The Christmas season is full of wonder. But it also celebrates the event in which God came into human flesh, into our reality. On Christmas Eve and Day, we hear the story of an angel who announces the birth of a king to shepherds. But we also celebrate the perseverance of an unwed mother. Wonder and reality are wed in this season.

It shouldn’t be a surprise to me, although it is every year, that the Christmas season also celebrates those who died for the faith. On December 26th, our church calendar celebrates the witness of Saint Stephen, whose confession of Christian faith led to his stoning (Acts 7:54–60). Two days later, the calendar commemorates the Holy Innocents, the children of Bethlehem killed by Herod’s order just days after Jesus’s birth (Matthew 2:16–18). These stories remind us of the harsh realities of life, just as we are beginning to celebrate Jesus’s birth.

Going from the heights of our celebration of Jesus’s birth to the stories of the earliest martyrs gives me whiplash. I find myself asking why we come down so quickly from one of the most joyous occasions to solemn commemorations.

Perhaps the answer lies in the harmony of wonder and reality found in the Christmas season. We celebrate Christmas with our church family, our kin, and our friends. But what we celebrate, Jesus’s incarnation, was not an event only to be celebrated in joyous times, but an event that reaches into all the experiences of life. His incarnation speaks into the worst of all human experiences—experiences of murder, like Stephen’s, and infanticide, like that of the Holy Innocents. Only Christ’s incarnation, the church calendar seems to say, can speak a word of hope into these dire situations.

Christmas is a season of hope. This hope that we find in Christ’s incarnation is not just for times of wonder, times of celebration. It enters into the messiness of our daily lives, even into situations that are unimaginably terrible.

Almighty God, you wonderfully created the dignity of human nature and yet more wonderfully restored it. In your mercy, let us share the divine life of the one who came to share our humanity, Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
(Prayer for the First Sunday of Christmas, elca.org).
 

Contributed by Philip
Monday January 2, 2012
Liturgical Year B: Week 6
Liturgical Color: White
Sunday Gospel reading:
First Sunday of Christmas