An Advent 4 Homily

Fr. Larry

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.
(The Gospel According to Matthew 1:18-24)

What are we to make of this Scripture? I don’t mean what are we to make of the virgin birth of Jesus, that’s not what is truly astounding and wonderful in the text. Although the virginal conception is what we most often get hung up on in reading this story, that is not what is most significant. That a virgin, literally a young unmarried woman, will conceive and bear a child, a son, is not what is most important here. What matters more is that in the birth of this child the Holy Spirit of God is mysteriously and marvelously at work — just as the Spirit was at work at the beginning of time and space and matter and energy – hovering over the primordial darkness, the primordial emptiness, the nothingness, like a mother bird over her nest hatching her chicks into life. So the Holy Spirit warmly “brooded” over the chaos, “void and without form,” until light and life burst forth – planets and stars, a world of stunning beauty teeming with life. But even more marvelous than the big bang, the formation of solar systems, and galaxies and universes and things that leap, and crawl, and walk and run, and swim and fly on the earth is something still deeper and more mysterious – “and his name shall be called Emmanuel, God with us.” That is the center, not only of this text, but of life and reality itself – mysterious, profound, unfathomable. Matthew is not simply telling an interesting or entertaining tale, a sentimental story, nor is he asking us to believe Jesus had only one set of DNA, but he is inviting us into an experience, inviting us to feel the divine presence – “Emmanuel, God with us. God in us. God revealed to us.”

There are experiences, noetic, ineffable, sometimes ecstatic but frequently subtle, and always completely simple, usually lasting only for seconds or a few brief moments, but possessing the power to determine the course and quality of a life forever, possessing the capacity to sustain with grace and courage in times of confusion, physical pain, emotional suffering, and intense darkness.
Here are three stories reported by the Oxford Research Institute for Religious Experience which may give you a sense of what I am talking about; although, if you have ever been present at a birth you may learn more from just remembering those feelings:

One man said, “I heard nothing, yet it was as if I were surrounded by ‘golden light’ and as if I only had to reach out my hand to touch Christ himself who was surrounding me with compassion.”

A woman wrote, “One night I suddenly had an experience as if I were buoyed up by waves of utterly sustaining power and love. The only words that came to me describing it were from an old Christian hymn, ‘underneath are the everlasting arms,’ though this sounds like a picture, and my experience was not a picture, but a feeling, and there were the arms. This I am sure has affected my life as it has made me know the love and sustaining power of God. It came from outside and unasked.”

Another described her experience like this: “Suddenly I felt a great joyousness sweeping over me, I use the word ‘sweeping’ because this feeling seemed to be just that. I actually felt it as coming from my left and sweeping around and through me, completely engulfing me. I do not know how to describe it. It was not like a wind. But suddenly, it was there, and I felt it move around and through me. Great joy was in it. Exaltation might be a better word.”

Here is a fourth, one that strongly resonates with me personally, which I guess is why I tell it so often: “When I was in prison in Vietnam in solitary confinement, my captors would continually torture me. One day I was tied to a rack. A young soldier was ordered to torture me and break me. During this torture, when I honestly felt I was at my breaking point, a beautiful prayer came instantly to my mind, even though I wasn’t praying. The prayer was: ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus, I give my life to you.’ So, I prayed that prayer over and over again. The more I prayed it, the more I felt I truly was giving my life to the Lord. Then this peace came over me like a warm blanket, and I no longer felt pain–only peace. The soldier torturing me saw this transformation in my face and stopped his torture. He went to his commanding officer and said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this.’ And they let me go back to my cell. From that day on, I continued to use that prayer of peace, ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus, I give my life to you.’”

“And his name will be called Emmanuel, God with us. God in us. God revealed to us.”

I think Christmas should be fun. I have no need to complain about people celebrating the commercial Christmas of gift buying – I would suggest you not worry terribly about how the stores are doing or take personal responsibility for the Gross National Product at the Holiday Season but there is joy in giving, and if people think of Christmas as a time of family and friends and eating good things and sharing a glass of egg nog you will hear no grumbling from me. I think Christmas should be fun. If you enjoy making or buying gifts to give someone else as a way of saying, “I value you, you matter to me, I care about you, I love you;” that makes me so glad. If you feel the warmth of friends and family at Christmas gatherings, if there is any Christmas laughter in your home or in your heart, or in your mouth I am so happy for you. And if you should feel the presence of Christ this Advent or Christmas I will be full of gratitude, awe and wonderment with you – “Glory, glory, glory in excelsis Deo!”

For this is the simple essence of Christianity. A child, a son, is born “and his name is called Emmanuel, God with us.” The Christian faith is not about, as the White Queen suggested to Alice, “believing six impossible things before breakfast.” It is not about being good so as to avoid everlasting torture. It is not about being against something, birth control, divorce, or abortion. It’s not about being against premarital, extramarital, or marital sex. The Biblical texts dealing with human sexuality are not obsessed with loving healthy sexual intimacy as something shameful, but with the evils of cultic prostitution, which still exists in places like India today, with sexual exploitation and violence. If you want to worry about sex as a social problem, then do something about the tragedy of human trafficking. Christianity is not not about hating vice, but loving virtue. It is certainly not about being against anyone because of politics, religion, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or social status. I love the way Eugene Peterson translates Philippians 4, “Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them. Help them see that the Master is about to arrive.” No, Christianity is not about being against, but for others. And, it has nothing to do with the esoteric theories of philosophers or theologians, education or lack of education, wealth or the lack or wealth, intelligence or the lack of intelligence, physically attractive or unattractive there is no advantage. It is within the grasp of everyone, without exception requiring only the least amount of humility, love, and purity of heart to embrace the child in the manger – “Emmanuel, God with us, God in us, God revealed to us.” Amen.