Ordinary?

2 Christmas B 2008
(Jer 31: 7-14; Ps 84; Eph 1: 3-6, 15-19a; Matthew 2: 13-15, 19-23)


I just made the drive down I-5 to take eldest kid back to college. We’d had a cozy time all together this Christmas break, snowed in and all, and had avoided major fights. So he was not thrilled to return to the dorms and keeping order among the undergraduate Ducks.

We see the vision at Christmastide. We are dazzled by the light of God poured out into human flesh and bone. For a brief moment all things seem right, and even when we wrestle with pain and loss we feel we are given a great gift.

But we always must return—to what one poet called the Time That Is. The Roman Catholic calendar calls it Ordinary Time. Back to work, back to school, and if that were not enough Ordinary Time the tax forms are beginning to arrive. And darker ordinary time is waiting—rockets and tanks in the Gaza Strip, talk of recession almost everywhere. Where does Christmas go? And what did it mean?

Coming back north on I-5 the car radio lost its grip on my usual alternative music stations, so I let the radio search. It came up with a sentimental old radio drama. I listened and smiled while squinting through snow flurries in the dark. After the predictable happy ending the announcer said some pleasant things and concluded with, “Celebrating the 12 days of Christmas with you.” I appreciated that.

I appreciated it because we need 12 days to let the meaning of Christmas sink in. Today we have the gift of a Sunday often lost, the Second Sunday of Christmas. Who are we, the people of God who celebrate the Christ-Mass each year? And who is the God of this vision that blazes out, yet seems to fade?

We are people of hope. And this God is the God who transforms.

Jeremiah sings it. “With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back.” The prophet spoke to a broken and broken-hearted people who had lost land and hope. It is exactly when things seem darkest, when hope seems lost and God is silent, that God shall take us to God’s own heart. We are adopted members of the family of God. Mourning shall be joy, and there will be abundance to share. No exile is forever. Hold to God and God shall bring you home.

Paul sings the harmony. Spiritual blessing is given to us in the Beloved, wisdom, revelation, enlightenment, hope, and glory—all this the apostle has prayed for us. And we have it. A wise fellow recently told me, “The prayer of faith is thanking God for what God has given, even if we do not yet have it in hand.” The gift has been given to us.

And the Gospel tells how hope is born. The infant Hope was born amidst tension, violence, and fear. Powerful forces contended to possess the holy land. To protect his little family Joseph, the new dreamer of dreams, knew he had to live on the run. The beloved of God was born a refugee. Today Joseph would have to contend with Israeli tanks and Hamas rockets and surly frightened soldiers at checkpoints. He would feel right at home. But God came to birth in such a world. And God was born so that the world might be transformed.

An ancient monk said that God transforms us by taking flesh like fire changes iron. The heat spreads and shares its strength and light to the cold metal, until it glows with fire and may be shaped into something new and beautiful and even stronger than before.

Claim in hope the unspeakable blessings given, even if we do not yet have them in hand. Know that God’s fire spreads and transforms our flesh and souls. Trust God to make us a new creation, home of God’s fire, beautiful and strong.