True and Lasting Happiness Restored

Homily: The Nativity of the Lord (Mass During the Day) – Cycle A

I’ve been a priest for over seven years now and if there’s one thing that I’ve learned it’s that only the most sophisticated folks show up for Christmas Mass.  Looking out over the congregation, it appears that my observations hold true.  Therefore, I feel like it would be pretty safe to bring up the Greek philosopher Aristotle without getting too far above anybody’s head, and so here we go.

          One of the core things that Aristotle taught was that all living things have an end for which they are striving—a telos in Greek.  For example, by his observation, a plant is striving for the sun.  He could see this by the way that a plant will stretch out its leaves way beyond its roots in an effort to reach the rays of the sun.  We, of course, know that the plant needs the rays of the sun to hit its leaves for photosynthesis to happen, in which it converts the energy from the sun’s rays into nutrients to help it grow, but it doesn’t change the fact that the living spirit in the plant—the anima, if you will—is striving always towards the sun as if reaching it was its ultimate purpose.

          Now, I think that we can all agree that we human beings are little more complex than a plant.  Nonetheless, Aristotle still thought that we have a telos: an end to which we are striving.  When Aristotle observed human beings in order to determine for what it is that we are striving, he concluded that the end we are all trying to reach is happiness.  In other words, when he looked at the reasons why human beings do anything, he could see that all of them boiled down to one thing: happiness.  Simply stated: everything that we choose to do, we choose because we think that it will make us happy.  We, of course, could be wrong about whether or not it will make us happy, but the fact remains that we choose it because we think that it will make us happy.

          Saint Thomas Aquinas lived a little more than 1500 years after Aristotle, but he was one of the first to truly synthesize Aristotle’s philosophy into Christian theology.  Saint Thomas agreed that human beings have a telos, and that this telos is happiness.  Because Thomas was a Christian, however, he could tell us that the truest and fullest happiness for which we can strive—the happiness for which we were made—is what Christian theologians call the Beatific Vision: that is, standing face to face with God, in perfect communion with him.  Therefore, because of Saint Thomas, we now have a criterion from which to decide whether or not what we choose is what will truly make us happy: because if what we choose moves us closer to the Beatific Vision, then it truly will make us happy; and if it doesn’t, well then it won’t.

And so, why do I bring this up here today?  It’s because of this.  For the last month, we’ve covered our lives with the sheen of “Christmas Spirit”.  Lights, trees, shopping, parties, lots of food, lots of drinks... in other words, we’ve covered our lives with a spirit of celebration.  Yet, in spite of what all of the songs on the radio, your spotify playlist, or in stores and restaurants say (…It’s the most wonderful time of the year...) … in spite of what all of these songs say, underneath it all we realize that we really aren’t happy.  Sure, for a few days (maybe even a few weeks) we’ll feel good: connecting with family, reminiscing about old times, enjoying the exchange of presents (especially watching the joy and excitement of children opening gifts), and a day or two (or more) off work can truly give us a sense of comfort amidst the toils and labors of our lives.  By the time January 1^st rolls around, however, all of those good feelings have mostly vanished, and we’re left with the toils and labors, perhaps with few “fleeting flashes of perfect” mixed in.  When this reality settles back in, once again we’ll have to confront the fact that we really aren’t happy.

My friends, this is really important to say on this Christmas Day, because the truth of the matter is that, since the fall of man (the first sin of Adam and Eve), NOBODY HAS BEEN TRULY HAPPY!  Ever since the fall, mankind has sought his happiness in the world and has always come up short.  While we can be temporarily successful, none of us is capable of achieving true and lasting happiness by our own efforts.  Why?  Well, because (as Saint Thomas taught us) our only lasting happiness is the Beatific Vision—seeing God face to face.  This means a return to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve walked in communion with God.  Sin caused them to be expelled from the garden, and a great chasm between us and our happiness appeared: a chasm that mankind can never bridge himself.

Therefore, if, underneath all of this “holiday sheen”, there’s a gnawing in you that says, “Is this all there is?” or “It’s too bad that this is all going to end soon”, well then I’ve got good news for you: You’re normal!  You’re a human being, searching for your telos, your true and lasting happiness, and no amount of tinsel and lights and cookies and egg nog and corny songs and tacky sweater parties can satisfy the longing for happiness in you!  Only perfect communion with God can provide that.  To this, I have still more good news: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  This is what we celebrate tonight: not that we made it back to God, but that God came to us to bring us back to himself—to save us from our unhappiness so that we could return to life with him.

This, my brothers and sisters, is why we are bold to speak the words of Isaiah in the Mass: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying to Zion, ‘Your God is King!’ … Break out together in song, O ruins of Jerusalem! For the LORD comforts his people, he redeems Jerusalem … all the ends of the earth will behold the salvation of our God.”  My friends, God our Lord has come to comfort us, his people, by redeeming us from our sin which separated us from him!  Why, then, do we keep looking for happiness in the ethereal... in the aesthetic... in the “sheen” of Christmas?

My friends, the prologue to John’s Gospel, which we heard today, reminds us of this wonderful truth that God, who existed before all time, made all created things through his Son, the Divine Word; and, when his creation went astray and in the fullness of time (meaning, when the time was right), his Son came into the world to be our redemption and, thus, to restore us to our true and lasting happiness.  In the generations since his birth, however, we have often allowed ourselves to forget that it is through him, Jesus Christ, that we find our true and lasting happiness and thus begin to seek our happiness by our own frustrated efforts again.  The season of Advent reminds us to turn back to the Lord and say, “Come, Lord Jesus!  Save us from this unhappiness!”  And today we gather to say to him, “Praise to you, Lord Jesus, for you have come and you have saved us!”

Friends, I am going to say something to you here and I want you all to look at me and listen.  (Are you looking?)  Nothing—absolutely nothing—that you do this Christmas matters more than what we are doing right now in this church: giving praise to God that he has sent his Son to save us from our unhappiness so that we can find our telos, our true happiness in him.  Let us, therefore, let the wonder and awe of this great mystery—the Son of God appearing in our humanity—envelop us today, so that the happiness of this time might remain with us, even after we return to the labors and toils of our lives, and thus preserve us in faith until Christ, our Mighty King, returns to take us home.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – December 25^th, 2019

Divine Mercy and the Birth of Christ

Homily: Christmas – Mass During the Day

          In April of 2015, I joined a group of pilgrims on a journey to the Holy Land.  I wasn’t leading the trip, like many priests do, but rather “tagged onto” a trip that another priest was leading; and this for a couple of reasons.  First, because I wanted my first trip to the Holy Land to be a “personal” pilgrimage, in which I could just focus on praying and engaging the pilgrimage on my own.  This, because my first trip may be my only one and I wanted to be sure that I didn’t get lost worrying about keeping a group together.  The second reason was to make a pilgrimage of thanksgiving for have been in remission from cancer for five years (at that point).  This, again, necessitated that I make a “personal” pilgrimage, instead of a pilgrimage in which I’m trying to lead a group.

          Nevertheless, on the pilgrimage, I couldn’t escape the fact that I am a priest on a pilgrimage with a group of lay persons and so, inevitably, I was asked to lead certain portions of the trip, like celebrating Mass on some of the days (which I was happy to do).  Since that pilgrimage, every time that Christmas rolls around, I’m reminded of that trip; and here’s why.

          As I said, the trip was in April.  In fact, the trip left the Wednesday after Easter, which meant that we were celebrating much of Easter week in the Holy Land.  It was awesome to be celebrating the Easter Solemnities in the land on which Jesus walked and which was the birthplace of the Church.  A certain set of circumstances, however, meant that we were presented with an interesting situation when the Second Sunday of Easter—Divine Mercy Sunday—rolled around.

          The day before—Easter Saturday—we attempted to visit the church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.  As it turned out, however, the Eastern Orthodox Christians weren’t celebrating Easter week that week, but rather Holy Week.  Thus, it was Holy Saturday according to the Orthodox calendar and the church of the Nativity was full of Christians preparing to celebrate the Easter Vigil.  This meant both that there was a long line of people waiting to descend the staircase to the crypt to visit the location of Christ’s birth and that access was about to be cut off since the Easter Vigil was soon to begin.  As it turns out, we didn’t get to make our visit that day.

The next day—again, the Second Sunday of Easter for us—another turn of events meant that our schedule for that day was upended.  Our very experienced tour guide decided to take the opportunity to take us back to the church of the Nativity so that we could make our visit.  In addition, he arranged it so that we could celebrate Mass there that day.  As it turns out, it was my turn to celebrate Mass and I was excited to be able to do so there.

One thing to note about celebrating Mass at these pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land is that, when you celebrate Mass at one of them, you celebrate a votive Mass for the events or persons honored at that place: including using any scripture readings that refer to that event or person as the readings for Mass.  Thus, at the church of the Nativity, we were handed scripture readings for the Mass of Christmas.  So, there we were, celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday, while hearing the readings we heard today, which proclaim Christ’s birth to us.

It was a striking contrast, but it immediately made sense to me: for we do our faith harm if we try to separate the birth of Jesus from the death and resurrection of Jesus; and we have to recognize that the mercy that we celebrate in Jesus’ death and resurrection was first made manifest to us in his birth as an infant in Bethlehem.  The message of Christmas is, therefore, one of mercy: God’s Divine Mercy made manifest to us.

Let’s pause and take a moment to think about mercy.  Although there are many ways that one could define mercy, I like to think of it in this way: that mercy is giving something to someone that he/she absolutely does not deserve.  To use perhaps a most common example: often when we forgive someone, we do so even though he/she doesn’t really deserve it.  He/she has hurt us in some way and the apology, though sincere, has not restored to us what has been lost and so he/she does not deserve our forgiveness.  Yet, we forgive: often, I guess, in the hope of restoring the peace and harmony in our lives that was lost by the offense.  Nonetheless, this is mercy: even if it doesn’t qualify as mercy in the grand sense that we may often think about it.  And so, in light of this, how is the birth of Jesus a manifestation of God’s mercy?

Let’s take a look at our Gospel reading.  There we find the prologue of John’s Gospel.  In it, he begins by speaking of Jesus’ “other”-ness: that is, that the Word of God, the Divine Logos, is not only separate and set apart from the world, but also completely above and before all creation.  Christ, the Second Person of the one God, existed before all things and needs nothing of creation to be complete in himself.  This Divine Word of God “became flesh and made his dwelling among us”.  Later in John’s Gospel we’ll hear the reason for this: “sic Deus dilexit mundum... for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life”.

This, my friends, is the greatest act of mercy ever made.  We sinful humans could not be any more undeserving of God’s forgiveness, yet “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”.  As we celebrate the birth of our Savior today, let us remember and acknowledge God’s mercy: that we, completely undeserving of this gift, have nonetheless received it.  And let us give thanks, as we do here in this Eucharist today.  Then, as recipients of God’s unfathomable mercy, let us go forth from here to be generous distributors of God’s mercy to all those around us.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – December 25^th, 2018

Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord

God's got a history...

Homily: Christmas – Vigil Mass

          Having been here for close to six months now, I have been asked a lot of questions by many of you as you all try to get to know me a little better.  Many of those questions centered around my family, my interests, where I went to seminary, my life as an engineer before entering the seminary and—much to my delight—what types of food are my favorite to eat.  The one question that I feel like I most often received, however, is one that is probably the most complicated for me, or anyone else for that matter, to answer.  The question?  “So, Father, where are you from?”

          Looking just at the bare facts, answering that question really isn’t that complicated at all.  For many of us here, in fact, it is rather simple: “I’m from Lafayette.  I was born and raised here and I’ve lived here all my life.”  For folks like myself, that answer gets a little more complicated, but it is nonetheless still digestible: “I was born and raised in Joliet, Illinois, I went to college in Flint, Michigan and then moved to Indiana, where I’ve lived for the past 18 years.”  But even this bare-bone answer contains indicators that reveal other things about me, that is, about “where I am from.”  Almost to the person, once someone hears that I grew up near Chicago they assume that I am a Cubs fan (which, of course, is the only valid assumption to make, since being a Cubs fan is the only morally correct choice for any Christian to make: for it is a sign that one is in possession of the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, without which it would be impossible to remain a fan of the Chicago Cubs).

          If we start to ask questions beyond that basic question, however—such as those I’ve already mentioned: how big is your family, where did you go to school, did you play sports—we begin to find that the answer to the question “where are you from” is far more complicated and nuanced (and, perhaps, embarrassing) than we might be ready to share.

          Today, we, as the Church, celebrate God’s coming to us as a human person.  The absurdity of that statement is so great that we could stay here until tomorrow morning’s Mass trying to talk ourselves into a way to rationalize why God—who is without limits—would ever want to put on this limited human nature, but you all would never allow me to do that, so I suppose we won’t try.  No, today we acknowledge—and celebrate—that the eternal God entered time and, thus, that God, who has no beginning or end, no past or future, but only an eternal present, now has a history.  In other words, in celebrating that the Son of God has come to us in the flesh, we are celebrating—at least in part—that he came from somewhere.

          In our Gospel reading today, we hear where that somewhere is.  And much like our own answers about “where we are from,” the Son of God’s newly-acquired history is complicated.  Taking a look back at his genealogy, we find that Jesus’ heritage contains not only shining examples of righteousness and faith, but also men of whom it is safe to say that most followers of Jesus would have rather left out.  In between are men whose lives were a complicated mix of righteous deeds tarnished by poor decisions and others who, quite frankly, were so unremarkable that they’d be all but forgotten if they weren’t part of this lineage.  I’d venture to say that these very same descriptions could be applied to each and every one of our family trees.

          At the end of this line comes, however, Joseph, the poor carpenter from Nazareth.  Although it is noted that he is a righteous man (and rightfully so, for he should be noted for that), if it wasn’t for his role in giving the Son of God a history—that is, a heritage—Joseph would otherwise have been one of those unremarkable names on this list (that is, if it would have even gotten there in the first place).  Notice, we didn’t hear Mary’s genealogy, but rather Joseph’s.  And why?  I mean, isn’t Joseph just a ‘fill-in’ so it doesn’t look strange that the Son of God is raised in a single-parent home?  I mean, can’t we just drop Joseph out of the picture all together?  No, we can’t.  To understand why, we have to go back to the beginning.

          In the Book of Genesis, right after our first parents, Adam and Eve, committed the first sin, God condemns them to a life of suffering: the man must labor to bring forth food and the woman will suffer pain in childbirth.  But then, he makes a promise: that an offspring of the woman (that is, Eve, the mother of all mankind) will one day crush the head of the serpent—that is, the evil one, who tempted Eve into sin.  And so we see that the Son of God who was to come and redeem all of human kind needed to be born of a woman.  Thus, we see Mary’s indispensable role.  As the years went on, the prophets of Israel began to reveal God’s plan that the Messiah—that is, God’s Son who would come to crush the head of the serpent—would emerge from the royal lineage of King David.  Thus, we see now Joseph’s indispensable role: for it is through him that the Son of God received his heritage as a “Son of David.”  And so, while Mary gave God his humanity, Joseph gave God his history.  And the parallels don’t end there.

          In the Annunciation to Mary, the angel waited for Mary’s response: for the Holy Spirit would not overshadow her unless Mary gave her consent, and she had every right to say no.  As we read today in the Gospel, the Annunciation to Joseph by the angel in his dream holds the same suspense.  Joseph had every right to divorce Mary.  He even had the right to divorce her publicly, inducing even greater shame on her.  Because he was a righteous man, however, he had decided to do it quietly, knowing that, although he couldn’t rightfully take her into his home, she would be shamed enough in that culture just by being a single mother.  This is when the angel bursts onto the scene and says, “I know that this goes against every righteous bone in your body, Joseph, but go ahead and take Mary into your home anyway, because God has a plan.”  And so, just as God asked Mary to make space for him in her life, so, too, did he ask Joseph to make space in his.  And just as Mary reversed Eve’s sin of disobedience by listening and responding to God’s will, so, too, does Joseph reverse Adam’s sin of consenting to Eve’s disobedience by consenting to Mary’s obedience and thus receiving her into his home.

          My brothers and sisters, I don’t think that it would be a surprise to any of us if I said that our world has become increasingly hostile to God.  Day after day, it seems, the media culture is closing itself off from God and we are so afraid of being left out that we are rushing to get in with it.  Packed in like sardines, there is, it seems, no more room for God in our lives.  Yet, we are here, aren’t we?  Many of us have been here all year and some of us haven’t been here since last year, but nonetheless we are all here.  Perhaps that means that there is still room for God in our lives.  If so, then there is a message for you here today.

          Now, I cannot know what it was that motivated any of you to come here today, whether you came by your own free choice or out of obedience to a parent, grandparent, spouse or fiancée, but I can tell you this: If you are here today it is because God wanted you to be here.  And if you can hear my voice then I can tell you assuredly that God wants you to hear this message: Do not be afraid to take God into your home, for it is by the Holy Spirit—the Spirit of goodness, righteousness, and truth—that he comes to you.  God wishes to bless you with his presence—his healing, consoling, and strengthening presence—if only you would make a space for him.

          Perhaps, however, we are afraid.  We’re afraid that if we give him a little space, that he’ll take over everything.  Don’t worry, though; just like with Mary and Joseph, he won’t take more than we give him.  He doesn’t need much to start out, anyway: perhaps just a wood box out back with some straw to sleep on.  And if we’re afraid that we won’t know what to say to him when he comes, well, then, why don’t we just start with a simple ice-breaker: “So, Jesus, where are you from?”

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – December 24^th, 2018

Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord

God can bring us to our best end.

          This is my homily for my last weekend at All Saints in Logansport.  Next weekend (June 30-July 1) I begin my assignment as Pastor of the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Immaculate Conception in Lafayette.  Please pray for me, for Fr. Jeff Martin (the new Pastor of All Saints) and for both parishes during this time of transition.

Homily: The Nativity of John the Baptist – Cycle B

          Friends, we are very blessed today to celebrate this great feast of the Birth, or Nativity, of John the Baptist.  Every year, this feast falls on June 24^th, and the Church thinks it so important that we celebrate this feast, that its celebration is not suppressed when it falls on Sunday: which it does every six years or so.  Thus, after only a couple more weeks of “ordinary” Ordinary Time Sundays, we enjoy another special celebration.

          So, why does the Church consider this so important of a celebration?  Well, certainly because John was such a pivotal player in salvation history.  He was the herald (that is, the announcer or proclaimer) of the arrival of the Messiah (the one for whom the Jews were waiting, who would usher in the fullness of God’s kingdom); and so, his birth—and the circumstances surrounding his birth—mark the moment that this crucial “pivot” begins.  I could spend time unpacking for you how all of those circumstances are meaningful (and if you’re interested, you might seek out Bishop Robert Barron’s homily for today on the internet, as he explores this nicely); but I’d rather focus on two points that today’s celebration seems to make for us: 1) the amazing truth that God works through us, not around us; and 2) that it isn’t how one begins one’s life that makes a difference, but rather how one ends it.

          First: God works through us, not around us.  One of the things that gets overlooked in our celebration of saints is that God didn’t need them.  In the book of Genesis, we read that God created everything ex nihilo, that is, out of nothing.  And so the question arises: If God doesn’t need us to accomplish his work, then why does he rely on us?  In answering this question, we come to better understand God’s plan.  God created us, not to be his slaves, or to be some plaything for his entertainment, but so that he could share with us, his creatures, the eternal bliss of his divine life.  By inviting us to cooperate in his work, he is inviting us to be united to him and to help others to be united to him, too.  Still further, our cooperation in his work makes us feel loved and wanted by God; and his interaction in our world demonstrates his love and care for us.  In the end: God works through us not because he needs us to make up for something he lacks, but rather to unite us to him and so fulfill his plan for creation.

          The evidence of this is right there in the Scriptures: in spite of the numerous times in which God’s plan to bring salvation was thwarted by the lack of cooperation from the men and women he called, God continued to call them.  And, by many numerous persons who did cooperate, he moved his plan forward.  Thus, we come to John: the one, in a sense, predestined to be the herald of the Messiah (though nobody really understood that at his birth): one who cooperated with God’s plan and thus helped make the fullness of God’s plan a reality when he announced Jesus as the Messiah.

          This, in a way, brings us to our second point: that it’s not so much how we begin our lives, but how we end them that matters.  You see, while John may have been predestined from birth for this work that God had given to him, he was not predetermined.  In other words, John could have chosen to resist God’s call or even to abandon God altogether.  Yet, he didn’t.  Rather, he cooperated with God’s plan and announced a baptism of repentance—a cleansing—in order to prepare for the coming of the desperately anticipated Messiah.  When the Messiah appeared, he continued to call for repentance: so much so that he was eventually killed by those in power whom he was condemning so as to silence his voice.  It is because of the way that John ended his life—remaining a faithful cooperator in God’s work—that we honor John and, therefore, his birth.  Therefore, like Isaiah, whose voice we heard in the first reading and who faithfully cooperated in God’s work until the end of his life, John has been honored far above his Jewish people and has become a light to all nations.

          Friends, these same things are true for us.  You see, God wants to work through us.  And for God, how he accomplishes his works is just as important as what he accomplishes.  The what is growing his kingdom by uniting more men and women to him.  The how is through our cooperation.  For most of us, this means sanctifying our world and others through day to day actions: such as, living virtuous lives according to the Ten Commandments, loving God in our prayer and worship and through our love for our neighbor, serving both their physical and spiritual needs and supporting their efforts to grow in holiness.  For some, this also means preaching and teaching and leading others.  For all, however, it is to discern how God has called us to cooperate with his work—continuously, in every stage of our lives—and then continuously to give ourselves to it.

          By continuously giving ourselves to the work of cooperating in God’s work in the world, we will then be prepared to end our lives well.  Friends, even if we've lived many years and have never given ourselves to doing God's work, we can still respond.  Many saints lived dissolute lives only to be turned, finally, to God and to cooperate with his work.  Some for only a small percentage of their life span; but it was the most important part, the end: and it is the end of our lives to which most people look to gauge what it was that we valued most.  Therefore, if we turn, even now, to seek God and the work that he has given to us, he will bless our efforts and we will not be disappointed.

          And so, what is the best way to end our lives?  I don’t think we can look for a better example than John the Baptist: who ended his life by pointing towards Jesus.  Again, no matter how we've lived our lives up to this point, if we end our lives having repented and cooperated with God's plan, and pointed away from ourselves and towards Jesus, we will have finished well.  (Which, of course, is what I hope you have seen me do in my time here: to seek repentance and to help others do the same and to point not to myself, but to Christ.)

          You know, not many of us had auspicious beginnings, like John the Baptist did.  All of us, however, can have an ending like his that leads to glory.  And so I encourage you: pray and listen for what God asks of you; then be courageous to step out and do it, even if it means you'll be rejected; and trust that God, working through you, will manifest his kingdom among us.  Friends, this begins here, in this (and in every) Eucharist, when we worship him with our hearts and are nourished by his Word and by his Body and Blood.

          John the Baptist once said, "I must decrease, he must increase."  As I “decrease” from your sight, may Christ and his kingdom continue to increase among you.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – June 23^rd & 24^th, 2018

The dirty, stinky, yet glorious reality of Christmas

          Merry Christmas to everyone!  May your encounter with the Christ Child in this holy season draw you more deeply into the love of his most Sacred Heart.

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Homily: Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord - Mass at Midnight

          About a month and a half ago, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and my eye was caught by the headline of an article that one of my friends had shared.  It read: “Sweet Jesus, there’s a ‘hipster’ nativity scene you can buy.”  Of course my initial reaction was a face palm, but then I had to click the link so that I could see if this was for real or if it was a joke.  Unfortunately, it’s for real.

          The producers of this nativity scene claim that this is what they believe Jesus’ birthday would be like in today's world.  A “hipster” is someone “who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream.”  Knowing this, you can probably now begin to imagine what this nativity scene looks like.  This “updated” version has Joseph in loose khakis, Mary in leggings and sneakers with her takeaway coffee while posing for a “selfie” that Joseph is taking of the three, with the baby Jesus in the manger, wearing a knit beanie—Mary, making the obligatory “peace sign” and “duck lips”.  The three wise men are on Segways carrying their gifts in Amazon Prime boxes.  There’s also a “hipster” shepherd with an iPad to spread the good news on Instagram, whose sheep is, ironically, wearing an ugly Christmas sweater (presumably, made out of wool), a "100% organic" cow (it has a stamp on its hind quarter indicating this) is eating gluten-free feed (obviously), and the “stable” is, of course, solar powered.  It is extremely clever, to say the least.  But I have to be critical of it, because in trying to reimagine the scene for modern times, it loses all of the meaning of the original.

          What this nativity scene is doing is making a “cultural appropriation”.  What that means is that it takes something from a completely different time and culture (a style of clothing, a cultural practice, or a way of speaking) and forcefully conforms it to fit into its own culture.  What often happens with this is that the richness of meaning that the thing contained in its original culture is lost as the surface aesthetics are adapted into the new culture.  Sure, the hipster nativity scene has all of the basic elements of the original: the stable, the manger, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the shepherds, the livestock, and the wise men—but it has lost all of the depth of meaning that it has in its Christian context.  For example, the original context emphasizes the poverty of the Holy Family and, thus, that Jesus was born into the lowliest of conditions.  The modern version drops the “holy family” directly into the upper middle class, leaving Jesus to be a victim not of poverty but rather of “white privilege”.

          This cultural appropriation, then, is really an “objectification” of the scene: taking a real, subjective reality (that is, a reality in which real subjects are involved, and, thus, whose experiences cannot be changed) and objectifies it, turning it into a tool for our amusement and pleasure.  (Thus, in a technical, but real, sense, this “hipster” nativity scene is pornography: the objectifying of a subjective experience for one’s personal amusement and pleasure.)  Can you see what’s wrong with this?  My guess is that you can.  Perhaps, however, we can look at something even a little more familiar.

          A Christmas Story is the 1983 movie that tells the story of Ralph Parker and his quest to get a Red Rider BB-gun for Christmas.  I personally love this film, but in many ways it’s a documentary of how the Midwestern middle-class family has also objectified Christmas.  For the characters in this film, Christmas has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus, let alone Mary or Joseph.  They have appropriated all of the sentimental parts of Christmas—the Christmas tree, presents, feasting, snow falling on Christmas day, etc.—and have dumped all of the underlying reasons why there even is a Christmas in the first place (namely, Jesus’ birth and the celebration that a Savior has been born).  It has all the feels, but none of the substance.  But we relate to this, don’t we?  Of course we do!  Because this is probably how we’ve lived Christmas our whole lives, in part, at least.  But it’s not real… it’s not Christmas (at least, not Christmas as the celebration of Christ’s birth).

          My brothers and sisters, in order to celebrate Christ’s birth without objectifying it, we have to return to understand the original event and what it meant to those involved and to the world.  Imagine, therefore, a people suffering under a great oppression—a people of strong faith in their God who has promised to send them a leader who will free them from their suffering (my mind thinks of the people of Syria or of the lands occupied by ISIS)—who then hear that the one who has been promised has, indeed, been born.  Imagine what their reaction might be and you can begin to understand the words of the prophet Isaiah, who so beautifully described what that experience might be like: that people who walked in darkness and gloom would see light, that those who had experienced the yokes of their oppressors and the rods of their taskmasters would see them smashed, and that those who had boots that had trampled in battle and cloaks that had been rolled in blood would see them burned, for their oppression had truly come to an end.  This was not trite sentimentality, this was a reality to which the hearer was subject.

          Then in the Gospel Luke describes the fulfillment of this prophesy.  He weaves a wonderfully subversive narrative that completely up-ends the worldly idea of power.  Although Caesar is demonstrating his power over the world, the long-awaited Savior is born in the lowliest of circumstances: into a poor family in a cave—where animals take shelter—because they couldn’t afford to rent a bed for the night.  Then angels appear in God’s glory… and to who?  To Caesar?  To Herod, king of the Jews?  No!  They appear to shepherds in a field!  They appear to those whom the world considered to be “nobodies” and proclaimed this Good News.  And what news it was!  This should have been proclaimed to the world’s great rulers, but instead it was given to poor shepherds first.  My brothers and sisters, this is not sentimentality: every bit of this is dirty, stinky, and yet gloriously real.

          My brothers and sisters, Christmas is not “pretty”: it is shocking, awesome, tear-inducing, and inspiring.  If this has not been your experience, then you have been celebrating a false Christmas (or, at least, an incomplete one). The reason why we come here and make everything seem so special and beautiful is not to give you warm fuzzy feelings, but rather to make real once again the experience of that first night of Christ's birth: Angels appearing in God's glory and crying out that this life of darkness in which you have been living is now ended.  The reason we walk into a brightly lit church in the darkest part of the night in the darkest nights of the year is to remind ourselves of this.  This is not to escape the reality of our lives but rather to give fullest relief to the full reality of our lives.  Christ is born!  The Savior, the one whom God promised would bring peace—real peace—and who would rule in peace and justice forever.

          The man-made magic of tinsel on trees and warm apple cider and snow falling in the moonlight is a false Christmas.  Christmas is people who acknowledge their suffering, and their inability to relieve themselves from it, suddenly seeing that their hero, who will come to relieve their suffering, has come and so they rejoice!  This is the day of our salvation and we give lavish gifts to one another as a sign that our poverty has ended and that we will now live in a time of prosperity under our newborn king who has come to save us.

          My brothers and sisters, if this is not the Christmas that you are celebrating, then it is time to be converted.  Turn here tonight and acknowledge that, indeed, there is darkness in which you have been walking and of which you have been powerless to overcome.  Acknowledge that God has never stopped promising you that he would be the light in that darkness.  And acknowledge that Jesus, born into the darkness of a cave to poor parents in a little, unknown town of Palestine is the fulfillment of that promise: the fulfillment that is continually made present to us on altars throughout the world whenever the Eucharist is celebrated.

          If you are not ready to acknowledge these things, then you are not ready to celebrate Christmas.  Do not be afraid, however, for the glory of the Lord is ready to appear to us again here at this altar.  If only you would adore him, you would make yourself ready.  Venite adoremus…. Venite adoremus… O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – December 25^th, 2016