The Christmas Story Is for You
The Nativity of the Lord
Maybe the Christmas story is a fiction. We know the story very well, perhaps too well to really give it much thought. A child is born and that child is God and the child who is born is a messiah who will save us from death because our sin broke the plan God had for the world and now we die but we do not want to die so a child who is our messiah is born in a manger to a virgin whose husband wanted to divorce her but does not and so now angels are singing and shepherds are adoring and kings are kneeling because that child born into poverty about 2,000 years ago is the Word of God who was there in the beginning and who was with God and who was God and who is a light shining in darkness and a Word that takes flesh and dwells among us.
There is the Christmas story. You know the story well, perhaps too well to really give it much thought.
Maybe we made the whole story up. How would that work? We know a man named Jesus lived and died—the history books all agree on that fact. But maybe Jesus was simply a brilliant man who interpreted scripture and spoke of the fulfillment of God’s plan in a novel way that attracted followers. And maybe after Jesus died, these followers got to work continuing the mission. Maybe these followers got to work writing down the Christmas story for the first time. Maybe these followers made up rules and created rituals and built up a new kind of faith and maybe these followers a few centuries later just got lucky and the empires around them started to collapse and suddenly these followers possessed legitimacy and authority and now the world will never be the same because a man named Jesus once lived and died and those who followed him got to work telling a good story. A Christmas story.
What makes a story a fiction? The fact that it never happened? Maybe. Maybe there are stories we tell that never happened—the stuff of fairy tales and novels and fables and legends and folklore—and the fact that these stories are invented by us means that these stories are fictions. The funny thing is that these stories that are fictions and that never happened often have quite an impact on how people live. There are an awful lot of young women who grow up wanting to become princesses because of the stories we tell. There are an awful lot of young men who grow up wanting to go on great adventures because of the stories we tell.
If a story is something we made up and it never happened, but it changes lives, does that make the story into something real, something that happened? Is that kind of a story no longer a fiction?
Maybe there is a better way to talk about fiction. Maybe a fiction is a story about something that really happened but no longer changes lives. You know what I mean. Stories about the past about which we no longer care. Did these events happen? Maybe but it does not really matter because those events do not impact my life; those stories do not form who I am or how I live. These stories might as well have nothing to do with reality. These stories are fictions to me.
Let me ask you a question. What would be worse, for the Christmas story to have never happened but for it to have changed millions of lives the last 2,000 years or for the Christmas story to have happened but almost no one cares that it did? Which alternative makes the Christmas story into more of a fiction?
I am saying what I am saying to you today because I want you to wake up and pay attention to the story of Christmas. You know the story well, perhaps too well to give it much thought—and that fact needs to change. You need to care about stories. You need to care about what makes some stories fictions and what makes some stories true and real. You need to care about why you are here today.
Why are you here today? There is a good question. Why are you here today?
I can think of a few answers to that question, some better than others. I am going to give you what I think is the best answer.
You are here today because you do not want to die and stay dead forever after living however many years you happened to live in this broken, corrupt world that is filled with sorrow and anxiety and fear and sometimes the football and travel and social media and streaming is not enough to distract you from the hardness of life and you need something more for your life and so you came to church today because a child who is our messiah is born in a manger to a virgin whose husband wanted to divorce her but does not and so now angels are singing and shepherds are adoring and kings are kneeling because that child born into poverty about 2,000 years ago is the Word of God who was there in the beginning and who was with God and who was God and who is a light shining in darkness and a Word that takes flesh and dwells among us.
The Christmas story is real and true and will change your life if you want it to change your life. God becomes a human being. God does not need you, but he loves you and he makes a home with you so that you might possess life and possess it more abundantly. Have you ever taken a moment to think about that fact? Or do you know the story too well to give it much thought?
Do you see how the meaning of the story is the only good answer to why you are here today?
There is a light now shining in the darkness. And so, you came to church today. You can have hope now because God is with you in your life and in this world. And so, you came to church today. You do not have to die forever because God is with you in your life and in this world. And so, you came to church today. You do not need to live in the grip of sorrow or anxiety or fear because God is with you in your life and in this world. And so, you came to church today.
God knows you and loves you and now because of the birth of Christ it is really, genuinely possible for you to know God and to love God. And so, you came to church today.
Maybe you came to church today for reasons like these. Maybe you came because that is just what lots of people still do on Christmas—the church looks beautiful, the music is pretty good, the kids are dressed up for a nice photograph.
No matter your reason for coming today, I would love for you to come back next week and every week. The Christmas story is for you—so that you might have hope in a broken world, so that you might have life in a world that is dying, so that you might see the light of Christ shining in the darkness.
The Christmas story is for you.
Homily preached on December 24th/25th at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary