Sunday, December 25, 2011

The Christmas Truce

Christmas

Mass at Night

For a child is born to us, a son is given us;
upon his shoulder dominion rests.
They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,
Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.
His dominion is vast
and forever peaceful,
from David’s throne, and over his kingdom,
which he confirms and sustains
by judgment and justice,
both now and forever.

Night is upon us, the stores are closed, the shopping is over. The crowds have gone home, and we are at peace.

It was the same for Mary and Joseph. They had endured the long, several days journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, struggled through the crowds looking for shelter, then finally settled down in the stable. For that short span of time, they had some peace. Now for a short span of time, we can have some peace. Silent night, holy night.

We have been given a great gift.

The gift Jesus brings is always peace. On the night of his birth the angels proclaimed peace to people upon whom God’s favor rests. Jesus’ career here on earth began with peace. It also ended with peace. His first words to his disciples in the upper room that Easter evening were “Peace be with you”.

What happened in between wasn’t so peaceful, was it?

It reminds me of the story of the Christmas Truce. On Christmas day in 1914, the first world war had been raging for several months, and the combatants had settled into a terrible trench warfare, with thousands dying daily under tremendous bombardment and withering machine gun fire. Their trenches were barely yards apart from one another, so close they could hear each other’s conversations. They would even call out to one another across no man’s land.

The story goes that sometime during the night on Christmas Eve men in trenches all along the front line began singing carols. The Germans even put up Christmas trees in their trenches and hung lanterns on them. Since they were so close to one another both sides could hear each other singing, and they could see the trees lit up. It would have been so easy to fire upon the voices and the lights, but that didn’t happen. In fact, the following day men from both sides spontaneously climbed up out of their trenches and met each other in no man’s land. They chatted, exchanged gifts of food and cigarettes, and even played a bit of soccer. None of this had been authorized by the high command, and the officers in the trenches turned a blind eye to what was happening. The unofficial truce lasted all that day and in some places along the line there was a cease fire for a couple of weeks. For a span of time, there was peace.

A great analogy for life, isn’t it? In the midst of all our squabbling and fighting and hatred and murder and injustice, there are moments that arise in which we put it all aside and reach out to those we hurt and hate and realize the peace of Jesus. And it is no accident that this sort of thing usually happens around the feasts of Jesus.

The message of Christianity has always been one of peace. If you delve into the true history of the Church and actually understand our doctrines and our teachings, it is always a spirit of peace that emerges. As human beings, we haven’t always lived that spirit, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there and isn’t true and valuable.

And perhaps that is why we are usually at odds with the world, because the world is not about peace. The message of Jesus has always been met with violence. The small innocent child that was born in Bethlehem became the greatest threat ever to the status quo. So much so that he was eventually tortured and killed. But his message endures just as he endures. It is telling that the first thing he assures his disciples of after his resurrection is that nothing has changed. He is still all about peace. Yes he has suffered. Yes they killed him. But he still brings peace. And he wishes to bestow that peace upon all mankind.

Life here on earth is not peaceful. Like Jesus, we suffer, we are attacked, we are misunderstood and maligned, and we die. But God is still all about peace. We wander far from our intended path but God is always calling us back. We have holidays, holy days, that remind us of that call from time to time, and for a time we experience a taste of His peace, until we go back to our old ways. Just like during the Christmas Truce of 1914.

Just because we know we’ll fall back doesn’t mean we should stop our celebrations. It’s good that we have these few short periods of peace amidst the chaos of our lives. We need these touch points to keep us on track. Could you imagine the world without the promise of Christmas? Even the watered down, commercialized Christmas message of the secular world is based upon peace on earth, good will towards all. Christmas fills a basic human need.You can take the God label off it, but it is still God behind it. Because that need is for our salvation.

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” The two things go together. If you give glory to God you will have peace. If you have peace you will be giving glory to God.

Tonight we do both.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Great Expectations

4th Sunday of Advent

Cycle B

Welcome to the season of Great Expectations. It is one week until Christmas and the anticipation of next Sunday is ramping up, especially amongst our littlest ones. These expectations have been raised and stoked by our images of what Christmas should be. We expect to receive gifts in great quantity. We expect our families to be around us and at peace with one another. We expect our Christmas dinner to have all the necessary ingredients and be done to perfection. We expect peace. We expect snow.

Have you seen the YouTube video put out by Jimmy Kimmel where he asked parents to give their kids the worst Christmas gifts ever and then send videotape of them opening their presents in to the show? One kid opened the wrapping to find an empty, dirty juice bottle. Another got a half eaten sandwich. One young man received a pair of Hello Kitty pajamas. Their reactions to these gifts is hilarious, and indicative of what Christmas has been reduced to for our children. The kid who got the bottle said it was “the worst present ever” and flung it across the room. The boy who got the pajamas began crying and ranting and raving that his parents were the worst ever and he hated them. The girl who got the sandwich was more puzzled than anything. It was completely out of her realm of possibility, and she didn’t understand. But her older brother was great. He told her to appreciate what she got and if she didn’t want to eat it he would.

We build our expectations based upon what we think we want to receive. We make our lists of what we want out of life and then think that just because we want it we should get it. Just because we want life to be a certain way we expect it to be that way. We hope it will be that way.

We have set up Christmas as an ideal, not as a reality. We have set life up as an ideal, not as a reality.

Christopher Hitchens died this week. He has been described as a “Ferocious Intellect”, one of the great commentators and authors of the past twenty years. He was also one of the greatest atheists of the modern era. He was especially hateful of the Catholic Church and wrote some horrible things about Mother Teresa. He often sparred with Fr. George Rutler , who finally told him that “he would die either a Roman Catholic or a madman”. To which Hitchens replied, “What’s the difference?”

When he announced he had esophageal cancer eighteen months ago people immediately began saying that now that he was being confronted by his own imminent death he would recant his atheism and have a deathbed conversion of some sort. There was even a worldwide day of prayer for his conversion last September. But Hitchens had no expectations of an afterlife, and he fought the idea of God until the bitter end. I expect that since he expected nothing that’s exactly what he got.

On the other hand, we have Mary. She knew of the promise God had given to her kinsman, David, a thousand years earlier, and like her countrymen she expected the promised messiah to be a king of great earthly power who would restore Israel’s glory. She was puzzled when the angel announced to her that not only would the messiah not be an earthly king, she was to be his mother. Mary had a very simple expectation after her encounter with the angel. Her cousin Elizabeth said it so very well when she greets Mary. “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”

God doesn’t think as we do. His will most often does not meet with our expectations. Like the children in the Jimmy Kimmel video, when we see what God has actually given us we react with anger, puzzlement, and hurt. David expected God to want a beautiful house in which to dwell, when what God really wanted was to offer humanity the chance at salvation by building an everlasting heritage for David. Mary expected a king, she got a baby instead.

We all want the world to be what we want it to be. We all want life to turn out a certain way for us. We all have expectations, both big and small, about all areas of our lives. We expect our families to be just so. We expect our children to grow up to have better lives than ours. We expect that we will find fulfillment in our careers. We expect our marriages to remain as full of promise as they were on our wedding days. We expect to be able to feel safe and secure in our homes and in our country. We expect the economy to always trend upwards. We expect that we will have all our hearts desire. We expect to have peaceful deaths. We expect to go to heaven when we die.

But many times what we expect and what God gives us are not the same. Our lives are full of struggle. Our families are dysfunctional. Our marriages fall apart. We hate our jobs. We come down with cancer. People we love suffer terribly and we look on helplessly. We live our lives full of hope only to see those hopes and dreams smashed on the rocks of reality.

God knows about all this. He knows that sin causes great suffering, and that’s not what he has intended for us. He knows our expectations, and their emptiness, and he knows that the only thing that will fill our emptiness is himself. The last thing we would expect is that God himself would choose to become a human being like ourselves. He would become like us so that we could be like him.

The mighty King David was not permitted to provide a home for the Lord. But his descendent, the poor and simple Virgin Mary was chosen instead. She was not to build a temple for God but to be the Temple of God.

So God's promise comes down to that - a child. Jesus began his human existence like you and me. God fulfills his promise not by politics, not by military power - but by the birth of child: in the city of David, Bethlehem. God uses what seems insignificant to accomplish mighty deeds.

How does it happen? I can only respond with the words of today's Gospel, the words of Elizabeth, words Christians have known for two thousand years: Nothing will be impossible for God. Even Christopher Hitchens is not impossible for God.

In the end we rarely get what we expect. We get much, much more.