It’s Christmas morning and my husband and I have just had our Christmas breakfast of ice cream sundaes. That’s right, ice cream sundaes. I don’t know that this would surprise Jesus, though I’m certain it may surprise you as readers.
Years ago, during my first marriage, we had begun a tradition of having a “junk food extravaganza” on Christmas Eve. It has stuck with my daughter and I and has been passed on to my current wonderful husband. He chose to add the sundaes to this year’s festivities.
Of course, while a meal of junk food sounds wonderful, our eyes are almost always bigger than our stomachs. So, we decided to breakfast on sundaes.
Why is it that Christmas is for most of us, pastors included, a day of conspicuous consumption? The Christmas event belies the festival of consumerism we have corrupted it into.
The story begins with scandal. A teenaged girl, betrothed to another man, is pregnant. Her story: she has been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and conceived a child from God.
Joseph, her betrothed, had every right to present her with a bill of divorce and to have her stoned for adultery. In Matthew’s gospel, Joseph receives a visitation from the angel and is convinced to raise the child as his own.
What is striking to me is God’s choice to enter the world as a child of scandal, a bastard to put it bluntly. Yet it is this very decision that bears witness to the fact that God loves each of us, the very least, the despised, the unloved, the fatherless.
What if we chose today to celebrate the coming of Christ into the world by loving those we have chosen to despise? Wouldn’t that surprise Jesus? Wouldn’t that honor God?
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