Homily: Christmas 2024
Christmas 2024 (Luke 2:1-14) “Where is God?
Meditating on the mystery of the Incarnation is a mind-blowing prayer. Why did God barge into the history of the world? Someone once said that we should read the beginning of the Gospel of John as a series of questions? “In the beginning was the Word? And the Word was with God? And the Word was God? He was in the world, and the world came to be through him? But the world did not know him?”
Yes, the story of Jesus seems so unlikely. What proves that the Incarnation is fact. Yuri Gagarin was the first astronaut in space. He spent 108 minutes in space on the first manned flight in 1961. He was a believing, Christian. But when he came back to earth, the atheist communist government of the Soviet Union reported that even though Gagarin went into the heavens he didn’t see God. For those who doubted this proved God didn’t exist. All this was great propaganda.
Yes, atheists would ask that someone show them some proof that God exists. We can explore every part of the material world. We can even look to heavens, but we will never find absolute proof God exists if our minds are closed. And there are things that do cause our hearts to be closed to God. Sad things happen every day.
Another Russian named Leo Tolstoy told a story that helps us understand where we can see God:
Once there was a cobbler (a man who made shoes) who lived in middle of a city many years ago. His name was Martin. Martin had a terrible thing happen to him. His only son died. Martin, who was an old man questioned God. “Why didn’t you let me die rather than my son?” He was very bitter. He prayed that he could die.
One day a friend came to Martin’s cobbler shop. The two of them discussed Matin’s anger. Martin asked how God could exist. The other man had great faith. “You have no right to say such things. If you live for God, you will find meaning in your life. Read the Gospels and you will find a reason to live.” Martin bought a bible. He began to read. He read the first lines of the Gospel of John. He began to see that word of God isn’t physically in the world right now. Jesus had come and gone, but the word of God still changes the world.
The next day Martin decided to look for a manifestation of Jesus. A man named Stepanitch came into his shop. The poor man shoveled snow to survive. Martin had tea with him as he fixed his worn shoes.
Later a woman came into his shop who was carrying a baby. She was cold and shivering. Martin gave her his coat along with some money to buy back a shawl that she had sold to survive.
Finally, as Martin looked out his window, he saw a scuffle break out between an old woman selling applies and a boy who had stolen one. Martin paid for the apple. But more importantly Martin listened to the sad story the old woman talked about her life.
Martin returned to the scriptures to pray. When he prayed, he thought he heard someone in the dark behind him. “Who is it?” Martin asked. “It is I” and Stepanitch’s smiling face appeared and disappeared. “It is I” another voice said and the woman with her smiling baby appeared and disappeared. “It is I” two other voices said. The apple vendor along with the boy appeared, then disappeared.
Martin had a great sense of reassurance. He opened the scriptures again reading, “Inasmuch as you did unto one of the least of my brothers you did it for me.” And Martin understood that God did exist, because he appears in the flesh every moment of every day.
We might feel like God is uninvolved in the world. How easy it is to doubt as we see innocent people suffer throughout the world. Yet, we remember today that Jesus came in the flesh. We remember that every person that we meet, especially those in the most need, are the word made flesh. Finally, we recall we who follow Jesus are the word made flesh. Yuri Gagarin saw God in the stars of space, because when he saw the magnificence of the heavens he believed. Leo Tolstoy saw Christ in the people who wrote about in his stories, the poor, the spiritually conflicted, the simple believer. At Christmas it’s good to ask where we see God. May the reality of God surprise each of us today.