Christmas Eve

And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. (Luke 2:4-7)

So very small, so woefully inauspicious, the beginnings of salvation. There they are, the shepherds trooping in from the fields, the magi traveling from the exotic east, and hosts of angels pouring through the skies to sing hosannah--for what? The shepherds had been told to look for a savior, the magi for a king, but all they found was an infant, a newborn, one of no doubt many born in Bethlehem that year. The shepherds wondered, the magi paid homage, but in later years the villagers of Nazareth would shake their heads in disgust and turn away--"A wonder worker? Him? He's just the carpenter's son." His family thought him crazy. Some of his followers thought him extravagant. The authorities thought him dangerous, not because he was the Son of God but because he thought he was, and said so, to others who thought he might be right. They executed him for it, a criminal among criminals. No one special, just another failed messiah.

We still make that same mistake, sometimes, in our search for salvation, whatever that word means to us. We look for the prophet clothed in camel hair, hurling imprecations, or we wait for a voice that speaks in thunder from the top of a mountain, but we miss a simple question asked by a friend, a question that might have turned our lives around had we been paying attention. "Why are you so angry?" or maybe "Do you really have to work all the time?" or "Have you ever thought of....?" We scan the heavens for a star to show us the road, but we pay no heed to a news report on the homeless in our town tonight. We expect a blinding light on the Damascus road, but we fail to see the small, clear illumination shed by a word on a Bible page or the look in a loved one's eyes. Nothing special, the question, the news report, the word, the look--just another interruption in the real business of getting somewhere in life.

Tonight we probably won't see a stream of shepherds heading for a local motel, or a strange band of pilgrims holding up freeway traffic as they follow a star. It's unlikely we'll hear choirs of angels in the sky over the house, or even over the church. But tonight we will hear the same quiet invitation that has been following us around, perhaps for years, tugging at our sleeve and asking simply, "Come. I have what you're looking for." Nothing extraordinary, just our incredibly patient and persistent God, focused tonight in a baby laid in a beat-up food trough in a long-ago town in a faraway place, but in reality everywhere. Even right there, where you're sitting. "Come."

©2008 Abbey of St. Walburga