Except for the flowers still in church, most of the rest of the world has moved on from Christmas. In fact, in the world around us, Christmas ends when the Christmas shopping season ends. Decorations and displays in stores serve to put us in the move to buy. But for Christians, Christmas is not just a holiday; it is not just an event; it is about a new relationship that God formed with the world on Christmas day. To use St. Paul’s language, when God came to earth, a marriage was formed between heaven and earth.

 As I look back to my childhood, it is hard to remember many of the presents I received for Christmas. I do have some old color slides of Christmases in the 1950’s and 1960’s, slides which I took down from the shelf and looked at a year ago. I was shocked to discover that when I was about seven, somebody gave me a toy cigarette machine. What a clever marketing tool from the cigarette companies: train seven year olds to imitate their dads, who would buy a pack of cigarettes from the big cigarette machines once found in many diners and restaurants.

What I do remember, though, without any help from old slides, are the people who would gather every year at our home in Memphis:  my cousins, my grandparents, my uncle and aunt, my great uncles, and a few neighbors, and shirttail relatives. My great uncle Lawrence was an attorney and the first Public Defender in Memphis. My great uncle Ed, a lifelong bachelor, had worked as a bookkeeper for a paint company. He was a man of set rituals. Every day he came home for lunch and ate one large bowl of alphabet soup (He made an exception for Christmas). My grandmother’s cousin, Joe Latura, had a famous relative. He was the nephew of Wild Bill Latura, a bootlegger, who had murdered six people. Wild Bill was shot by a cop when he threatened to kill everyone who worked for the local newspaper because they had referred to him as Wild Bill. He was a man so unpopular that after he had been shot, no one would touch the body for thirty minutes. They wanted to make sure he was dead before the ambulance brought him to the hospital. All of those folks, save one cousin, are long deceased. I don’t remember the gifts; I don’t remember the food; but I sure remember the people.

It is interesting how each of the four Gospel treats the miracle of God coming to earth differently. In St. Mark’s Gospel, Jesus simply appears as an adult. Matthew and Luke each contribute different scenes to what we often call “The Story of Christmas.” John takes a very different approach. John is not so much interested in telling us what happened as telling us the meaning of what happened. The child born in Bethlehem was none other than a manifestation of the creative power of God, the Word that had created heaven and earth. He wants us to understand that Jesus was so much more than a great teacher or ethicist or prophet. He was truly God. He declares, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,“ or, literally, “put his tent among us.” John’s Christmas story is a bold statement that God is not a remote being, but a God who is present to us. God’s presence endures, not just in memory but in day to day reality: whenever we gather to pray; whenever we gather for Eucharist; whenever we look into the face of a person in need.

Today’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord inaugurates a new phrase of Emmanuel (God with us). Jesus is now publicly revealed as God’s Beloved Son, and he prepares through fasting and prayer to begin his public ministry. This Jesus would no longer be the lovable infant of Christmas or the self-confident twelve-year-old we met on the Feast of the Holy Family. This Jesus would ruffle some feathers, especially among the political and religious establishment. This Jesus would let us see that love of God and love of neighbor takes precedence over our religious rituals, our political preferences, our financial advantages, and our family loyalties. In all that Jesus said and did, St. John told us, we would be able to see the face of God.

So, while being a disciple of Christ can sometimes force us to make tough choices, we know that however we fail to live up to God’s hopes for us, God will never fold up his tent and cease to dwell among us. At our own baptism, which for most of us happened long before we had accomplished anything of note, God declared us his beloved daughter, his beloved son. That is our identity. While the love of the world is often conditional, the love of God is not. For God has also pitched his tent within our heart and our soul.

                                                                            Fr. Joe