the future.  But we don't have to have the answers.  We don't have to be certain about our personal resources.

I don't know how Mary felt.  I don't know how Joseph felt.  When others seemed to have got carried away by astonishment – enjoying a real religious "high" – Mary and Joseph just seem to have kept silent.  Luke would simply say of Mary: she pondered these things in her heart.  What might that mean?  Whatever our answer, it might be a good, sobering, starting point, too, for us.

With all that swirling in my mind, I wish you all a truly Happy Christmas!

Homily 8 - 2013

By the time Luke wrote his Gospel, Jesus had been born eighty years earlier.  He had been dead for a few days, fifty years back, but then had risen … and was still around.  The question for Luke’s readers, and for us, is where, and how, to find the risen One…  Perhaps Luke was hoping to give his readers a few hints through the angels and what they had to say in today’s story.  Let us explore a few possibilities.

The first angel said, You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.  Is Luke, perhaps, telling us that Christ will be found in the ordinary … and so, probably, in the unexpected.  Disconcertingly, perhaps, is he to be found best in the poor, the vulnerable and the powerless?  To stand in the shoes of the oppressed and the excluded, the unwelcome, can provide an amazing, even shocking, entrée to reality.  However, in order to find Christ present in life lived, we need to cultivate the inner eye, the in-sight, that enables us, really, to see: to be open to the unfamiliar within the familiar; open, too, to wonder.  We may need, also, to approach our search expectantly.  How might we cultivate that inner eye?  My answer to that is: deliberately to create periods of stillness and emptiness in our otherwise hectic lives.

The angelic choir that took over from the solitary angel, sang: Peace to all who enjoy God’s favour.  Is peace your experience? Do you expect to experience peace? Luke seemed to think it a distinct possibility.  But, no one can do that for you.  For you to find peace, you have to discover Christ there in your life.  You need to discover that God is a God who favours, who loves.  Now that may not necessarily be the automatic sense of God that a lifetime of accumulated words and voices has taught you.  But, even if it is, to discover God for yourself, you need to engage with God.  And how can you do that?  My answer is the same as before: deliberately to create periods of stillness and emptiness in your otherwise hectic lives.

Let us go back again to the first angel, to the opening words, I bring you news of great joy.  Joy is not the same as pleasure; indeed, pleasure is nothing like joy, really.  Pleasures are stirred by our senses, and can be attractive and strong.  Joy comes from deeper within, usually quietly and unobtrusively – and it is markedly more fulfilling.  But it can be appreciated only through engagement with God.  And for that engagement to be real for you, my invitation is [You’ve guessed it!]: deliberately seek to create periods of stillness and emptiness in your otherwise hectic lives.

With that thought, I wish you all a “Happy, peaceful, truly joyful Christmas”!

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.  

Homily 10 - 2016

It’s hard to hear, to look freshly, at a story that we have heard and even sung about ad nauseam since we were children - especially one that carries countless memories and triggers a variety of competing feelings. But let us give it one more go this evening. Let’s begin by trying to cut loose from childhood. Luke did not compose his story for children. This is a story for adults, and needs an adult sensibility to get hold of the messages he was trying to convey. It is the start of his gospel. He was setting up the scene and rehearsing the themes that will become more obvious as the narrative unfolds.

Tonight’s passage began with Jesus’ parents in clear tension with the recognized power bearers of the time. They were citizens of a conquered, occupied country; and at great personal inconvenience, were being helplessly pushed around by the bureaucracy. The purpose of their having to temporarily relocate was so that the bureaucracy could work out how much tax they could extract from the population. The aim was to milk everyone to the limit, not to distribute the country’s wealth equitably among the different sectors of the society, but to satisfy the demands of the brutal occupiers.

The adult Jesus would have much to say later that would be relevant to how society should function, how people should best relate to each other, about the vision and values that might contribute to their experiencing life to the full. His message would not be appreciated by the power elites.

As Jesus’ story evolved, the dominant questions underlying all that he said, all that he did, would be, “Who on earth is he?” and “What is his relationship to God?” even “What is his sense of this God he talks about? How does he see God?”

Right from the beginning of his Gospel, Luke wanted clearly to address that problem so that his readers might be alerted to hear clearly the message he hoped to convey, and not be unnecessarily distracted wondering. God-questions are beyond human comprehension. So, to make that quite clear, Luke has the necessary information about Jesus conveyed by what he called firstly “The angel of the Lord”, and afterwards “a great throng of the heavenly host”. Not only what they said was important, but whom they said it to. Indeed, whom they said it to was highly relevant to what they had to say.

The single angel identified Jesus as “Saviour”, as “Christ”, and as “Lord”. “Saviour” indicated his crucial relevance to them, indeed to everyone – the ‘why’ of his presence among them. “Christ” identified him as the mysterious figure spoken of, though unclearly, by many of the Hebrew prophets. “Lord” related him somehow with God, but left the issue still open-ended.

The message was given to “shepherds”, a social group that was universally despised and ostracized by anyone with any self-respect. What is going on? Why not to the Jewish priests? Why not to the Jewish king? Has that any relevance to the meaning of salvation? Does it invite a re-reading of Jewish religious history and of the interventions of the prophets? What does it say about God? What is Luke on to, by bringing “shepherds” into his story?

Rather than answering, Luke intensified the message. He had “the angel of the Lord” declare that this saviour, Christ, Lord, would be identified precisely by being no different from any other young baby born around that time in Bethlehem – simply “wrapped in rags and laid in an animals’ feed trough” [if you will pardon the alternative translation]. At which stage, Luke then had the “great throng of the heavenly host” brought on stage to confirm the mystery. This birth revealed nothing less than the “glory of God”, and brought the promise of genuine “peace” to a world loved by God.

Might Luke’s story challenge us to ask, and to answer, how can we help ourselves recognise God present in the ordinary events of our ordinary lives, and of our messy world. What do we look for?

Homily 11 - 2017

Who am I? I am John. Who is the child in the crib? That is Jesus. Well, those are our names. But our names really tell you nothing. They don’t tell you who am I, who he is. Perhaps that can’t be answered. I have managed to construct a sense of my self, a self-image, over time, and to project it more or less successfully. But as time goes on, I am constantly getting to learn more and more how far from the reality that familiar self-image is, and who in fact I really am. And who is that? There is more to me than me. St John put it this way, “In the beginning was the Word [the Logos, the blueprint]. The Word was with God and the Word was God. Through the Word all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through the Word.” So what is making me real, what is making me exist, what is allowing me to be John, is the Word of God. And that is true not only for me but for everyone and everything else that is real, that exists. This is fascinating! What about Jesus? There is a difference. Of him, St John wrote, “The Word became flesh. The Word lived among us” – The Word allows me to be real; but the Word became Jesus.

The Word, then, did not come into the world only with the birth of Jesus, two thousand years ago, give or take. The Word has been in the world since the beginning. The Word has been the source of the world’s realness from the moment of the Big Bang [and the scientists tell us that that was 13.6 billion years ago, give or take].

It is interesting to ponder the evolutionary trend observable over the world’s history. I start off from the premise that God is love, or even better, God is loving – more verb than noun. God’s loving expresses itself as God’s Word, and acts in the world as the energy source that moves the world. Initially it took the primitive forms of matter and energy in their varied expressions. Then through inanimate creation, to living things like plants, to sensate things as bugs and animals, till eventually living animals became conscious of themselves as homo sapiens, and began then to think and eventually to love.

Even the Hebrew people seem to have had some inkling of this presence of the divine in creation. Did you notice this morning’s Responsorial Psalm, “Sing to the Lord all the earth, tell.. his wonders among all the peoples. Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad, let the sea and all within it thunder praise, let the land and all it bears rejoice, all the trees of the wood shout for joy..”

That evolutionary development climaxed when the Word itself moved from being the reality source of humans to finally becoming human in Jesus. Through our incorporation, then, into the risen humanity of Jesus, celebrated in baptism, we are drawn even more deeply into the mystery of the Word made flesh. As love intensifies and becomes more and more universalised, we move into closer and closer unity with each other and with the created world. St Paul shared his intuition thus: “God wanted all perfection to be found in Christ and all things to be reconciled through him and for him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by his death on the cross.”

Humanity has further to travel yet. But the birth of Jesus that we celebrate tonight serves to remind us that we are on the way, and that God is serious. In the meantime, it is imperative for us to realise our radical oneness with all creation through the Word of God that constitutes the reality, the existence, of all that is.

Homily 12 - 2019

I believe that it is important as we come to celebrate today’s Feast to be watchful for the mystery present between the lines. Whatever about the details of the story, the overwhelming reality is that the child referred to in the story really is our “Saviour”. God has become human.

Not only did God become human, but became a child, totally dependent for his existence on the care and love he encountered in his parents. Their love even influenced his developing human personality. If any child looks like his mother, this child surely did, given that he inherited no other DNA than hers. Then, as he grew, he would have picked up his parents’ ways of doing things, their funny sayings, their accent.

This helpless child reveals to us the heart of God as much as does the dying Jesus stretched out helplessly on the cross. When we stop and think, both the infant Jesus and the tortured, dying Jesus do exert in their different ways a remarkable but real power of a unique kind – the power of love. The only power that can give life is, in one shape or other, the power of love. Check it out! That is the power of God [who in fact is nothing but love]. God’s is the “love that moves the sun and other stars” [as the Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, wrote centuries ago] – the power that creates and energises the immense, ever-expanding universe, and everything and everyone in it.

It is breath-taking to think that the power behind everything that is and moves in our universe is the power of love – never forced on us but there for the finding. That was the power condensed into the heart of both the newborn Christ and the crucified Christ.

I often wonder, sadly, why, after all that Jesus said and did, we almost instinctively image God as almighty, all-powerful, majestic and glorious when God’s own default option is love and mercy? It seems too easy to fashion God in our image than to allow ourselves to be shaped according to God’s truth.

To touch the mystery revealed [or concealed?] in today’s Feast, we perhaps need deliberately to stop, to sit, and quietly and joyfully take time simply to ponder.

Homily 13 - 2020

We probably all accept that Jesus was both human and divine, one like us and one like the Father. If we are a little more sophisticated, we know that he is not human and divine somehow mixed up, but as fully human as we are, and as fully divine as the Father is. The catch is that, even though we know it, we find it hard to handle both together at the same time. We tend to focus either on his humanness at the expense of his divineness, or his divineness at the expense of his humanness. If we are going to do that, I would suggest that we stick more with the humanness — because we know what it means to be human but we have no idea what it is like to be divine. Certainly, whatever we do, let us not make a caricature of his humanness.

I fear, for example, that we have trouble imagining how we was as a young lad. The apocryphal Gospels don’t help us with their would-be edifying legends, that seemed to make Jesus insufferably pious. He was fully human, like all young boys. We do believe that he didn’t sin. But how old does any young lad need to be before he can freely and thoughtfully commit a deliberate sin — grave matter, full knowledge and full consent? Can we imagine the young Jesus climbing the tree in his back yard, and shouting out, “Look at me, mum!”? What used to make him laugh? When he was in grade two, did he ever have a harmless crush on some similarly innocent young girl? Did he ever say “Sorry!” to his mother or his father?

If we can’t comfortably handle the fully-humanness of the young Jesus, how do we cope with the adult Jesus? Do we de-humanise him to protect his divinity? We are [innocent enough] heretics if we do, but heretics nevertheless. Jesus was as fully human as he was fully divine. Let him be human, and let us respect him deeply because of his divinity — both at the same time, if we can manage it!

That, after all, is why and what we celebrate at Christmas.

 Homily 14-2021

When I was a little child, the crib’s appearance was always good news. I loved the story; and I heard it with joy because I knew that when the crib came out, the presents would not be long in coming either. Early impressions are always deep impressions. But Luke, and Matthew, wrote their Gospels, not for children, but for adults.

As we heard just now, Luke prefaced his story with the historical context of Jesus’ birth. Palestine was an occupied country. The Roman army were the equivalent of the police forces of today — except that they were ruthless and cold-hearted. The Roman armies conquered and occupied countries for the sole purpose of revenue and raw materials. For the local inhabitants, life was tough.

The purpose of the “census” that Luke referred to was simply to calculate the annual general head-tax to be forwarded on to headquarters.

Joseph and Mary had to travel down to Bethlehem. They were two of the nameless poor pushed around by Rome. And Mary was heavily pregnant. Luke made no mention of a donkey. Like so many others, they simply had to walk, despite Mary’s condition. A local travellers’ inn would be no place for a young mother to give birth. Luke put them in an unoccupied stable instead. No mention of animals, beyond the reference to an empty manger — hardly hygienic, certainly not comfortable. No mid-wives either.

Yet Luke would soon invite us to reflect deeply on who this child was, wrapped in the swaddling cloths of the poor, with a manger substituting for the cradle.

How could he make clear the mystery that had happened? Luke was writing with the benefit of fifty years of prayerful pondering by early Christian believers like himself. He moved into symbol, but not without continuing to emphasise the sheer inconceivability of what was happening. He summoned angels, traditional revealers of mystery, to proclaim what he wanted his readers to be aware of right from the start of his Gospel. He had the angels announce: “news of great joy, joy to be shared by the whole people. A saviour has been born for you; he is Christ the Lord.”

Consistent with his message, Luke mentioned that the recipients of the mystery were shepherds. At that time in that world, shepherds were regarded as not unlike what many think of a Bikie gang today— uncouth, living on the margins.

An angelic choir then revealed more of the mystery: “Glory to God in the highest heavens, and on earth peace to all who enjoy God’s favour”. What sort of a God was this! Were the angels really saying that all enjoy God’s favour, whether poor, the suspect, and those consigned to the edges by society — like shepherds? Perhaps like Mary and Joseph, too? Or even like the baby?

By his captivating story, Luke was preparing his readers for Jesus’ later inclusive and sensitive outreach especially to all whom polite society chose to disregard.

Homily 15-2022

Suddenly with the angel there was a great throng of the heavenly host, praising God and singing: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to men who enjoy his favour”.

What was Luke [from whose Gospel this evening’s passage was taken] trying to achieve by bringing a chorus from “the heavenly host” into his story? Did he want his readers to take the angels’ message literally, and carefully to dissect its possible meanings? I am inclined to think “No”. I see the whole story as a poetic construction designed by Luke to alert his readers to the mystery of the Jesus whose actual deeds and words he would soon share with them [with us?] in the main part of his Gospel.

The angels’ message is poetic metaphor designed to get his readers in the small early Christian community to which he belonged to listen carefully. Luke wanted them to make sense of the actual deeds and teachings of the adult Jesus in the light of their own experience as disciples over the years since their personal conversion to the risen Christ.

Luke seemed to sense that the coming of Christ was leading to a radical change of era in the world in which they lived. As we heard tonight, Luke’s introduction to his story of Jesus’ birth clearly situated the action within the world of the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus.

According to tonight’s Gospel passage Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem precisely because Caesar desired to have some idea of the size of the populations of the various nations he had brutally conquered so that he could tax them accordingly.

Caesar had prided himself on the “Roman Peace” that he claimed to have brought to the world, ignoring the fact that that peace had been achieved by the cruel subjugation of everyone else. He considered himself to be the world’s saviour; and the Roman Senate even went so far as to give him the title of ‘Son of God’.

If written eighty years earlier, during the life of Caesar, Luke’s Infancy Narratives would have been seen as treasonous.

So what sense do you make of the angelic message, “Peace to all who enjoy God’s favour”? Jesus? or Caesar? It is a significant time to raise the question, because most of us, I think, are wondering what on earth is happening to our Church, and what will be its immediate future? Indeed, what is happening to our world at the moment? A lot of keen minds are currently chewing over that question also.

These questions are becoming increasingly relevant against the backdrop of possible, even threatening, nuclear warfare — unless a handful of powerful nations are prepared to face the obvious, even at the price of ‘losing face’. Arguments over climate change, or an unwillingness to change the status quo, could also lead to the world quickly destroying itself.

In all this, most of us as individuals feel so powerless.

Is it time to listen seriously to Jesus? For him, the way to peace, the only way to peace, is for us all to choose to replace our habitual ways of regarding each other as competitors, as threateningly different, as nuisances or whatever, but as brothers and sisters. Until there is a palpable “mood”, or at least a ‘critical mass’ of convinced people in our world committed enough to mutual respect and care, to cooperation and mutual caring, violence of some kind will inevitably remain unchallenged.

Can we find some time during these otherwise busy days to look carefully at the little boy in the crib, and ask ourselves, “Powerless? or powerful?”

We may even go deeper, and ponder, “Is his way of love powerless? or powerful?”

And even, if I feel uncertain, “Is now the time to experiment and find out for myself”?