Merry Christmas. Certainly all of us have many and various recollections—a kind of Christmas Treasury of our lives, revolving around sounds, sights, tastes and the people who make Christmas joyous. For me, an early and fond ingredient of Christmas was my grandmother’s lasagna. It’s the first Christmas meal I remember, which was served year after year in her Brooklyn dining room upon that lace tablecloth that everybody’s grandmother back then seemed to have for the holidays. Even in my teen years, when she was getting too elderly to manage the dinner on her own, she and my grandfather would arrive at our house with her lasagna. One Christmas, when I was home from college, my mother felt it was time for her to relieve my grandmother of the lasagna duties. Being the witty and intelligent freshman that I was, I asked my mother if she might consider making an improvement on my grandmother’s “Depression” lasagna. “What are you talking about?” my mother quipped. I explained as to how grandmother’s lasagna fed her family back in the years of the Great Depression, and it showed because her lasagna didn’t have much filling between the layers of pasta sheets. Yes, it smelled and tasted delicious, I added; “but the Depression is over, it’s the 1970s. How about some more meat and ricotta in there!” My mother came back at me quickly, “Don’t be such a wise guy. Those were hard years in the 30s. Mom’s lasagna served us well at Christmas. Nobody could afford extras and Pop (that was my grandfather) was a New York City policeman then. At that time of year, if there were any extras, he was taking them to people on his beat who really needed some help. So, don’t be such a wise guy”.
That is how the memory of my grandmother’s “Depression” lasagna took on added meaning with the revelation of my grandfather having been a Depression-era Santa Claus.
Many people are making a thinner lasagna for Christmas 2008. A number of people in our parish community are experiencing leaner times and that is likely true for some of our visitors tonight. It is the case for countless people that Christmas past will have been better than present, and that the future feels shaky. Still, we celebrate tonight, not as an evasion of woe but as the occasion to ponder anew how this celebration might go out as light shining in the lives of other people. And so this is Christmas.
Even though I began by sharing a Christmas memory, from a religious point of view, memory is not the Christmas text, the Gospel is. If we try to approach Christmas by way of memory, we expend energy either by trying to revive certain fond memories or to avert the repeat of disastrous, hurtful ones. Christmas, however, is not about capturing the past but rather about being open and available to and for the moment of Christmas now:
God with us—not a story from 2,000 years ago; not a fable about a stable or a tale of a comet;
God with us—in flesh and blood, in space and time, here and now;
The Incarnation.
Come, ponder anew this Christmas present. In a silence of the night, ponder within yourself—that’s what prayer is. At the Exchange of The Peace, ponder with the many who gather—that’s what liturgy is about. Prayer and worship are at the heart of Christmas. Mary pondered all these things in her heart.
Mary had no Christmas memories. It was her very first, her only Christmas. What if, like Mary, you have only one Christmas? You have no idea what it is about. There are no traditions that rehearse it. As far as you knew, you were just getting on with things, each day as it came. Yet, in the midst of all that concerned you, about your life and that of your loved ones, you sensed a need—a compelling awareness dawning on you, almost calling out to you: be open and ready as one who carries, as a people who are willing to bear, to bear an inexplicable but intimately known grace: the grace that awakens our flesh and blood to the God being born.
Mary only had that one Christmas; first and last. Really, we only have one also. This is our Christmas. By the grace of God, we are born as gifts of God for the people of God. Christ is born for this. The Nativity Scene is not a projection—a wish, a fanciful memory of long, long ago. Rather, the Crèche is a reflection of real time and space. We are looking into a mirror that gets our attention. Christmas is a hope realized by God with us.
The Church is the cradle of Christ. Those who come adore the child; and then we grow to the stature of adulthood and go out, bringing Christ into the world—
To a world in recession from hope,
With a people on the borders of despair,
For malnourished children who do not yet know how shalom means health,
Or amongst combatants who have not yet committed shalom peace to heart,
To rulers and ruled, reminding all that government rests upon the shoulders of wisdom and compassion, we sing a new song. We glorify and praise God for all we have heard and seen. We bring offerings, zealous as we are for good deeds with those in need. We tell it out among the nations that The Lord is King. Christ’s reign is peace, justice, equity, righteousness and truth.
Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. It was a lot to take in that Christmas. That Christmas is here and now.
Amen.

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