God stands with us
Christmas means that you never have to be alone again
Homily preached by the Rev. Jonathan A. Mitchican at Epiphany of the Lord Catholic Church in Katy, TX on Tuesday, December 24, 2024 - The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
(Matthew 1:18-25)
Anyone who spends more than five minutes with me knows that I’m a big fan of Star Trek. Every year when the school where I minister does its ugly Christmas sweater day, I proudly wear my sweater that says “Trek the Halls!” There are many things I love about Star Trek, but one of them is the way it displays the value of friendship. There have been some truly amazing friendships in Star Trek, going all the way back to the original series in the 1960s and the friendship between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. In the 1980s, there was a series of three Star Trek films starting with The Wrath of Khan and ending with The Voyage Home that dealt with the death and subsequent coming back to life of Spock. Kirk risks everything to rescue him, stealing a ship, risking his career and his life, and suffering tremendous losses along the way. At the end of The Voyage Home, Kirk and the rest of the crew are brought before a tribunal to be punished for what they did. When they arrive, Spock walks out and stands with them. The president says to Spock, “You do not stand accused.” But Spock replies, “I stand with my shipmates.”
It’s amazing how much courage and strength we gain from someone who’s willing to stand with us as we face danger. My great uncle Jack was in a submarine during World War II that was bombed by the Japanese. More than once, the crew thought they weren’t going to make it out alive. Years ago, my dad shared with me some of Uncle Jack’s journals from that experience. At one point, they all shared a drink together as they faced almost certain death. I don’t think it was just the alcohol that took the edge off. The fact that they were in it together, facing it together, somehow made the unbearable burden one they could shoulder.
Tonight we begin our celebration of Christmas. The angel came to Joseph and told him not to fear because the child Mary was carrying in her womb was none other than the Son of God, and he should name him Jesus, which means God saves. But then Matthew tells us that this would fulfill the prophecy from many centuries earlier in Isaiah which said that the Virgin would give birth to a Son who shall be named Emmanuel, which means God is with us. I used to puzzle over this when I was a kid. How could naming Him Jesus fulfill the prophecy to name Him Emmanuel? I wondered for a while if maybe Emmanuel was Jesus’ middle name, though I knew that couldn’t be true either since I’d heard far too many adults refer to Him as Jesus H. Christ. But what I came to learn later is that the reason calling Him Jesus fulfills the prophecy to call Him Emmanuel is because those two ideas are intrinsically linked. In Jesus, God saves us, and He saves us by being with us. He becomes one of us. We’re His friends, His shipmates if you like. He isn’t accused, but He stands with us. And standing with us makes all the difference.
All the surveys and studies tell us that we’re living through an epidemic of loneliness. One in four adults feels isolated and alone. Rates of anxiety and depression are higher than they’ve ever been, especially among young people. And wrapped up with that is the persistent feeling that nobody gets it, nobody can relate to us, that as the late, great Tom Petty sang, “You don’t know how it feels to be me.” Social media connects us to one another, and yet the algorithms that run such things only serve to isolate us more and more. We feel like we’re not good enough, we’re not popular or pretty or perfect like the people we see online. And many of us, as we age, also struggle with difficult relationships and estrangement from family. All of this makes it hard to face the world. We carry the burden, the weight of our sins and our wounds, and there’s no one to carry it with us. We feel like we’ll be crushed by it.
But Christmas can change all of that. The magic of Christmas isn’t in the candy canes, the presents, or the lights on the tree - the magic of Christmas is God coming to be with us, God choosing to become one of us. Jesus could’ve simply appeared to us, like one of the ghosts of Christmas who appear to Ebenezer Scrooge. But instead He’s born into the world like we all are. He chooses to have a mother and a foster father, to have cousins and aunts and uncles. He chooses to be a baby like we all once were, to be dependent on others for survival. He chooses to be hot and cold, to be hungry and thirsty, to have to get up and pee in the middle of the night. He chooses to be one of us - not just to appear to be one of us but to really be one of us - with all of our weaknesses and challenges. Christmas is God coming to be with you, choosing to take on the things that you’ve taken on, to face the difficulties that you face, and to make sure that you will never, ever have to be alone. Nothing about you scares Him off. He won’t abandon you, not even for a second. When you face trials in your life, He’ll stand with you. He’ll give you the strength and the courage to keep standing. And if you fall down, He’ll pick you up and carry you. Jesus is your Emmanuel. Christmas means that you never have to be alone again. God is with you, now and forever.