“For today in the city of David a saviour has been born to you who is Christ and Lord.” Luke 2: 1-14
“Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place which the Lord has made known to us.” Luke 2: 15-20
The circumstances of Jesus’ birth challenge us to enter with our power of imagination into the mystery of God born among us. In describing those circumstances, Matthew prods us to venture into God’s unexpected, yet imaginative, way of bringing the Messiah, the Christ of God into our world and into our contemporary lives.
The stories of the birth of Jesus which we hear from Matthew, John and Luke in the gospel=readings of the four Masses for Christmas Day are their accounts of the enormity of God’s response to human hope that had endured for centuries. The Saviour whom God sent among us was, surprisingly, neither a powerful ruler nor a king. If we care to look at both the First and New Testaments, it doesn’t take us long to discover that God, so very often, works in ways that are very different from what we humans expect or prefer. In the vigil Mass for Christmas, Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus makes it clear that Jesus ’ancestors were a mix of prominent leaders, scoundrels and frail and troubled human beings. Matthew made it clear that God had no difficulty in dealing with the best and worst of humanity, with the strong and the vulnerable. John, scholar that he was, situated Jesus as having an integral place in the history of the cosmos. He tells us that, in Jesus, God came among God’s own chosen people but “they received him not.” But John quickly added that, to those who were wise enough to accept Jesus, ”he gave power to become children of God.” And while Luke’s uncomplicated stories give us all the romance of Christmas and the inspiration to erect our creches and cribs, we have to ponder his stories to get to their true meaning. Interestingly, it is only Matthew who gave us the Magi with their wisdom and their gifts.
Prominent in Luke’s story are the shepherds, characters who were regarded as not particularly reputable members of society. Their occupation meant that they were most likely unlettered and ignorant of the Jewish scriptures. They had a reputation for being dishonest and for smelling like the sheep for whom they cared. They did not have a reputation for regular attendance at temple prayer. They probably scored low when it came to longing, hoping and praying for the coming of the Messiah. Anyone who told of angels appearing to them would almost certainly have met with disbelief. Yet, the message the angels allegedly gave them was enough to whet their curiosity and to lead them to go to Bethlehem to check it out for themselves. At the very least, they would have known that no ordinary, new-born baby would have been wrapped up and placed in a manger – a feed-bin for cattle and sheep. That baby in the food-bin for domestic animals would grow into the Jesus who, through his teaching, through the way in which his touch restored life to broken people, and through his death and resurrection, became nourishment for all humanity. Consequently, the shepherds did not hesitate to tell everyone they encountered that what the angels had told them was exactly what they had seen. Paradoxically, these ignorant, unsophisticated, unlettered shepherds became the very first evangelists, the bearers of the good news of God’s identification with humanity in the person of Jesus.
These gospel-readings invite us to ask ourselves just where do we go in search of God in our world. Story after story in the First and New Testaments point to how God’s presence has been revealed to us in unexpected and very ordinary ways. The prophet Elijah encountered God in a gentle breeze, Moses had a divine encounter in a bush that had caught fire in the desert, Mary was visited by an angel from God in a humble house in the middle of nowhere, Joseph in a dream – an experience we all have! Maybe we have to lower our sights and accept that God can reach out to us through people as ordinary as the garbage collectors, the check-out staff at the supermarket and the beggars on our streets.
We can see something of Luke’s artistry as a writer in the manner in which his account of the life and impact of Jesus is sandwiched between two parallel stories. There are close similarities between his story of the shepherds at the start of his Gospel and that of the meeting with the risen Jesus of the disciples as they made their way to Emmaus, ignorant of the fact that Jesus had been raised by God from the tomb. In both stories there is a journey: one to Bethlehem by the shepherds and the other out of Jerusalem towards Emmaus by two of the disciples. In both stories there is reference to a visitation by angels: one to the shepherds telling them of a baby who would be found in a manger in Bethlehem, the other of angels informing the disciples that Jesus was alive. However, the angels had been unable to convince two of their number that Jesus really was alive. In both stories Luke makes reference to an inn: one that had no room for Joseph, Mary and their baby about to be born, the other in Emmaus, to which the two disciples invited the stranger they had befriended. They made room for their new-found friend whom they had not yet recognised. In the shepherd story, the curious shepherds discovered the baby Jesus in a bin to which animals came to be fed. In the Emmaus story, the two disciples eventually recognised the risen Jesus when he broke bread at the table in the inn around which they had gathered. Last of all, both the shepherds and the two disciples went off to share with others what is was that they had discovered, By structuring his Gospel within two parallel stories, Luke is telling everyone who reads it that there is within it a succession of invitations to encounter the person of Jesus Christ and to develop a relationship with him.
As we take time to ponder one or other or all four of the Christmas gospel-readings, let’s make an effort to articulate for ourselves what we have discovered about the God who has come among us in the person of Jesus.