“An angel of the Lord appeared to [Joseph] in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.’ So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:20-23 NKJV)
Grief is particularly difficult at Christmas, as the best memories can be the hardest ones. But the hope of Christmas is broad enough for joy and sorrow.
The strangeness and scandal of the season get easily lost in its familiar rituals. In Christian belief, the boundless, timeless God became, in J.B. Phillips’s phrase, one of those “crawling creatures of that floating ball.” …it is the central tenet of an enduring faith. Instead of setting out a philosophy to interpret the human drama, God joined it. He became “God with us” -- a God with a face. In the process, He both shared and dignified ordinary human life, with all its delight, boredom and suffering. The Christmas story revels in this blasphemous elevation of the ordinary -- a birth in second-rate accommodations under a cloud of illegitimacy.
The story is also shadowed by sorrow. In one of the odder moments of the narrative, a random stranger at the Jerusalem Temple predicts a mother’s grief. “A sword,” Simeon tells Mary, “shall pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35). As it did. As it has for many mothers and fathers who have followed.
The point of Christmas is not a sentimental optimism about the human condition or even a teaching about the will of God. It is an assertion that God in Christ came to our rescue, and holds our hand, and becomes, at the worst moments, our brokenhearted brother. It is preposterous, unless it is true. And then it would be everything.
-- Michael Gerson in “The
Washington Post,” December 24, 2012
#6012
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