Fr. Bill Carroll – The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, December 24, 2024

To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Tonight, beloved, we sing God’s new song.  The earth trembles and the trees of the wood shout for joy.  Because God is making all things new.  

We have come to celebrate the birth of a child.  Jesus is both Son of God and our only Savior.  He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Yet he is not ashamed to be our brother.  He is God-with-us in the flesh.  Jesus has come to make us right with God—and right with one another.  He has come to give us eternal life.  Jesus is God’s own love in a world too often filled with hatred, violence, and fear.

And so, with the shepherds and the angels—with animals and wise men, with Mary and Joseph, and with all the faithful in every generation—we too have come to Bethlehem.  

We come to behold.  We come to worship and adore.  We come to see this humble child, and to be changed by the love we see there.

Out on the edges of town, we behold him.  In a place made for the animals, we behold him.  Jesus is the Bread of Life who comes from God, to give life and salvation to us all.  Tonight, we will eat this bread.  Tonight, we will have his flesh pressed into our hands.  

God gives us Jesus when we have no words.  In his eloquent silence, he says more than we can understand or say.  God gives us Jesus in a dark and lonely season, where we are weary and afraid.

He is the breaker of bonds. He is the giver of peace.  He is shameless in his love for us.  Here, in the manger, he lies asleep:  this tiny baby, the Son of God.  

In one of his letters, Paul says that, though he was rich, Jesus became poor for us.  In another place, he marvels that Jesus “humbled himself” and took on the “form of a slave.”  One of our carols tonight echoes this theme:  

Mild he lays his glory by
Born that we no more may die.
Born to raise us from the earth
Born to give us second birth. 

In the story, Mary and Joseph are children of Israel.  They are heirs of God’s gift of freedom.  And yet, they journey by night–compelled by an emperor.  They must be counted, so that they can be taxed and exploited.  But their hearts have been set on fire by the words of an angel.  They are amazed but confused by the promises of God.  

When Mary’s labor finally comes upon her, Jesus is born.  He’s born in the ordinary way, with blood and sweat and tears.  He is God’s own Son, her very own flesh.  

And he’s born not in a palace, but in a stable.  There is no room for him in the inn.  He is born in a borrowed place, out among the animals.  In Jesus, we meet a different kind of king.

If we want to find God, if we really want to find God, this is where to look.  We must look for God where he chooses to be found.

The birth of Jesus dispels our fantasies about power.  He renounces all forms of violence and coercion.  God relates to us by the strange, weak power of love.  Rowan Williams once put it this way:  “This is what the love of God is like:  It is free and therefore…both all-powerful and completely vulnerable.”  In Jesus, God puts himself at our mercy.  He looks at us with the gentle, humble eyes of a child.  

In his fourth sermon on the Lord’s Nativity, St. Bernard of Clairvaux urges us to remember his poverty:

Today (he writes) how many altars are aglitter with gold and precious stones!…Do you think that the angels will get sidetracked to these and turn away from the tattered poor?  If it were so, why did they appear to shepherds of sheep…

In Jesus, God has opened his arms as wide as his heart.  In his embrace, there is room for all of us.

The trust he places in us is poorly deserved, yet freely given.  The love he offers touches us profoundly.  We want to love him back.  We want to take care of him.  In the words of another Christmas carol:

Child, for us sinners, poor and in the manger, 
we would embrace thee with love and awe.
Who would not love thee, loving us so dearly?  

The love of Jesus breaks our hearts.  It softens our resistance.  Tonight, we come to him empty-handed, which is the only way we can.  We come to Jesus, and we ask him to make us whole.  We bring him our fears.  We bring him our longings.  We ask him to make us his own.

And so, whatever separates us from God, whatever divides us from each other, whatever hurts us or makes us afraid, we give these things to Jesus.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Let every heart prepare him room.

Amen.