Christmas 2011

Christmas 2011 (Luke 2:1-14)
“Fear not; I bring you good tidings of great joy.”

The great mystery of Christmas is Jesus Christ.

In Jesus God the Father united God the Son with human nature.

God became as we are so that we might become as God is.

The Christmas angel announced to the shepherds and to the world: fear not. This world and your lives are neither random nor meaningless. There is no condemnation in God. The Good News the angel brought to the poorest of the poor that night echoes throughout the centuries to all people everywhere.

The great joy of Christmas is that God is real, God is personal, God is love, God is Jesus Christ.

Where so many people ponder the question of whether God exists or who God may be, God himself answers that question once and for all, fully and completely. The answer is Jesus Christ.

In the infant of Bethlehem we see how the co-eternal Beloved Son of the Father set aside his omnipotence and omniscience to become one of us. Fully God and fully human. A particular man at a particular time in a particular place to reveal the infinite eternal real presence of Divine Love and Compassion for all of us and to each of us.
Jesus is the transcendent Beloved of the Father. Jesus is God with us and God for us in the manger with Mary and Joseph, the animals and the shepherds, the kings and the angels.

Jesus is the real and personal love of God for everyone. Jesus excludes no one and welcomes everyone to receive the gift of eternal love. That love has no beginning and will have no end. As we make a real choice to be found by that love and to immerse our souls in that love we reclaim the Original Blessing our species once rejected.

In Jesus God calls us to be who He originally created us to be. God the Father calls us to be the beloved of the co-eternal Beloved, Jesus Christ. Jesus fills us with that infinite love and compassion who is eternally the Holy Spirit.

In Jesus, God finds us wherever we are. In Jesus God found Mary and Joseph in the working class town of Nazareth. In Jesus, God found the shepherds in the fields. In Jesus God found the three kings in their observatory pondering the vastness of the universe. In Jesus God finds each of us where we are here and now.

The Christmas angel proclaims: Feat not. God is real. God is love. God is personal. God is Jesus Christ for you and forever. Amen.