Homily for Christmas Day, 25th December 2023
Readings: Isaiah 62:11-12; Psalm 97:1,6,11-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:15-20
Happy Christmas. On Thursday one of my nieces gave birth to her firstborn. Both are well and thriving. What better Christmas present could there be. What better pointer to the real meaning of Christmas. I was a grand uncle for the 28th time. My niece texted me on the morning of the birth: ‘Thank you for all the prayers. They were much needed and appreciated. Can’t wait to introduce you.’ Like the shepherds, I felt I should set out as soon as possible to meet the newborn. We will meet in Queensland early in the new year.
“When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger.”
Listen at https://soundcloud.com/frank-brennan-6/christmas-homily-2023
Eight verses earlier, Luke describes how they “wrapped him in cloth strips, placed him in a manger, because there was no place” for them. Scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson suggests that this deliberate phrasing anticipates “the same threefold rhythm of ‘wrapped him in linen cloth, placed him in a rock-hewn tomb, where no one had yet been laid’ (23:53) so that birth and burial mirror each other”.[1]
An hour after receiving my niece’s text message, a friend sent me the one-minute video being circulated by Dr Munther Isaac, Assistant Pastor at the Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.[2] Isaac is a scripture scholar who studied in the USA before completing his doctorate at Oxford on ‘A Biblical Theology of the Promised Land’. This was his arresting message:
“This year’s Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem are cancelled and for obvious reasons. It’s impossible to celebrate while our people in Gaza are going through a genocide, when children are being massacred in such a brutal manner. All the heads of churches in Jerusalem decided that Christmas celebrations will be mainly prayers with no festive celebrations. We thought of: what is the meaning of Christmas for us as Palestinians, and what message do we want to send to the world about the meaning of Christmas today? So we came up with this idea of a manger in the midst of rubble resembling a destroyed house in Gaza and the child Jesus as a child was under the rubble. We’ve seen so many images of children being pulled out of the rubble and to us this is a message that Jesus identifies with our sufferings. He’s in solidarity with those who are oppressed. He’s in solidarity with those suffering. So it’s a message of comfort and hope to us. But it’s also a message to the world, that this is what Christmas looks like in Bethlehem. This is what Christmas looks like in Palestine: with occupation, with destruction, with the bombardment of children. While the world is celebrating, our children are under the world problem. While the world is celebrating, our families are displaced and their homes are destroyed. So this is Christmas to us in Palestine.”[3]
Fr David Neuhaus SJ is a Jesuit scripture scholar who lives and teaches at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem. He is a Jewish Israeli who was adopted into a Muslim Palestinian family. Searching for the words to say this Christmas, he takes his lead from Cardinal Pier-Battista Pizzabella, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who emphasised equally three points in his pastoral letter on October 24:
- “My conscience and moral duty require me to state clearly that what happened on October 7 in southern Israel is in no way permissible and we cannot but condemn it.”
- “The same conscience leads me to state with equal clarity today that this new cycle of violence has brought to Gaza over 5,000 deaths [now well over 16,000 deaths]….It is time to stop this war, this senseless violence.”
- “It is only by ending decades of occupation and its tragic consequences, as well as giving a clear and secure perspective to the Palestinian people, that a serious peace process can begin…We do not have the right to leave this task to others.”
Neuhaus insists that these words “resist simple reductions and facile solidarities. They are forged in sorrowful tears and love for all who live in the Holy Land….They are based on authentic relationships with Israeli Jews and with Palestinian Arabs.”[4]
Without analysing for balance and political correctness every word uttered by Dr Isaac, Fr Neuhaus and Cardinal Pizzabella in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, let’s join with them this Christmas praying that the message of Titus in today’s second reading might be fulfilled:
‘See, the Lord proclaims to the ends of the earth:
say to daughter Zion, your saviour comes!
Here is his reward with him, his recompense before him.
They shall be called the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord,
and you shall be called “Frequented,” a city that is not forsaken.’
The shepherds were the ones who communicated to Mary and Joseph the news about their baby: “Today in the city of David a saviour was born for you. He is Lord Messiah”. “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.”
I have just returned from Indonesia with many things to reflect in my heart. I was there a week with a team of Australian lawyers and social workers who have worked with their Indonesian counterparts over the past 15 years. We travelled to Cilacap in south Central Java to welcome into freedom a man who had been on death row for twenty years. Poor and uneducated, this man had travelled to Indonesia on a false passport as a one-off drug courier. He had mistakenly been sentenced to death because the passport was of a person from another country who had probably been a serial drug runner. He had been acting under duress from a drug cartel who threatened to kill his family members if he did not cooperate with them. He was given a false identity by the cartel. Ultimately the lawyers were successful with their appeals.
On Saturday this man arrived home for Christmas with his family. Fifteen years ago, he languished on death row without hope. There was no one to plead his cause. He just happened to be sharing a cell with one of the Australians known as the Bali Nine who brought his case to the attention of a group of us who made five visits to that jail in October 2008.
On the day of his release, we gathered and prayed a blessing on him and a prayer of thanks for all those who had laboured so hard for his release. The release of one person from death row is a cause for celebration and an inspiration for us to continue agitating for the abolition of the death penalty which is neither just nor useful. Justice must not kill.
This Christmas we hold in our hearts the suffering of Gaza and of Israel. I hold dear the birth of my newest grandniece and the freedom of the man who has walked free in Cilacap. May all of us hold close one who is newborn and one who has newfound freedom as we pray:
A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is born for us.
The LORD is king; let the earth rejoice;
let the many isles be glad.
The heavens proclaim his justice,
and all peoples see his glory.
A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is born for us.
Light dawns for the just;
and gladness, for the upright of heart.
Be glad in the LORD, you just,
and give thanks to his holy name.
A light will shine on us this day: the Lord is born for us.[5]
Wishing you and your loved ones a very happy and blessed Christmas in our hope charged, troubled world.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is the Rector of Newman College, Melbourne, and the former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023.
[1] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina Series (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), p. 53.
[2] See https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-12-19/scant-glad-tidings-this-christmas-for-palestinian-christians
[3] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSzaG9EmjVM
[4] David Neuhaus, ‘What can I say?’, The Tablet, 23/30 December 2023, p.8.
[5] This is my last homily as Rector of Newman College. I will resume the publication of homilies on this website later in January when I move to Queensland.
