Homily for Friday, 24 December 2021– The Nativity of the Lord, Mass at Night

Readings of the day: Isaiah 9:1-6; Psalm 96:1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:10-14

At the end of 1932, Dr. Akiva Posner was the rabbi of a community of about 500 Jews in the town of Kiel, Germany. He returned home quickly to his wife Rachel and three young children, in time for sunset on the first day of Hanukkah, also the beginning of the Sabbath, to light the first of eight candles on the menorah on the window sill of the family’s apartment.

In Judaism, Hanukkah and its menorah have long been a symbol of resistance to oppression. The celebration of Hanukkah dates back to the revolt led by Judas Maccabeus (or Judah Maccabee) against the brutal occupying power in Israel, the Greeks under Antiochus IV “Epiphanes,” about 160 years before the birth of Jesus. Antiochus’ self-proclamation as “Epiphanes” was revealing enough as to who he thought he was: “Epiphanes” means “One who is made known”; Antiochus proclaimed himself to be a god. And he made the Temple of Jerusalem, Judaism’s most sacred site, into a place of worship of the Greek pagan gods.

In our Bible, in the Books of the Maccabees, we have the account of the Maccabean defeat of the Greeks, and the rededication of the Temple for worship of the one God of Israel. The Greeks had destroyed the vessels in the Temple that held fresh olive oil to keep the menorah lit for all eight days of the celebration of the rededication of the Temple. But the menorah’s central light, the shammash or “attendant” from which all the other lights are lit, stayed burning the whole time with the little oil the Maccabees had left.

Before her husband, Rabbi Akiva, returned home for the first sundown of Hanukkah, 1932, to light the family menorah, Rachel Posner took a striking, famous photo of the menorah against the window. Across the street from the Posners’ home in Kiel was a newly-dedicated Nazi Party headquarters in Kiel, with its stark brick exterior hung with swastika flags.

 

On the back of her photo of the menorah against this backdrop of evil and repression, Rachel Posner wrote:

“Juda verrecke.”

Die Fahne spricht;

“Juda lebt ewig.”

Erwidert das Licht.

“Death to Judah.”

So the flag says;

“Judah will live forever.”

So the light answers.

For our Jewish sisters and brothers, Hanukkah, which is usually at around the same time of year as our celebrations of Advent and the Nativity of our Lord Jesus, is the commemoration par excellence of the light and of life answering darkness and death. Hanukkah is also called Chag HaUrim in Hebrew, the Festival of Lights.

“So the light answers.” The light has answered the darkness, chaos, and death from the very first moment of creation, when God’s Spirit breathed over the face of the deep; the primordial chaos: “Let there be light.” And so the light answered. And so the light has answered many times in Israel’s history as God’s people. We hear today from the prophet Isaiah an affirmation of the light’s answer, God’s answer to darkness, chaos, and death. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shone,” Isaiah says.

I find it a bit unusual that this prophecy from Isaiah is in the past tense. Isaiah proclaims that the people have already “seen a great light”; the light has already shone. I think we could pardon the people of Israel of Isaiah’s time if many (or most) of them were not able to accept and believe the message Isaiah proclaimed to them. In Isaiah’s time, Israel (and Judah, the southern part of Israel that includes Jerusalem and its temple) was surrounded by much more powerful empires: The Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians. And the Assyrians had invaded Israel from the north and progressed as far as the gates of Jerusalem. Israel’s and Judah’s kings were weak leaders in Isaiah’s time, trusting more in their treaties with other nations to keep these more powerful nations from invading Israel than they trusted in God. Judah, including Jerusalem, was extremely poor during this time. Yet it is at that time in Israel’s history when the prophet Isaiah exclaims, in past tense, that “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”; that “on them light has shone.”

The light has answered the darkness, chaos, and death, Isaiah proclaims. This despite the observable fact that “death to Judah” and to Israel seemed to be around every turn. But “so the light answers.” Enough people were persuaded by Isaiah to trust that God’s light had never been extinguished over Israel; that Israel’s God was and would forever be Emmanuel (another of Isaiah’s prophecies), “God-with-us.”

But to continue to trust in God, in God’s light proclaimed by prophets like Isaiah, would be far from easy for the people of Israel. Their nation would be invaded and occupied by the more powerful nations around it, one after another. The people of Israel would be exiled to Babylon, and return to their homeland only to find their temple destroyed; their society and their religious traditions in need of rebuilding. There would be the later invasion and occupation by the Greeks, a rising world power just before the time of Jesus, and then the Romans.

All the while the dominant message seemed to be, “Death to Judah.” Death to Israel. Why persist in building and trying to rebuild a nation? Why persist in believing that God and God’s prophets would save the nation, Israel, from occupation, ruin, chaos, and death?

Amid what seems like the dominant message—gloom, darkness, chaos, occupation, death—once again the light has answered, we believe and celebrate today, in the birth of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Luke’s Gospel begins tonight by mentioning the people who held political power in Israel of Jesus’ time: Caesar Augustus and Quirinius, “governor of Syria.” They were the occupying power; a Roman power that ruled by conquest, brutality, might-makes-right. Their power spelled “death to Judah”; death to Israel as a nation of God-with-us.

But it is into this world at that time and in that place, Roman-occupied Israel, that God chose to enter our human existence, through the Virgin Mary, under the saintly care of Mary and Joseph, into a manger in tiny Bethlehem, of all places. “So the light answers.” The light—God’s answer to the seemingly-prevalent darkness, chaos, and death—would first be revealed to humble shepherds “living in the fields.” These shepherds, who would be greeted by the “Angel of the Lord” with “good news of great joy for all the people” were, if we can imagine, even farther on the outskirts; the periphery of society than Bethlehem was on the periphery of Judah; of Israel.

There, to shepherds tending their fields, the light has answered first. In Bethlehem, “a child”—God’s own Son—“has been born to us.” This light; this good news of God who has become human, like us in all things but sin, is now entrusted to all of us. God’s luminous answer to darkness, chaos, and death—light, order, life, salvation—is, as Luke says to us tonight, “good news of great joy for all the people.”

What will we do to ensure this “good news of great joy” reaches “all the people”; that it reaches a world continually and desperately in need of God’s light, God’s joy that the birth of God’s Son brings? The Letter to Titus says to us tonight that this “good news of great joy” we receive and celebrate tonight changes our relationship with the world. “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all,” the Letter to Titus says. The same letter urges us “to renounce impiety and worldly passions… to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly.”

In short, the Letter to Titus invites us to live as a people who has received that “great light” that prophets proclaimed from long ago. The Letter to Titus invites us to live as the people who has received the greatest gift—salvation in and through God’s taking flesh in the person of Jesus Christ—that we could possibly receive, because we have received the greatest gift possible.

So the light has answered. And so, through us, God’s light continues to answer in our world. It may seem sometimes that darkness, chaos, and death have the upper hand in our world. It is even worse when events seem out of our control: A new and more contagious variant of a virus that has raged around our world for two years now, for instance. Our response to this; our response to acts of violence and injustice that still afflict our world; our response to attitudes and structures of sin latent in our very social fabric must be to proclaim and to live by the light we know we have been given and entrusted with.

There are and will be, in a figurative sense, many flags (although few as blatantly ugly as the swastikas hung across the street from the Posners’ apartment in Kiel in 1932); many signs in our world that will cry out: Darkness, chaos, death. Against this backdrop, we celebrate here tonight the birth of our Lord. We renew our commitment to carry in faith this light to our world by our celebration here tonight; by our acts of kindness; our acts of concern especially for the least well off; our acts of concern for the common good of all people, even over our good as individuals.

Against a backdrop that too often cries out, “darkness, chaos, death,” we celebrate and re-commit to live, beginning anew here and now, by the supreme and saving gift we have received by the birth of a Saviour, the Lion of Judah; the Lamb of God who would give his life to “take away the sins of the world.”

“Death to Judah.” So the flag says; “Judah will live forever.”

We as God’s people will live forever. The birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, has made it so.

And so the light answers.

Homily for Sunday, 19 December 2020– Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C

Readings of the day: Micah 5: 1-4a; Psalm 80: 2-3, 15-16, 18-19; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

The “rags-to-riches” motif is one of the more common ones in storytelling, because it resonates, does it not, with our heartfelt human inclination to encourage the heroic underdog to overcome the odds against her or him. In reality, these kinds of scenarios may be less common than we would like them to be: So many poor, maligned, marginalized people remain poor, maligned, and marginalized in our world. But occasionally some people overcome all odds against them, or at least they become the heroes of their stories or of pivotal moments in the greater history of our world or a society, or they keep other people from suffering the same marginalization as they have.

From the word of God, we hear today from the prophet Micah. Maybe the most memorable verse from Micah, at least for me, is his admonition about what the LORD requires of his people: “To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” I especially love this verse from Micah because it does not only exhort the people of Israel (and us) to act with justice, kindness, and humility. The Hebrew words Micah uses, which are notoriously difficult to translate but that we hear in English as justice, kindness (or mercy), and walking humbly, apply attributes of God to the people: Do justice, because God is just; love kindness, because God is kind and merciful; and, maybe most strikingly, “walk humbly with your God,” who walks humbly with us.

This verse, Micah 6:8, portrays God himself, and God’s prophet Micah, as by nature just, kind, merciful, and humble. And Micah is known as just that: A just, kind, merciful and, above all, humble prophet. Micah lived and preached at the same time in Israel’s history as much more famous prophets than he: Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah. These other prophets were from Jerusalem (in Isaiah’s case) or small towns. Micah, though, was from the countryside, between the downslope of the Judean mountains away from Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea coast. Other prophets preached to kings; Micah was the prophet of the common people.

And the part of the Book of Micah we hear today, Biblical experts say, may not have been his but an interpolation or insertion of a text from another, even more anonymous prophet. How is that for a humble situation, that of the prophet Micah? And his message today is one of the humble becoming great. Not from big, showy Jerusalem, with its mountains and its temple, but from little Bethlehem, the “house of bread” in Judah, the economic “have not” region of Israel in Micah’s time, would arise a great king in David’s line: “One who is to rule Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.”

We Christians have traditionally understood this prophecy of a great ruler in David’s line from little Bethlehem in light of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. And that is fine. Our Gospels often connect Jesus with the Davidic line of kings of Israel. But Micah looks back into Israel’s history in order to look forward, too. Micah’s references to David today are clear: David was a native of Bethlehem. He was a humble, obscure shepherd before slaying the giant Goliath and inheriting the throne of Israel. The ruler of Micah’s prophecy, like King David, will be a shepherd from Bethlehem. And, Micah says, while the king of whom he prophesies rules, he will return to be on a level ground with the common people; he will rule precisely by shepherding: “And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.”

The Psalmist carries on Micah’s shepherd-king contrast: “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth.” Here God himself is depicted as a shepherd and, at the same time, a heavenly and mighty ruler. God is mighty in his humility, and humble in his might. If we are to be anything like God, we are called, as Micah once said, to “walk humbly with [our] God,” because our mighty God walks humbly with us.

Our mighty God was born, humbly, to us in Bethlehem yet again, in the person of Jesus. This Jesus, shepherd-ruler of the universe, was born into a stable; a manger where animals eat, in Bethlehem, as a vulnerable human baby. We are less than one week from celebrating the birth of this shepherd-king who has saved this universe, sisters and brothers, by choosing to walk humbly with us and inviting us to walk humbly, justly, kindly with him and among one another.

If God’s humility is shown to us in the Nativity of Jesus, it is shown that much more in Jesus’ giving of his life for us on the cross. When I was in my first parish as a priest, St. Kateri Tekakwitha in Rochester, New York, one of my favourite liturgical elements during this time of Advent and Christmas was the conclusion of the Prayer of the Faithful (or General Intercessions), which reminded us how “the wood of the cradle” was fundamentally connected to “the wood of the cross.” May we always remember this connection, sisters and brothers.

The letter to the Hebrews today reminds us, in a way, of this same connection of the wood of the cradle and the wood of the cross; of Bethlehem to Calvary. Hebrews draws on the Psalms and prophetic writings, especially those of Isaiah, and places them on the tongue of Jesus: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me… See, God, I have come to do your will.”

I admit that Hebrews’ reflection on sacrifice is challenging to me personally: Not only that Jesus made the ultimate, saving sacrifice of himself on the cross, but that doing God’s will, in an ambiguous sense in our reading, somehow replaces or “abolishes” the need and the value of religious acts of sacrifice. Even our Eucharistic celebration is often called “the holy sacrifice of the Mass.” I do not think, then, that Hebrews is saying that what we celebrate here is worthless. By no means! But any religious ritual, including our Eucharist, can only have meaning if it is God’s will for us. And Jesus, at his Last Supper, commanded his disciples, “Take and eat… Take this cup and drink from it… Do this in memory of me.” This is how we know that our Eucharist is God’s will for us. In our Eucharist, we celebrate a historical action by Jesus, his sacrifice of himself through his passion and death on the cross, that is finished and past. We make it perpetually real and present through our memorial of Jesus’ passion and death, Jesus’ once-forever sacrifice, but that sacrifice can never be replicated or outdone.

This is the surpassing humility of God that we remember and celebrate here: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired… See, God, I have come to do your will… Do this in memory of me.” It is the surpassing humility of God that impelled the preaching of Micah about a shepherd-king to arise from little, insignificant Bethlehem; a shepherd-king who would save Israel; humankind; the entire created universe. It is the surpassing humility of God that impelled the song of the Psalmist that called upon the LORD: “Stir up your might, and come to save us.”

And it was the surpassing humility of God, whom the Virgin Mary carried within her in human form, as she “went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country” to visit and care for Elizabeth, also pregnant, with John the Baptist. Luke’s Gospel gives us many sublimely beautiful words and images today. Luke gives us Elizabeth’s greeting, on which part of our “Hail, Mary” is based: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Elizabeth is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit,” as Mary was from the moment she conceived Jesus at the Annunciation. John leaps with joy in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary greets them.

But maybe the most moving moment of today’s Gospel for me is in Elizabeth’s question to Mary: “And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me”? Elizabeth was not lacking in humility, by any means. But this event, the Visitation and these last days of preparation for the Nativity of the Lord, are greater than Elizabeth. These events are greater than us. They are greater than a simple lowliness-to-riches scenario. We could ask the same question as Elizabeth does: “Why has this happened to us, that our Lord has chosen to be born as one of us, to come to us through the Virgin Mary, through a humble manger in Bethlehem”?

This event is all about God’s humility: That not only would God send his Son into our world in this way to save us, but that now God regards us, little and insignificant though we are (if we think about it), as fit to do his will: To feed his flock (that is, one another); to act with justice and kind mercy; to “walk humbly with our God,” if only because God has chosen to walk humbly as one of us.