Is It Possible?

Christmas Eve
December 24, 2007

The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector

“She gave birth to her firstborn son… and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”^[1]

A mother lays her baby in a manger in the squalor of a dank, rank stable, for there was no room in the inn. It doesn’t matter the reason. Some, reading this story, condemn the heartlessness of the innkeeper who closed an already callously blind eye to a family in need. Others consider it all a matter of happenstance. The people arriving for the census and the soldiers charged with taking the census simply got there first and filled the inn. But whatever the reason, this story often is seen as a perfect picture of poverty. An example of exclusion almost too excruciating to read. But wait! This is a story – whether understood as God’s word or words crafted by the human heart – of hope. This is a story meant to reflect our longing for the way we want life, the world to be. A longing so embedded and abiding precisely because it is so seldom realized, and even when realized, not long lived. Hope is why this story has such captivating power. Why we read it every year. Why we gather annually to hear it. All to remind ourselves of the way things are supposed to be. If that is so – and I think it is so – then, let us listen again. This baby, according to his story, grew up and became for many then and, according to history, has been believed to be for countless thereafter the embodiment of love, the kindness for which our souls cry, and justice, the fairness for which we all long. This baby found no room in the inn and was laid in a manger. An inn is a place where visitors lodge. A temporary house for those who are not at home. For those who, as aliens, do not belong. A manger is a place for food where those who are hungry come to be fed. This Jesus, the embodiment of love and justice, then, was no foreigner, but rather, a feast. Is it possible, then, that love and justice are the food of which we are to partake that we become what we eat? So that embodied in our very lives we, others, and God Herself will behold that love and justice are not alien or unknown, but alive and at home in this world? If we believe that and if we seek to embody that belief, then we, this Christmas Day and on every day will make all the difference in this world.

[1] Luke 2.7. The gospel passage appointed is Luke 2.1-14