Based on the Gospel reading: Luke 2:1-21

Christmas is a time for joyous celebration. There is no doubt about that. It is not something which needs a whole lot of discussion. We see celebrations going on all around us. There are many homes in Canada where no prayers are offered at Christmas, no carols are sung, no nativity stories are told. But there can be few homes where Christmas is not seen as a time for celebration. The secular world may reject our faith perspective. But who can reject the feelings of joy and happiness surrounding Christmas? Who can reject the warm fuzzy image of the baby in the manger?

Happily, such images transform society. And that is good, even if it lasts only a short while. We greet each other in a different way. It is a time to give. It is a time of outreach to the poor and to those in need. The celebration is everywhere. One cannot miss it.

But we Christians seek a deeper meaning in our celebration. Without the truth of the Gospel story the lights, the trees, the carols, the gift giving, all become something else – something very fine, something well intentioned and desirable, but something quite empty. For Christmas has become secularized in a way that leaves out the most important, and the best part.

A few years ago I made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Each place that I visited brought a perspective to my faith that is only possible when one begins to live it out. Our journey started in Galilee, the site of Jesus' preaching ministry. I got a sense as we visited the sites that I was walking where my Lord had walked. Scenes from Scripture came to life as we travelled from place to place.

The busyness of Jerusalem was overwhelming. But what a bittersweet experience it was to participate in a Eucharist in the Upper Room, to sit in that beautiful garden of Gethsemane under ancient olive trees, to walk the Via Dolorosa, the way of the cross, to stoop down and enter into the tomb. To breathe in its emptiness.

And so I looked forward with enthusiasm to our trip to Bethlehem. There, I was certain, I would feel that sense of joy that is at the heart of Christmas. We had a day on our own away from the tour. Some Nazarenes whom I met on the tour invited me to spend the day with a friend of theirs in Bethlehem. We would, they assured me, get a completely different perspective on the Holy Land.

I had not expected Bethlehem to be so close to Jerusalem. It is only a few minutes drive. As we drove out of the city, our host stopped the car and pointed across to a terraced hillside. There was a town nestled amongst the hills. "That is Bethlehem!" He explained. Far away on a distant hillside were sheep and shepherds. Yes! This was just as I had imagined it. This was going to be a wonderful experience.

We got back into the car and headed up into the hillside. He turned off the main road. The landscape suddenly became quite desolate. We kept driving. There were tents and ramshackle houses. Poorly dressed little children came out along the roadside begging us to stop, holding out their hands to us. "This," he explained to us, "you must not talk about to anyone on your tour. You must not say where you have been. If they ever find out, you will have real problems with customs. They might detain you." For this was a Palestinian refugee camp. We tourists were not supposed to know that it existed. We visited for a while with a Palestinian family who lived in the refugee camp. It was an eye opening experience for me.

Then we went on to Bethlehem. It too was not at all what I expected. In the Manger Square in front of the church, people offered us crèche scenes carved from olivewood. There was mother-of-pearl jewellery to be bought. There were post cards and any number of articles for sale. Then we stepped through a low door into a Greek Orthodox Church. There were hundreds of candles lit. There was incense burning. There were beautiful icons and rich ornamentation. We went down a narrow hallway and stooped to enter into a cave-like room. It certainly bore only the remotest resemblance to a stable. On the spot where "Jesus was born" was an ornate star. Try as I might I could not capture in the gaudiness of this tourist trap any sense of the joy of Emmanuel, God-with-us.

On the way back to Jerusalem I asked if we could stop again so that we could look back on the hillside. By this time it was dark. Stars were shining in a bright sky. The moon was full and bright. The air had a slight chill to it. I felt what I can only describe as a deep sense of joy. It was not that bubbly effervescent party kind of joy that the secular world seems to adopt at this time. It was an inner joy that rose up from the depth of my being, a joy that rose from my faith in God.

That is the kind of joy that we try to capture at Christmas. It is a joy that comes from a personal trust in God and from the knowledge that God has come into the world. God has become one of us, a real flesh and blood person who lived and walked and died as one of us.

God's will is to be present with us in all that we do, to be Emmanuel, to be God with us, to be born in us. May we know God's presence in our lives. May God be born in you this day. Amen.