CELEBRATING INCARNATION

I wanted to share with you a slice of the fascinating history of why we celebrate Christmas the way we have as followers of Christ. It’s written by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan theologian.     Merry Christmas with Love!   Pastor Brent

In the first 1200 years of Christianity, the central feast or celebration was Easter, with the high holy days of Holy Week leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. But in the thirteenth century, Francis of Assisi entered the scene. He intuited that we didn’t need to wait for God to love us through the cross and resurrection. Francis believed the whole thing started with incarnate love. He popularized what we now take for granted as Christmas, which for many became the major Christian feast. Christmas is the Feast of the Incarnation when we celebrate God taking human form in the birth of Jesus. Francis realized that since God had become flesh—taken on materiality, physicality, humanity—then we didn’t have to wait for Good Friday and Easter to “solve the problem” of human sin: the problem was solved from the beginning. It makes sense that Christmas became the great celebratory feast of Christians because it basically says that it’s good to be human, it’s good to be on this Earth, it’s good to have a body, it’s good to have emotions. We don’t need to be ashamed of any of it! God loves matter and physicality. With that insight, it’s no wonder Francis went wild over Christmas. (I do too—my little house is filled with candles at Christmastime.) Francis believed that trees should be decorated with lights to show their true status as God’s creations, and that’s exactly what we still do eight hundred years later. And there’s more: when we speak of Advent or preparing for Christmas, we’re not just talking about waiting for the little baby Jesus to be born. That already happened two thousand years ago. In fact, we’re welcoming the Christ that is forever being born (incarnating) in the human soul and into history. The gifts of incarnation just keep coming! Perhaps this is enlightenment.  “The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.” John 1:9 (NLT)