The First Sunday after Christmas Day
The Church of the Good Shepherd
Scranton, Pennsylvania
December 26, 2004
I was eight years old when my youngest sister was born in the summer of 1979. That July my Grandmother Bergman came east from Illinois to take care of my siblings and me while my mother gave birth and cared for the new baby. For the weeks she was with us my grandma stayed at our house morning, noon, and night. This meant we had access to her and she was able to keep an eye on us, but more importantly, her presence allowed her to learn things she would not have otherwise observed had she visited for only a couple hours a day. One of the things she learned was that my seven-year-old sister, having just completed first grade, still could not read. Grandma had come to distract her four oldest grandchildren so my mother could take care of the fifth, but at the time during the school year she worked as a special education teacher. So in between feeding us, taking us to the movies, and finding other ways to keep us occupied she spent hours on the living room sofa with my sister, Becky, teaching her to read. My sister would not have received this great gift had my grandmother not been willing to dwell among us, to make what sacrifices were necessary to give what we couldn’t acquire on our own.
On Friday I spoke to you about what God has done for us in the Incarnation, how Jesus is for us our example, our strength, and our purity. Yesterday at the Christmas Day Mass I explained how we as followers of Christ are then obligated to be examples to others, to be their strength in times of need, and to call them to lives of holiness whereby they might be wholly transformed. I focused on the necessity of being present with others in order to accomplish these great purposes, that the starting point to any serious ministry is the willingness to be with those to whom we minister. But as we all know, just being around, in the same town, in the same house, in the same room, does not automatically mean we will have a transforming effect upon those in need. Usually much more than simple presence is needed, so today I will talk about how we can do the most effective missions, missionary work that not only addresses the needs of the needy but also effects the transformation God desires in each of His children.
Once we apprehend what God has done in sending His Son Jesus Christ to dwell among us we can begin to understand how we can be successful missionaries. Our Gospel this morning tells us that, “...the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”, the Word who “...was in the beginning with God”, through whom “...all things were made”. Understand that this is God Himself side by side with the children of men. Herein we see the first ‘new’ thing about the New Covenant. God is not distant, behind a veil, giving us instructions from afar but never stooping to demonstrate how to fulfill His commands. In the Incarnation God is with us, in plain sight, showing us that what He asks us to do can in fact be done. Moreover, in the Incarnation God in Jesus Christ shows us that He will help us fulfill our calling to love our Heavenly Father and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
An easy way to understand this distinction, the difference between the Old and the New, is to remember how sympathy and empathy differ. In the Old Testament God is wholly sympathetic to His people’s plight, pleading with them, calling again and again for them to return to His ways, lest the life He desires for Israel be extinguished by their pursuit of death. Not only does He send Moses to give the Law, He sends prophet after prophet, all of whose words are ignored by the people to whom they are addressed. God appears to His servants, performs miracles, hardens hearts, and smites those who deny His will. But all of this is done from the light inaccessible. God and His acts are shrouded in mystery, kept at arm’s length, a barrier that keeps God’s sympathy from seeming real to so many.
In the Incarnation God becomes empathetic. In Christ our contact with Him is not limited to a brief vision, nor does He communicate mostly through certain faithful individuals. Instead God is with us at every hour, delivering His Wisdom face to face. In Christ God literally walks the road we must travel, becomes intimately acquainted with the pain that is the consequence of our sin, and finally He suffers with us as we have suffered in a way that a King sitting upon His throne could never do. To empathize is to enter into the pain of another in order that those hurting may bear a lighter burden and be comforted, and in the Incarnation God becomes empathy’s Master. We know that God loves us because we know that He has been present in our every circumstance, no matter how terrible, no matter how miserable. He has not kept our suffering at a distance, observing our trials while remaining stress-free. No, in the Incarnation that suffering has become His own.
To be effective missionaries we too must enter into the pain of those who suffer, if the needy are to know that we love them as much as God in Christ has loved us. Too much of Christian mission work is undertaken for only eight hours a day. Christians commute from where they feel safe into the places where they perceive a need for the ministrations they offer. And at the end of the day they return to the domicile of their choosing, fully removed from the stress-inducing poverty, conflict, and despair they encounter for a third of each week day. Our celebration of Christmas should cause us to ponder, “What if Jesus did that? What if Jesus were only available to us from nine to five during the workweek? What if He sought to distance Himself from our pain two-thirds of every day, and were inaccessible to us every weekend?” How many of us could say with a straight face that we know He loves us?
Consider our own families. Would we really have felt loved by our parents if they had left every evening to sleep somewhere more comfortable than the house in which we resided? How would our relatives know we loved them if we never came to visit or made our visits so brief we could exchange niceties and nothing more? St. Paul reminds us in our Epistle today that we are God’s sons, that we are part of God’s family through our relationship to God’s Son. That is, we know we are loved as God’s own children because of what Jesus has done for us, because of how Jesus has been with us through good times and bad. How can our brothers in need know we love them as brothers if we never deign to enter into their own circumstances, if we are never present to them as Jesus has been present to us?
My point is that sympathy will never change the world. Feeling bad for the tribulations of another is a far less sacrificial love than entering into those same tribulations. Empathy is the more perfect love, for it requires the greater sacrifice, a sacrifice akin to what Jesus offered for us. For instance, it is one thing to visit the sick in the hospital, but quite another to sit for days by someone who is dying, to allow a part of yourself to die with that person. It is one thing to baby-sit your children, and again quite another to raise them as God’s precious vessels of life, to actually know them and be an example to them because you have given them your time and your presence. It is one thing to give a homeless man a coat, but quite another to provide for him, to make the effort necessary to teach him how to virtuously get that coat himself. To be empathetic we must give 100 percent of ourselves, must be willing to stop counting the cost and begin concentrating upon the gifts we have to offer. Our time, our talents, and our treasures are precious commodities that can be used to much better ends than our self- indulgence, and only when we are prepared to give them all away will we be of the orientation necessary to be successful missionaries. That is, if we hope to demonstrate the love of Christ, if we hope by Jesus’ aid to effect a transformation in our needy brothers, the people to whom we go need to see us making sacrifices along the same lines as Jesus’ own. That sacrifice entails entering into people’s pain, getting to know them, as only one who is empathetically present is able.
Like missionaries of old modern Christians need to begin to consider living amongst the people they desire to serve. Not only will such a sacrifice demonstrate that these needy souls are worthy of the salvation God desires for them, devout Christians will be able to offer them the means of grace that have sustained the Church throughout her two millennia of mission work. That is, by our presence we can offer them the necessities of life, (food, clothing, and shelter), we can offer our earnest friendship, but most importantly, we can share with them the sacraments that sustain us day-by-day and week-by-week.
In the sacraments we receive the presence of Christ that He promised to us before His Ascension to heaven. In the sacraments we have an example of sacrifice, the strength we need, and the purification that keeps us striving for a life of holiness. That is, we have Jesus Himself. Attempting to do mission work from afar, without ready access to the ministrations of Christ’s Church, is essentially an attempt to do mission work for Jesus without Jesus being there. The reason so many twentieth century social welfare programs have failed is that their initiators forgot they are called to represent Christ to those in need and they tried to address people’s welfare without Jesus by their side. If we want to succeed in the twenty-first century we will have to be Jesus to the needy while not forgetting to invite Jesus to our work. We can’t do it on our own, and the sacramental life is the most valuable tool at our disposal, for it enables Jesus to be with us as we seek strength to be with the lost.
When we make the problems of the vulnerable our own problems we show people what Incarnational love is all about, dwelling among them as Christ dwelt among us. If we are to introduce people to Christ’s soul saving grace, they must learn to love others as Christ loved us. They cannot they learn this if they never see faithful Christians doing it. Therefore, identify the vulnerable about you and be present for them, seek them out and go to them, and do not stop at offering your sympathy. Empathize, as well. After all, being present in this way is what Jesus did for us, and through the Church He is present with us to give us the strength to continue His work.
But there’s more. Our work, Christ’s work, is not the end. The joy we sing about this Christmas season, the joy of a life in Christ, is not something we can grab. Rather, it is a gift, a gift to those who receive our Lord, the power that sustains us through our sacrifices, what encourages us to continue making sacrifices for His children. This joy is not only for this life. That joy can be ours eternally, if only we bear our cross as Christ has borne His, if we be with our neighbor as Jesus has dwelt among us.