How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” —Isaiah 52:7 (NRSV)
OUR VIGIL ENDS WHEN, like the watchmen of ancient Israel, we sing for joy at our Savior’s coming. On Christmas day, the full dimension of our relationship with God is revealed and we become, through Christ, God’s children. Because God took on human flesh, human flesh is made holy. Even lowly and dusty feet, if they carry God’s message, are beautiful. This is the glory, and the scandal, of the feast we celebrate today. Things that we would prefer to keep separate—the holy and the profane—have come together, in a cold and smelly stable. The God of Ages is warmed by the breath of cattle, and by his mother’s arms.
Our minds revolt at the thought. But on Christmas day, as Thomas Merton wrote, “eternity enters into time, and time, sanctified, is caught up into eternity.” Time, ourselves, and all of nature, are now made holy, illuminated by Christ. All that exists has the potential to reveal God’s truth and love.
On Christmas day we celebrate God’s doing a new thing with an ancient creation. God created us in his image, but we betrayed this gift in Eden. On Christmas day, we give thanks that the Nativity of Jesus has renewed it in us. It is the day when, as the great early church poet Ephraem of Syria says, “The creator of all things became the restorer. He gave them back their former beauty.”
On Christmas day we are asked to sing the new song that we will hear again at the end of time. Although our celebration of Christmas is festive indeed, we know that it is not the perfect feast to come. As Judea suffered under the yoke of empire, so millions suffer today under the yoke of unjust economies. The poor labor for pennies a day and die in misery when they are no longer of use; the rich consume compulsively, imprisoned by the notion that their worth as human beings comes from social status and possessions.
On Christmas, of all days, we are not to forget that too many families are homeless, too many children die of starvation and treatable disease, or that too many people are victimized by a profitable weapons trade that fuels genocidal conflict and terrorist acts around the world. How can we celebrate Christmas in such a world? The answer is that the joyful feast of Christmas exists because, and in spite of, the pitiful human condition.
We might take Joseph as our model in rejecting any temptation to despair. In icons of the Nativity he is set in a bottom corner, his hands on his head in a posture of resignation. The devil, depicted as a little man covered with hair, is trying to convince him that there is nothing extraordinary about this child, nothing changed about the world at his birth.
On Christmas day, we insist that everything has changed, and that it is good. We rejoice that God has come into our world, in human flesh, and we believe that Christ will come again. We give thanks for the Christ we know now, in the poor and oppressed and despairing of this world, and we believe that we will know him also when he comes in glory. On Christmas day, we are not resigned; we stand up and sing, for God has not given up on us. We are his own, and we are welcomed to the feast.
~Adapted from Kathleen Norris, “Christmas Day,” in GOD WITH US: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, edited by Greg Pennoyer & Gregory Wolfe
