Christmas Day 2010 Sermon

Christmas Day 2010

The obscurity of Our Lord’s birth symbolises the rejection He received. Unfortunately however that rejection still continues.

If everyone who heard the Christmas story would then say: Well, I will certainly open my house to Him! Then we would be making progress.

But we have celebrated Christmas every year and after 2000 years it does not get much better as far as welcoming Him goes.

He is the most insulted person in the human race, despised and rejected. The rejection did not end with Bethlehem, either during His life or since. In the third Mass of Christmas we hear from John’s Gospel: His own did not receive Him. They did not want His message; they don't want religion even to be mentioned.

All this rejection is so unnecessary. A lot of it is just people being impressionable and following each other. It is fashionable to blaspheme, to laugh at goodness and purity, to be cynical and sceptical.

However to accept Him, to stand with Him - takes courage. We have to be prepared to be different to be His disciple.

Just as Mary would have kept Him warm, and protected Him from any dirt, cold wind or any danger... so we have to protect Him too from the cold winds of anger rejection, scorn.

So we ‘protect’ Him from the hatred of the world; siding with Him not against Him. And we do the same at Calvary.

Were you not with that man? We were, and we still are.

Part of our ‘welcome’ means we must defend and hold sacred all that He has put in place such as defence of human life, respecting the body, being merciful to others; standing up for Him in the market place of ideas; pointing out why His teachings are always right and why any deviation from them will always mean trouble.

Christmas comes by itself, in terms of the date. But that is just the shell not the substance. Christmas has not really come unless we interact with it, involve ourselves, see ourselves in union with Christ; then it has come.

We go beyond just the commercial, social, cultural aspects of Christmas and come to the main point: standing with Christ; ready to live or die for Him.

Above all, accepting Him. Not giving Him the ‘No vacancy’ sign, but the warmest widest possible invitation to come and dwell with us.

Of course this point could be reached any time of year, but we will make use of the good feelings that come at Christmas to prod us to a further response.

Christmas is the only feast that everything stops for. This could be helpful as an occasion to think. It could be unhelpful insofar as the cultural customs can be taken for observance, and thus the real point – the acceptance of Christ - is easy to miss.

Did you have a good Christmas? An open-ended question, which probably means did you have a nice time with family etc? That question can mean for us: Did you welcome and recognise Him? Did you go into the stable and offer Him warmth and strength and support? Did you protect His name?

The great rupture of the human race from God is still only partially healed.

Accepting Him means allowing His healing reconciling work to take effect. The world needs all the healing it can get. We would be glad to do anything to help. We do help if we accept Him in our own hearts.