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J.R.R. Tolkien, probably better known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings than as a theologian, once observed that the Gospel both begins and ends in joy. The Gospel begins with the joy of Jesus’ birth and ends with the joy of the resurrection. In between is found the full story of Christ’s life on earth. That joy embraces all that is human - in Jesus and in us: growing up, family, work relationships, Jesus’ teaching and healing, his rejection and betrayal, his suffering and death. That full range of human experience is permeated and held close in the joy of the beginning and the end.
We, each one of us, come to the celebration of Christmas in our own way and from our own lives. Many, perhaps most of us, come full of happiness, grateful for the gift of family and friends, immersed in the warmth of Christmas. Others of us come in loneliness or burdened by worry, financial hardship, illness or conscious of the absence of someone we love. We come in need of the healing and hope of Christmas.
However it is that we come to this Feast, we can be touched by God’s joy and embraced by God’s love brought to us in Christ. In Jesus, God chose to be close to us, to be one with us. He chose to touch us with a human touch. God chose to know - from the inside - the full range of our experience: our hopes and desires, our fears and sorrows, our joys and our fulfillment, to begin with us in the joy of birth and to open for us the joy of life beyond human dying.
God continues to touch us, no longer the Child of Bethlehem who lived in time, but in the Christ alive and present in power and glory and love. He is present in and among us, His faithful people, the Body of Christ. In our very human touch, Christ is with us. When we embrace one another in love, when we speak a word of forgiveness and healing, when we reach out to help another in need, Christ loves, forgives, heals and cares through us.
The birth of Christ we remember in joy today is joy and peace and healing as we remember Christ each and every day. Tolkien was right: the Gospel, the good news, begins and ends in joy and embraces everything, all that is human, in between.
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