Three things Luke wants to tell us
When we read Luke the Evangelist’s account of the first Christmas we hear three things in particular.
This story is good news for everyone. Luke tells us how Jesus was born when a census of the whole world was being taken. And he also says how the Angels proclaimed they were bringing Good News for all people. No one is excluded from this news that God has come among us because he loves us. It’s easy to say but actually more challenging to believe – God loves us immensely, each one of us but also each other person God places beside us in life. In a letter he wrote on the Nativity, Pope Francis commented: “By being born in a manger, God himself launches the only true revolution that can give hope and dignity to the disinherited and the outcast: the revolution of love, the revolution of tenderness.” So from the crib let’s hear the child Jesus say: believe in love, believe God loves you, believe God loves even that person you find hard to love.
A second point. Luke says it clearly: A Saviour has been born for you. God wasn’t born when everything was in order, things perfectly worked out. The political situation was complicated, people were moving from one town to another, the local inns were full, accommodation for Mary, Joseph and the New Child was in the cave, with the animals and the manger was Jesus’ altar. But that’s how Jesus came to save us. He entered into the messiness of our lives and from within helped to bring hope, new vision and peace. Saint Clement of Alexandria wrote, “Christ came down and assumed our humanity, willingly sharing in our human sufferings, for this reason: so that, having experienced the frailty of those whom he loves, he could then make us experience his great power”.
Jesus is the saviour born precisely for us right where we are and just how are at this time. Maybe our heart is troubled just now, but in it there’s always a longing for the answer ‘yes’—‘I can’t get out of this problem! ‘don’t write me off!’—‘forgive me!’—‘give me another chance!’—‘accept me!’’ At Christmas, Jesus from the crib is asking to be let into your, my heart, as a Saviour, the One who with is saving power saves us from ourselves, from the misunderstanding of others, from the injustices of our world. Let him enter and take away our darkness.
The third point that Luke underlines is that the coming of the child Jesus sends us out to be ambassadors of peace. It’s what the angels sing: “Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” We are to be ambassadors of peace, justice, hope and love. Ambassadors represent the One who sends them out. And so the way to be ambassadors of Jesus and his message is to live like Jesus, to be the first to love, to love everyone, to love our neighbour as ourselves. St. John Henry Newman had a prayer: “May each Christmas, as it comes, find us more and more like Him, who at this time became a little child for our sake, more simple-minded, more humble, more holy, more affectionate, more resigned, more happy, more full of God”. And he went on to say: “[Christmas] is a time for innocence, and purity, and gentleness, and mildness, and contentment, and peace”.
May these three messages from the Christmas story console us and encourage us: the Good News is for everyone; A Saviour has been born for us. Jesus sends us out as ambassadors of peace.