CHRISTMAS, 2008
“Somebody’s taken Jesus from the chapel” the tear-filled voice of an elderly lady cried over the phone to me in a previous parish I served as pastor. Located in the parish cemetery was a small devotional chapel inside of which, was a small altar, with an approximately three foot tall statue of Jesus under his title as the Sacred Heart. A couple of days later, acting on a tip from another parishioner, I drove to the Courthouse in Waterloo. At the lobby desk I explained to the receptionist why I had come. She directed me to the “Evidence Room” in the courthouse basement. The Evidence Room, as its name implies, contained all items related to criminal cases, but also was the repository of items that have been abandoned, or simply lost and found awaiting their owners to claim them.
I made my way to the basement and going to the window of the Evidence Room rang the little bell on the counter to summon the clerk. “May I help you?” the clerk said. “Yes,” I replied. “I’m looking for Jesus.” The clerk gave me a dumbfounded look so I described the statue of Jesus and showed my credentials as the pastor of the church where the statue had been reported missing. “Oh, yeah, he’s here. I just saw him on the shelf. I’ll go get him,” replied the clerk. A couple of minutes later the clerk returned carrying the statue and placing it on the counter handed me the necessary forms to sign him out. Finishing the paper work and handing it back to the clerk he said, “I gotta tell you, Father, this is the first time I’ve ever seen Jesus down here. Missing or stolen bikes, purses, lawn ornaments, not to mention a few guns and knives I see all the time. But Jesus? What’s this world coming to? Doesn’t seem right he should end up here.”
I looked at the clerk and said, “You know, I think Jesus felt right at home here.” “What do you mean?” the clerk said with an incredulous look on his face. “Well,” I continued, “if you read the Christmas story and the rest of the gospels Jesus spent a lot of his time here on earth among the lost, the abandoned, the rejected, the sinners. As a matter of fact, Jesus probably spent more time with them than with any other groups of people, because they were the ones who needed him the most. We so often just want to keep him in church. Perhaps there’s a lesson here for all of us in how Jesus expects us to live our faith.”
“Hmm, hadn’t thought about that” said the clerk. With that I put my arms around the statue of the Sacred Heart and bid the clerk a pleasant day.
Our celebration of Christmas while it has its origins in the events in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago, is a celebration of God once again making us the body of Christ today. Just as God took on our humanity and entered into our world that first Christmas, we are called to let God’s love become flesh in our own lives and situations. How do we feel about our response? Will we try to confine it, put our religious life in a box or building and keep it safely contained in the practices we can control? Or are we willing to risk whatever may happen if we truly invite God’s love and power to unfold in our lived experience? Most parents of newborns rapidly discover that though the baby books may give them detailed instructions on how to proceed, the new baby does not follow any rules. We, too, can expect to be surprised over and over by how the reality of this newborn child of Bethlehem unfolds in our lives. Will we keep him tightly swaddled in our own ideas of how he should be handled and how far he should be allowed to move and act, or dare we “unbind” him and follow and stay with him as he makes his home among all the lost, the forgotten, the powerless, and the sinners of the world, and the lost dreams, the forgotten hopes, the fearful powerlessness we experience at times in the face of the circumstances of life which confront us, the sinner in each of us and set him free to transform our world and our lives?
“ Almighty God, creator and redeemer of humankind, you decreed and your Word became flesh born of the Virgin Mary. May we come to share the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share our human nature.” (Roman Misssal, Opening Prayer, December 17.)
A Blessed Christmas to all of you.