Have a very Defiant Christmas

Third Sunday of Advent C, 2015

Get to wear my favorite color only twice a year.  This is Gaudete Sunday, we are to rejoice and be glad.  Happy happy.  But, how can we rejoice and be glad amid so much terror and violence?  There is a decided edge to our celebration of Advent and Christmas this year.  Well, let’s see if there isn’t a way through all that we are experiencing.  I would like to wish you a very DEFIANT Christmas.

Our defiance is not born of fear, hatred, jealously or anger but is born out of the Love and compassion that brought about Emmanuel, God with us, the Incarnation God in the flesh of Jesus Christ.  We need to do more than just feeling holy one day of the week, or for a few minutes we spend saying our daily prayers.  It isn’t enough just to feel holy here, we must be holy out there all of the time, 24/7.  We need to be rooted in a spirituality that prevents us from being tossed about by the ill winds that are blowing through our society and around the world.

There is a scene in the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon depicting the life of St. Francis.  As Francis became aware of his life in Christ he begins throwing all of his father’s goods out the second floor window of their house in Assisi.  Naturally his father  Pietro Bernardone was furious and began beating on Francis.  The scene shows Francis smiling through the entire ordeal.  Francis had found a life and a love that no one, and no situation could take away from him.  All he really wanted to do is to share his joy with his family and anyone else he came upon.  If we are attached and addicted to things we might judge that Francis got what he deserved.  However if we think for a moment and listen, which is father did not do, we might hear and see that we too need to be rooted in something far deeper than the things we have, or even the feeling of holiness we experience here this morning at mass.  Our present circumstances are calling us to root ourselves more deeply.

Our first two readings ask us to rejoice, but how with so much darkness around us?  The crowds in the Gospel are asking the question we may be asking “what are we to do, what are we to do?”  Basically John the Baptist is saying do what you can, share your clothing, your food, do  your job be agents of justice and peace.  We can feel very powerless but John the Baptist is saying to us, “do what you can.”  Sometimes all we can do is be outraged; at the treatment of our sister and brother Muslims, at the hatred that spawns terrorism of any kind from mass killings to and the abuse of children and other family members.   The world needs our defiant witness.  We must not only eat and drink the body and blood of Christ here, but dare to bear the flesh and blood of Christ no matter where we are.

To live a defiant Christmas means that, as we trim our trees, decorate our homes with lights and evergreen, as we wrap our packages and give tokens of our love to one another we are, in all these ways saying no to the darkness, to hate, no to the cold, no to all the emptiness we and others may feel, we are saying yes to the light that is coming, yes to the light and life the Christ child brings.  In the sounds of the season, if we are careful, we can hear the shepherds, and may even hear angelic voices offering us words of encouragement and hope.  In all of this we are jointed by our brother and sister Jews who are celebrating Hanukkah, the festival of lights; a feast born in darkness and exile, as too our feast of the Nativity, born in a trying time moving us as well from darkness to new light and life.

Yes, I wish you all a very merry and defiant Advent and Christmas.