Christmas Night at SVP 2021

The absolutely amazing thing about Christmas is that God became a human being.

To me at least, it is amazing because God knew what he was letting himself fin or. From his home in heaven – wherever that might be! – God could see the stupidity and the crassness of humankind. God could look down on our ancestors and see what a mess we were making of our lives. God saw the fighting, the killing. God saw the pain we put ourselves through with our agonising emotions of jealousy and anger and hatred and lust. And yet God chose to enter into this and become one of God’s own creatures, one of us.

And – still amazingly – God chose to enter into this world as one of its human victims. God entered as a baby, with all its dependence on others, its awesome fragility and vulnerability. God chose to be one of the homeless in Bethlehem, delivered onto the filthy floor of a stable. God chose to join the migrants as they fled the terror of genocide, seeking refuge beyond the border with Egypt, hoping for sanctuary among the strangers. God chose to be a simple, poor worker, not to join the rich or ruling classes with their luxurious living standards and life security, but to work with his hands, sweating it out over the carpenter’s bench with his father, Joseph.

God chose to be one of us, in this most precarious human society, because he also knew what we could be if only we would see the light and choose to follow God’s ways.

God knows how much better is love than hate. God knows how much better are calm and patience than anger. God knows how much better are pardon and forgiveness than rancour and vindictiveness. God knows how much better it is to use our body and our senses in acts of love and caresses of joy rather than assaults of anger and hatred.  

God knows what we are capable of: of the goodness within each one of us. God knows of our profound desire to love and to be loved that too often lays as though trapped and imprisoned in our fractured hearts. God knows what it is like to look at the first green shoots on a tree in Spring. God knows what it is to marvel at the freedom of a bird, to feel the fresh breeze on our cheeks, to wonder at the sparkling sun on the wave tops on the beach, to gaze at the stars in the heavens singing out the wonders of creation. God knows the taste of ice-cream on a hot summer’s day. God knows the thrill of the first lovers’ kiss. God knows the best of humankind.

And this is what God wants for us all at Christmas.

Sisters and Brothers, in all the hustle and bustle and the mixed emotions of the next few hours and days, let us find the time, even a moment or two, to contemplate the little baby we have just laid in the crib at the beginning of our meeting. Let us make a moment’s space to imagine what this divine baby really wants for us and the potential within each of us to become God-like in all that we are. For this is what God intends and in Jesus Christ God has shown what we are all capable of being. Let us open our hearts to the power of God’s transforming grace so that we may become the image of God; the divine humanity we are all called to be.

Happy Christmas to you all.

Terry Madden