Our Christmas story can be approached in so many different ways. There are four different masses given to us on this feast day, each with its own readings. If you were in a monastery you would attend all of them – at midnight, 3am, 6am, and 9am!
In one of the readings Isaiah speaks to a people returning to scenes of devastation (Isaiah 52:7-10). At this Christmas, like very other, this is the experience of so many caught in the middle of war and violence. But devastation may also be what we feel inside when our our lives are confused or conflicted. We all need comforting in some way.
Break out together in song,
O ruins of Jerusalem!
For the LORD comforts his people,
he redeems Jerusalem.
The LORD has bared his holy arm
in the sight of all the nations;
all the ends of the earth will behold
the salvation of our God.”
The power of God, baring his arm, a warrior going into battle, is such that even the ruins themselves will break into song. And this something not just for the people of Israel, his chosen people, to see. This is for everyone. The whole world will see the salvation of this God, Israel’s God.
But what does this salvation look like? Who is this mighty warrior, so powerful that the whole world will take notice? A great king, a general, a leader of the greatest military force the world has ever seen?
What does the world see? A baby!
This has to be some crazy joke yes? A baby will fix all that destruction? And this baby will grow into a man who is executed alongside common criminals because he made a nuisance of himself with the people in power. This is the salvation that the world will see!
The salvation promised by Isaiah looks absolutely nothing like any human triumph we can imagine. Emmanuel is a baby, utterly dependent as only human children can be.
This is indeed our faith. This baby was the person through whom God became fully visible in the world. The person who gave us the complete insight into who and what God is.
Only people living amid devastation, trying desperately to put their lives back together, could possibly believe anything so absurd. Isaiah wasn’t talking to the people who had it made, who were comfortably off, he was talking to people who had nothing. If we can recognize that we also have nothing, that our need is as deep as theirs, then we can also hold tight to the salvation brought by a baby, born in a barn, with only a few shepherds around to notice anything was going on.