Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
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Original Manuscript:
Many of you are probably familiar with Charles Shultz's A Charlie Brown Christmas. You may even remember that in the film, Charlie Brown is asked to get a Christmas tree for the group. He goes and finds the worst looking one, out of compassion for the poor thing. He is mocked to no end by the other kids, until his friend Linus takes a look at the tree. Linus realizes that all the tree needs is a little love, and sure enough, with a little bit of care, they make this completely imperfect tree look fabulous.
What Shultz has done is perfectly capture part of the spirit in the actual Christmas story. We'd think that God's birth into the world would involve triumph and fanfare, but it was far from it. If anything, Jesus' birth was just about as imperfect as you could get.
To start with, Mary and Joseph have to travel all the way from one side of the country to the other. The path they had to take was probably filled with danger. Not to mention Mary was pregnant.
When Mary and Joseph get to Bethlehem, they don't know anyone. They don't have anywhere to stay. Nor can they find one. So they do what people in their day did in this kind of situation: they found a cave to sleep in.
It's not as if they were the only ones to have this bright idea; others would have been there with them in the cave. When Mary was ready to give birth, she went to the one place where she could get privacy. She went where the animals were.
Jesus didn't have servants to help bring Him into this world in luxury, or even in modern standard hygienic practices. Jesus had a poor tired teenage mom to wrap Him tightly to keep Him safe and warm. He was placed in the most comfortable surface they could probably find, a feeding trough.
Jesus wasn't visited by foreign dignitaries, at least not at first. Jesus was visited by shepherds, who were not the most respected members of society. There's a reason they were out there on their own, away from the rest of civilization.
In fact, the powers that be, Herod the Great, didn't have any respect for Jesus. His family had to flee the country because Herod wanted to put Jesus to death.
The savior of the world, God Himself, did not come into this world easy. There were obstacles at every point along the way. Even before His death, Mary could have been killed for having a baby that wasn't Joseph's as we spoke of yesterday at the end of Advent. Jesus' birth was far from perfect, and yet God chose to come into this world anyway.
I suspect there are many of us during this time of year who struggle to make things perfect. We want to set out the perfect decorations, buy the perfect gift, and cook the perfect meal.
I suspect many of us also struggle to make ourselves be perfect, or at least to make sure that we all seem that way.
God didn't come into this world perfect, so guess what? He doesn't require us to be perfect to approach Him either. We don't have to be kings or dignitaries. We can just be shepherds in the fields to be called to witness Him and hold Him.
God is ready to take us as we are. That's why He came down into this world, so He could help us to be renewed and reborn. God came down so that we could once again be His, without us having to do any of the work to get there.
This Christmas season, don't worry about being perfect. Don't worry about things being perfect. They certainly weren't for the Holy Family, and yet Jesus came into this world anyways.
What matters is the love that God has for us to endure such an imperfect birth. We too are called to share that love that Jesus showed us to one another.
So have a merry Christmas, even if it's not perfect one.