Christmas Day 2021

 Luke 2:15 - 20

There are still shepherds. As a teenager in Montana I worked in a grocery store. There were shepherds tending flocks of sheep up in the hills on land belonging to the government. There’s a lot more of that in Montana than in Massachusetts. Shepherds would now and then come to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. I doubt they’ve changed much since Jesus; time; they smelled bad, they wore ragged clothes, they didn’t say much more than they had to; they were mostly people who couldn’t speak much English -- the ones around my home town were from the Basque region of Spain.

In Jesus’ time as in ours shepherds lived on the edge of society, literally as well as figuratively. Because they had to watch the sheep 24 hrs a day 7 days a week, they did not take part in the religious life of the community. For the same reason they did little socializing; and even out on the hills where they worked, they had little contact with each other. Even today in the middle east shepherds only get together at night so they can take turns watching each other’s sheep. Now you can imagine this kind of life doesn’t suit everyone and you’d be right. Studies have shown that people who spend their lives being shepherds are antisocial, introverted, and many have mental disorders.

So why did God send his angels to announce the birth of the Messiah to shepherds? Maybe Jesus would have been more successful if the angels had appeared to the High Priest or the rulers of threJewish People. That’s a question that many people have tried to answer down through the ages.

When you look at many events in Jesus' life, you can find prophecies in the Old Testament that point to them. There’s nothing in the bible predicting that shepherds would be the first to know about the Messiah, unlike the prophecy that Jesus would be born of a virgin, or kings would come from the east bearing gifts. So it seems peculiar that shepherds were first.

The shepherds weren’t very religious, at least in any conventional sense. They weren’t chosen for their holiness -- and they reacted to the angels with fear and trembling, so much so that the angel had to tell them not to fear.

The conventional answer is that God wanted to show the world that he was on the side of the lowly, the outcast, the poor, all of which described the shepherds. And that’s probably a good answer.

But there are two other possibilities that God chose the shepherds to be the heralds of the birth of his Son.

First, God knows, as you and I know, that if he had made the announcement to the leaders of the people, they would have tried to find a way to use the knowledge to gain power or riches. The same with the religious authorities -- they would find a way to exploit the situation. That’s not such a bad thing, by the way. We do that in our church all the time. We like to publicize those among us who serve the church in a special way -- hoping that it will bring others to do the same. But the danger to us as to the religious authorities at that time is that we lose sight of what we are celebrating and what it means to me personally. The shepherds are not in a position to exploit the information they have received; they are empty and God seems to like to manifest himself in those who are empty, those who have been crushed by life’s burdens. The ones who are empty are the ones who have the capacity to receive the message God wants to give them

But another is that the angels are there all along. Through a special grace the shepherds had a glimpse of true reality and that changed them so much that they became messengers -- the first apostles, as it were. You and I have had moments, I am sure, when we have caught a glimpse of the deeper reality that surrounds us. It might have been on a mountain top or at the seashore, or on a pilgrimage or a retreat. As one poet exclaimed, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”.

So think about the shepherds; ponder these things in your hearts, as Mary did. How can we become empty so that God will speak more clearly to us, maybe through an angel, maybe directly? How can we become more sensitive to the marvelous reality around us that we almost never notice? Jesus coming has changed everything. God has taken on our humanity and offers us his divinity. Pray that we will have the grace to accept what he offers.

Feast of the Holy Family, 2021

Luke 2:41 - 52

When my sisters and I would get into trouble, my mother would rant that it was impossible for her to imitate the Blessed Mother; after all, she only had one kid and he was God. I have a feeling we were not the only kids who heard something like this from the mouths of our mothers. And indeed when we think of the Holy Family, who we celebrate today, I’m sure you have your favorite idyllic scene; mine is a Joseph showing the boy Jesus how to do something with wood, with Mary looking on approvingly.. We really don’t know much about Joseph, who disappears from the story after the scene we just heard described. We assume Joseph died sometime before Jesus’ death on the cross, because otherwise he wouldn’t have to worry about who would take care of Mary.

We know a little more about Mary. And from what we can learn from the scriptures, her life was not as portrayed in our paintings. Much has been made of her pregnancy occurring before her marriage and the scandal that might have caused -- or maybe there was no scandal. We talk about the hardship of being an exile from your country when the family emigrated to Egypt. But maybe that wasn’t so bad -- they might have traveled with a bunch of people and settled in a community of Jews who welcomed them with open arms. We hear about the prophecy of Simeon when Jesus was brought to the temple as an infant -- Mary might remember that in the distant future, but at the time it probably only raised her curiosity.

But there is another thread that some people see in what we read about Mary.

First, Gabriel, then Elizabeth, then the shepherds all lead Mary to believe that the future for her son is bright -- he’ll be the Messiah, he’ll inherit the throne of David, he’ll reign forever. But then they settle down in Nazareth, Nazareth where Joseph and Mary’s relatives live, where Jesus is probably related to half the town, at least. And then the next thing we hear is that when Mary and Joseph wander the streets of Jerusalem frantically looking for their lost son, he gives them lip when they find him. And this won’t be the first time.

Early in his ministry Jesus returns to Nazareth to preach to the hometown crowd. When he quotes Isaiah about himself, the whole congregation reacts with shock and anger -- “is this not Joseph’s son?” they exclaim? After driving Jesus out of town for what is obviously blasphemy, we never hear of Jesus going back. Where was his mother? Probably in the congregation, perhaps embarrassed, perhaps shocked by his words herself. And if you read any of the four gospels, we never hear that Jesus returns to Nazareth.

Then we see Jesus in Caparnaum, where Mary and Jesus’ relatives come to see him. Mark tells us that they think he’s gone mad and want to bring him home, but Luke doesn’t mention the reason. We do know that when Jesus is informed of their presence, he replies “My mother and brothers and sisters are they who hear the word of God and do it.” That had to sting a little.

We don’t hear about Mary traveling with Jesus -- Luke never mentions that. She disappears from the picture. Maybe its a good thing. She might have heard Jesus replying to the woman who blesses “the womb that bore you and the breasts that nourished you” -- Blessed, instead, he says, are those who hear the Word of God and obey it.” or “Whoever does not hate his father and mother… cannot be my disciple.” or “I did not come to bring peace, rather, a sword so that father will be set against son, mother against daughter.” And except for that moment at the foot of the cross when Jesus gives her over to the beloved disciple -- he didn’t ask her opinion, of course -- we don’t meet Mary again during Jesus' time on earth, even after the Resurrection. You would think that Luke would have told us about that.

The point is that for Luke, who wrote his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, it’s almost like Jesus rejects his mother and all the Nazareth relatives. What special privilege did Mary have after God used her to give birth to his son and raise him to adulthood? My mother suffered when I left home and I’m sure she suffered when I moved to the eastern side of the US, leaving her out west. I know Joan suffers a little when her kids leave after a visit. When you follow Mary through the eyes of Luke, I suspect she had a lot of grief.

But there is a happy ending. We read in the first part of the Acts of the Apostles that Mary is there with the apostles and the 120 or so followers when the Holy Spirit again shows up. She, like you, like me, like all of us, finally meets her son in the community that makes up his mystical body, and in the Eucharist that is his body and blood.

So Mom, Mary didn’t have it as easy as you thought. But I think you know that now.