What is real

Christmas 2008
Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Psalm 96; Luke 2:1-14(15-20)


What we’d planned and what was real crashed head-on, these past several days.

What we’d planned was a peaceful Christmas. What we’d planned was our travel. What we’d planned was our church schedule intact so we could celebrate those lovely liturgies, sing all the lovely music we planned to sing, celebrate the astounding news of God taking flesh when we planned to. And then we planned to get home, celebrate with loved ones, and have some time and resources left over to help the poor.

What was real was record snowfall: snowdrifts piled into side streets, planes grounded, trains stalled, even buses stuck. One of us slept on the airport carpet off and on for 24 hours before her plane left for Chicago. The deacon got stuck on a side street just this past Thursday. What was real were hard decisions to forego Mass at church on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Brigid’s Table Christmas meal, and then Mass for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

I stood in my neighborhood with my aging boots sunk deep in a big slushy pile of what-is-real waiting for the Chihuahua to figure out how to manage his personal business in the snow. I thought about what is real.

What is real is our life here on this living, unpredictable planet. What is real is how little control we really have over our lives. What is real is the work we do to live, the love we share to be human, our care for the poor who teach us how privileged we are. We slowed down and got in touch with ourselves, with one another, and with God. We got in touch with what’s real these past days.

That’s the Good News of Christmas. Christmas is real.

The Christmas Gospel says: No more promises and no more waiting. No more wishing and no more hoping. The gift is given. The Word of God, the vibrant living flaming Word, is among us. Fire and wind has taken flesh and blood. Mystery has become a tiny vulnerable child.

The night was silent, when Caesar’s legions covered the known earth and men now forgotten were in charge and a distant emperor taxed the world. In Rome they built him altars—the divine Caesar, the Savior of the world. This age is the age of peace, said Rome, the Roman peace, won by war and by blood and by treaties and by policies and by deals. The world was silent, watching, knowing there was no real peace that could come from a city of stone and a man on a throne.

Then what was Real became flesh.

The night was silent as all things were re-arranged for all time and a child was wrapped in cloths and laid in a feeding trough. Long ago the prophet said, “The donkey knows its manger, but Israel does not know their God.” That old wound was healed. Shepherds gathered and knew the one given to feed and free his people. We are still in shock.

Perhaps it is easier for our weary hearts and our disappointed souls and our perplexed minds to live in our plans and our wishes. But what is Real cries out in Bethlehem’s night. Often we do not recognize the sound. But today we do. The cry is God’s and the one who is Real is God, and at Christmas all is possible and all that was promised is here.

We see his glory. We hear his cry. We awake as if from a troubled dream to see and touch what is truly Real.