Merry Christmas! This afternoon we heard those ancient and
beautiful words from the Prophet Isaiah:
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has
shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing,…. For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on
their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed, as on the day
of Midian.
Oh yes, that wonderful,
glorious, happy Day of Midian. ¿¿What
the heck is the day of Midian???
Well,
the Day of Midian has to
do with a battle. More than 1,000 years
before Christ, even before King David, so more than 3,000 years ago, Midian was
a neighboring Kingdom of the Israelites.
The Midianites were nomads. And
they were bullies. They would swoop in
on their camels, beat up the Israelites, take their crops, steal their sheep
and goats, make fun of their God, and generally make the Israelite’s life
miserable. The Israelites cried out to
God in their suffering, and God responded.
God raised up a leader, a hero, a judge.
A guy by the Name of GIDEON.
Gideon was reluctant to play the hero.
He took some convincing, but finally agreed to lead the people. Gideon sent out the call to arms and raised a
large army.
Gideon had 36,000 men.
For the time a BIG military force. With this huge army Gideon knew he could whip
the Medianites and kick their behinds.
He was all set to go when God called him and says, “Wait a minute. You have too many men. If you win with this large army you will
think you did it, but I am going to do it.
This is my show.” So God tells
Gideon to tell the army, “anyone afraid, go home”. 26,000 guys pick up and leave. They could see this was not going to be any
picnic.
So only 10,000
left. But Gideon thinks he still has
enough to win the battle. God calls
Gideon again. Guess what? “You still got too many guys. If you win the
battle with this army you will think you
did it. You will take the credit. But I
- GOD - will provide the victory.” So
God tells Gideon to take the army down to the stream to drink. Those who kneel down to drink the water, send
home. Those who scoop up the water and
drink standing, keep. Only 300 are
left. BUT with these 300 Gideon wins the
victory. Not only does he beat the
Midianites, he whips them thoroughly.
Kicks their keesters. It is a
great story, and you can read it all in the Book of Judges, chapters 6 through
8.
Now the point about the Day of Midian
is not only that it is a great victory for the Israelites, but more importantly
is that God wins the
victory. This is God’s doing, not
Gideon’s, not the Israelites, not mankind’s, not humanity’s doing, but
God’s.
And that is
what we are celebrating here tonight. As
on the Day of Midian, God does the heavy
lifting at Christmas. God will provide
the victory. But this time the victory
is not over Midian, or any other earthly kingdom or country, but over the much
more insidious enemy, over sin.
As St Paul tells us in the second
reading tonight: “Beloved, The grace of God has appeared, saving all ...” This is God’s doing, God’s free gift, God’s
grace.
Look at the Christmas story. Next to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus
this is the most important event in all history. But this is not the work of the EMPEROR. Caesar is in far off Rome, issuing decrees,
totally unconcerned and unaware of what is happening on that momentous first
Christmas night. This is not the work of
any human government, or the U.N. or any political party, no N.G.O nor any
human power. NO HUMAN POWER does this.
There is no Roman LEGION
involved in accomplishing the First Christmas.
No military power, no army, no bombs or guns or swords or drones flying
over head, no ICBMs or stealth bombers or submarines or any weapons at all involved
in this victory. NO MILITARY POWER does
this.
There is no GOLD, no silver,
no money, no high finance, no banks, no riches involved in this wonder. Not a single financial consultant, investment
banker or hedge fund manager in the whole story! Rather there are a couple of poor peasants
who don’t even have the money to get into a motel, and a few lowly
shepherds. NO WEALTH does this.
There is no SCIENCE, no
academics, no professors, no scholarly bodies, no universities, no peer
reviewed journals, no high-tech, no whiz-bang gadgetry involved in this
victory. Nothing on the internet,
nothing in the cloud, no iPads or smart phones. Just a donkey and natural child-birth. Pretty
low tech. NO TECHNOLOGY or SCIENCE does
this.
None of the things that we humans
pride ourselves on are involved in this accomplishment: no political power, no military might, no
economic power, no scientific or technical achievement. None of that stuff.
This is all God’s doing. A baby is born,
and EVERYTHING is changed. The darkness
is over. The long reign of sin is ended.
Salvation and the fullness of life will be offered to all. And it is all God’s doing. Because God loves us. What there is in this story is lots and lots
of LOVE.
For the birth
of the Christ child is “the appearance of the glory of our great God and
savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness
and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.”
Now that is quite an
accomplishment! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment