I believe we have some
young people here. Have any of you heard
of Sesame Street? I am not Big Bird,
Bert nor Ernie, not Miss Piggy, nor the Count nor Kermit nor Oscar the Grouch though
I may have been accused of sharing traits of one or another of these characters
from the program from time to time. Tonight
we are having an alphabet lesson like Sesame Street. I have decided that Christmas is a story
about the letter m. Of course M could
stand for Michael as in my name, Abbot Michael, or Mount Michael. M could stand for my favorite candy which the
development office will be more than happy to tell you is M&M’s. For me, the letter M stands for many words
which are intimately associated with Christmas.
I think I will give you the words in reverse order, starting from the
least important to the most important.
You may decide at the end of this homily to put them in a different
order. But this is the order I
prefer. I will tell you immediately that
the m word money does not have a place in my list. I suspect some misers – another m word –
might want to dispute that omission. But
tonight, they are out of luck. Miserable
misers can make up their own manifests if they are so inclined.
The first M word is
majesty. On Christmas night, the world
welcomes the king of kings into our world.
A descendant of King David, heir to the promise that God will protect
and preserve his people, ascends to the throne.
Shepherds bow down in awe. Kings
from foreign lands bring their finest gifts.
Angels worship in the heavens, singing glory to God on high. It is a breathtaking scene of majesty as the
divine breaks into a world disrupted by sin and evil, marking the onset of a
new beginning of grace.
The next M
word is miracle. On Christmas night, God
himself becomes a human being just like one of us. In the words of the letter to the Hebrews,
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and
in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us
through his Son … the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact
representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. For
to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘You are my Son; today I have
become your Father’. The answer to that
question is God never said that to any angel, only to a human being. It is truly a miracle.
The third M word is
mystery. How can it be that the human
and the divine can co-exist in the person of one human being? Though many elaborate philosophical and
theological treatises attempt to explain how the divine and the human can be
one, at the end of the day they are all merely a houses of cards, a tower of
straw It is a mystery which we can
hardly understand, but for which we should be forever grateful.
The fourth
M word is manger. My literature teacher
used to say you need to pay attention to words that occur more than once in a
story. The word manger shows up many
times in the story of Jesus’ birth. Jesus shared the majesty of king, but he
chose to be born in the humility of a manger.
(For those of us who are Benedictines, this is an important lesson
because of the great emphasis that St Benedict places on humility.) Humility
means becoming a servant to one another, as Christ himself chose to do. Remember that on the night before he died,
Jesus put on a robe, got down on his knees and washed the feet of his
disciples. That is an example of
humility that we cannot hear often enough.
Think of the title the pope gives himself – servant of the servants of
God. The word manger points in the
direction of humility.
The final M
word is magic. Christmas is magic. What is more magical than watching the gleam
in the eyes of children as they unwrap presents left under the Christmas tree
by Santa Claus? What is more magical
than the Christmas lights that decorate so many homes, creating enchanting
scenes that shine in the darkness of the night?
What is more magical than the melodies of Christmas carols and Christmas
music which delight the soul? What is
more magical than the taste of a Christmas dinner? What is more magical than coming home to the
warmth of a family brought together to celebrate? What is more magical than the realization
that despite the sin and evil in the world, there is new hope for the life of
the world and for the life of each and every one of us? Ask any mother, what is
more magical than the birth of a baby child?
To me, Christmas is pure magic.
Always has been, and always will be.
There are
the five M words – majesty, miracle, mystery, manger and magic. The best gift I could give you is to wish
that you never grow too old, too cynical, too jaded to appreciate the magic of
Christmas. Merry Christmas to you all.
