A few years ago, I was reading a review of children’s storybooks about Christmas. The reviewer said, basically, that the Christmas story has everything. Here’s what he wrote: “In terms of plain narrative, the Nativity story is hard to beat. It has everything: A journey, a baby, a mass murderer, angels, animals, refugees, violence and tenderness, and big - really big - special effects.”

But the Nativity isn’t just a wonderful story. It’s a story that tells us Who it is that’s being born. We know the rest of the story, the story behind the story.

This tiny child, helpless, born in total poverty, born in a cave and laid in a stone feeding trough for animals, a feeding trough for donkeys, sheep, and goats, that Child, one of our hymns says, is the pro-aionion logon theon, the pre-eternal Word of God. We’ve been singing that hymn for weeks now in preparation for tonight and tomorrow morning’s celebration of Christmas. Let’s stop for a moment: what does the phrase pre-eternal mean? It means that before the universe was created, before time itself even existed – THAT Word of God whom John’s Gospel says was WITH God and IS God became a human being in the womb of Mary, a teen-aged Jewish girl.

St. Paul wrote in his Letter to the Colossians 1:15-17:

This newborn Child, this baby, carried in the womb of Mary for nine months “is the icon of the invisible God. (YES, the word icon is used in the Bible!) In Him – in THIS infant – ALL things in heaven and earth were created. ALL things have been created through Him and for Him. He Himself is before all things (that’s why we sing pro-aionion) In Him all things hold together.”

This Child Jesus is the invasion of the creation by its Creator.

In these few verses, St. Paul says that this Child Jesus is the one thru whom the entire universe was created: billions of galaxies, countless trillions of stars – and that’s only what we know of.

The Word of God who IS God, the opening lines of John’s Gospel tells us, who existed before the universe existed, and therefore outside of time and space, who is completely “incomprehensible” as we say in the Liturgy, is now one of us, a child born just like us, coming to us, seeking us out on our own terms, coming to rescue us. To save us.

Save us from what?

• From ourselves.
• From our darkness.
• From our foolishness.
• From our stupidity.
• From our fear.
• From our greed, from our hatred of one another, our violence,
• From sin, corruption – and even from death.

The world at the time of the Lord Jesus was not unlike the world we live in today. Violent, fear driven, hate driven, wars and rumors of wars. But Christ has come to take our fallen, broken humanity into His divinity, to assume in Himself everything that’s wrong with us, to heal us, to rescue us, to save us and to show us another way. This new way is the way of love.

Because God has become human in the Lord Jesus, we are called to be like Him in every possible way, here and now, to allow Him to shape our character according to His character. We have a word for this in our Church – Theosis - becoming like God in so far as that’s possible for a human being.

• God is loving – and we are called to be loving.
• God is compassionate – and we are called to be compassionate.
• God is forgiving – and we are called to be forgiving.
• God is kind, gracious, merciful, and true –and we are called to be kind, gracious, merciful, and true. Within our families, with our neighbors and even with our enemies.

Christmas is the announcement that this is possible!

The saints are proof of this, that this new way of life is real, that we can live in a totally different way than we had ever dreamed of living before. That we can be filled with mercy, compassion, and love like a Mother Theresa of Calcutta. That we can be so filled with the light of Jesus, that a young blind girl can meet a man like St. Nektarios of Aegina and say to him, even though she is blind, that he is so full of light, she can see the light of Jesus shining in him and all around him. Do you remember that scene from the movie, Man of God? Every saint is a point of blazing light in a world that often prefers darkness to the light of Christ.

How does this happen? How do we change? How can this new life, the life of the Christ Child, be ours? St. Ambrose of Milan wrote more than 1500 years ago that if we are truly to understand the meaning of Christmas our hearts must become a manger in which the Christ Child can be laid.

For Christians, Christ was not simply born a long, long time ago. And coming to Church at Christmas isn’t just about hearing the Christmas story. Christmas is about letting Christ be born in our hearts – today! And then living from His presence within us, every. single. day. This means that for believers, Christmas is NOT so much about P-R-E-S-E-N-T-S. It’s about P-R-E-S-E-N-C-E and the difference that His Presence makes in our lives. The Lord Jesus is EMMANUEL, the Gospel says: God-with-us.We are never alone. God is now with us forever. And if we allow Him to be born in our hearts, He will change us in ways we could never have imagined before.

Christ is Born! Glorify Him!