We had quite a bit of snow, blowing and drifting with dropping temperatures on Christmas morning, here in the foothills of the Adirondacks. Here's my homily for Christmas on The Crib and the Cross.
Once upon a time there was a great tall tree on a hill in the woods. He stood there all daylong, dreaming of what he might become. Some days he would dream that he would be carved into a great treasure chest, filled with gold, silver and precious gems and decorated on every side so that everyone would admire his beauty. On other days he would dream that he would form the massive timbers of a mighty ship which would carry kings and queens across the oceans to the four corners of the world. He wanted to be great and powerful.
One day a woodsman came and looked up at the tree and cut it down, making it into
neither a beautiful chest nor a mighty ship, but a feed box for the animals. He placed it a barn and filled it with hay. The tree was very sad, because he would never be great nor powerful.
Then one day, a man and woman came to the barn. She gave birth and placed her baby in the feed box, because there was no place for them in the inn. But then a strange thing happened, as the whole manger seemed to fill with light, and there were angels and a star above the baby’s crib, and shepherds and wise men came to worship the child, not like a baby in a crib, but like a King upon the finest royal throne.
But soon they all left and the memory of that wondrous night began to fade, and over the years the barn grew old and the crib grew rickety, until it was sold for scrap to some Roman soldiers and carted off to Jerusalem, where it was made into a Cross for the execution of criminals.
That was the cross they placed on the shoulders of a man who was made to carry the
it, a man who who seemed to glow with the same light as the baby so long ago in Bethlehem. The man fell three times and was finally affixed to the wood with nails which dug deeply. The people jeered at him and mocked him, while only his mother and a younger man stood weeping at his feet, until the man looked to heaven, prayed and breathed his last.
And three days later, when the sun rose, so did the man rise from the dead, and the tree stood taller and prouder than he had since he lived in the forest, for he knew now that now he was, indeed, great and powerful, having been made little and weak. He had never been a chest for earthly treasures nor a ship for powerful princes, but he had been a throne for the Son of God, as his crib and his cross.
And what about us? Do we want to be rich and powerful? Do we want the whole world to acclaim our beauty and our strength? Or am we willing to be a throne for the Son of God, making our hands ready to receive him in Holy Communion, making our hearts pure enough to be his manger and the sacrifices of our lives true enough to walk with him to Calvary? Are we willing to be a throne for him: a crib and a cross.
For the secret is in that old Appalachian Christmas carol:
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
Why Jesus our Savior
Did come for to die
For poor ordinary people
Like you and like I
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
Jesus was born a little baby in that crib, to come for to die,
For ordinary people like you and like I.
He came for to die.
For if you look really close at that manger, just behind the wood of the crib you will see a shadow of the wood of his cross.
Behind that little baby, a shadow of a man, stripped of his garments and nailed to a tree because he loved us.
Behind that Woman who kneels by his crib, a shadow of the sorrowful mother, weeping by his cross.
Behind those wise men who call him ‘The King of the Jews’ a shadow of the plaque that will be nailed above his head.
And behind his little body that sleeps his first sleep tonight, silently in his Mother’s arms, a shadow of the sleep of death we will see in Most-Blessed Pieta.
And behind that angel is a morning star, rising in glory, reminding us that someday that child will rise from the dead, destroying all death and sin, that it might never ever be dark again.
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son in a crib and on a cross for our salvation.’
