Homily for the Midnight Mass
of Christmas 2007
I believe it is in the movie Tin Men [1987]
that Danny DeVito is pushing a conked-out, used car down the street.
Looking up to heaven in a moment of frustration,
DeVito prays, "Work with me, God, work with me!"
The line is funny because DeVito is funny,
but also because it is God who typically says it to us:
Work with me, John, work with me!
Work with me, Bill, Paul, Kim, Sue, Megan, or Jim, work with me!
God's sending the Son to become one with us
requires human partners, people to work with.
a Mary, a Joseph, a you, a me.
It requires human beings who are willing to believe the impossible,
willing to claim the scandal,
willing to adopt and give the child a name,
accepting the whole sticky mess and rocking it in our arms.
In Luke's Gospel
the whole grand event depends on Mary.
She is Theotokos, the bearer of God.
In the midst of questions, confusion and fear,
Mary gives her "yes" to the angel Gabriel.
Her "yes" makes a new beginning possible.
And it is not all about her --
Through the angel Gabriel, God says -- "work with me!"
In Matthew's Gospel,
the whole grand event depends on Joseph,
whose life has been turned upside down by an angel's news.
Joseph has to make a fundamental decision --
to put aside his own confusion, doubt, and hurt,
and accept the child as his own,
not as a matter of biology,
but as a matter of love and compassion.
God asks each one of us to welcome Christ into our midst.
In the mystery of Christmas,
God's "yes" depends on our "yes."
God will not do an end run on the human condition,
work around our freedom to say no.
The birth of Jesus doesn't rid the world of evil.
For the Christian, just as for everyone else,
there will still be sickness, senseless hurt, broken dreams,
and cold, lonely seasons when love is far away.
We don't get heaven on earth.
We do receive God's presence in our lives.
And it's that presence that redeems us.
When we sense that God-is-with-us in Christ
we can give up selfishness, bitterness, and jealousy
because we are no longer alone in them.
We continue to work on behalf of the poor, those who are in prison.
We continue to look for new ways to restore justice,
because again, it is not about us --
it is about the God who walks with us and works with us.
Theologian and Cardinal Avery Dulles once put it this way:
"The incarnation does not provide us with a ladder
by which to escape the ambiguities of life
and scale the heights of heaven.
Rather it enables us to burrow deep into the heart of planet earth
and find it shimmering with divinity."
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
December 25, 2007
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