STORY - "Celebrating Christmas: From Crib to Cross"
A Christmas Message from Bishop Michael

In one memorable Christmas episode of the American cartoon The Simpsons, Homer steps in to lead the Christmas service, and decides to re-enact the first Christmas with the help of his family and many of the Simpsons' regular characters.

As you can imagine, there is a parody of the story of Jesus’ birth: Mary, Joseph, the Angel Gabriel, the Three Wise Men – all the familiar elements - are given the Simpsons treatment. However, Homer finishes his story with the telling words: “Did you know that Baby Jesus grew up to be…Jesus?”

Homer is spot on. This statement is so simple but so insightful because it points to our tendency to focus on the Nativity story in isolation. We sometimes forget the man who Jesus became and all that his life means to us. The story of Jesus doesn’t begin and end with a baby in a manger. We know that “Baby Jesus grew up to be…Jesus” but it is all too easy to ignore, amongst the busyness and glitz of Christmas, that Jesus was born to show us how to live. Receiving gifts, being the centre of attention, hearing angels singing…all this is lovely, but it wasn’t the stuff of Jesus’ life any more than it is of ours.

Christmas is about a child, sure, but Christmas actually challenges us to grow up, as Jesus did. The gospel of Luke tells us that “Jesus grew in wisdom and maturity. He gained favour from God and from people.” (Lk 2:52)

When we make the birth of Jesus the start and finish of Christmas, we are only focusing on one half of the whole and holy reality of Christianity. Paradoxically, Christmas is only something worth celebrating because of Easter. We cannot experience and celebrate the profound miracle of Christmas if we divorce it from the context of Jesus’ life, death and (most significantly) resurrection.

We must not limit Christmas to being merely a celebration of Jesus’ birth. It has a deeper meaning: Jesus established the reign of God in our midst, coming in the tender humanity of a helpless, fragile baby, gifting us with the power and promise of his life, death and resurrection – the Paschal Mystery.

Death and resurrection are always at the centre of our Christian faith and worship. Christmas invites us to draw near to both the infant Christ and the empty tomb. The child we honour and remember at Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us, the servant of all, the one who washes feet and welcomes sinners, the one who finds the lost and carries them back, the one who suffered, died and rose from the dead.

May we have the courage to recognise in the crib the Christ of the cross and take Christmas beyond the stable of Bethlehem to a way of life.

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