“Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.”
Matthew 2:2
Christmas has come and gone for another year. The holiday music that filled our ears with joy for weeks is now hushed. It is the silence out of which a new year is being born.
The Christmas season came with lighted candles that have now all been extinguished. Lights have been put away. The Christmas tree and the evergreen garlands wait patiently by the curb to be taken to the landfill. The absence of decorations exposes a strange emptiness around the house. The warm festivities of what is called Christmas seem like only memories of the past.
We can never forget Christmas Eve. It’s a time when our hearts were renewed as we listened again to the Nativity story; vividly cast in our imaginations upon the hillsides near Bethlehem. Smelly shepherds caring for even smellier sheep; and as they tried to bed-down for the night, an angel interrupted their daily routine with a message in song.
Later those shepherds decided to go into town — to see for themselves what was going on. And they discovered a young family from Nazareth, an unmarried couple away from home with a newborn baby — his name was Jesus.
Matthew’s Gospel attempts to unfold the story about the birth of Jesus by reminding his readers that Jesus came to save the world. And he didn’t just come for some — but for all. Not for men only but also for women. Not for the perfect only, but for those whose lives bear the scars of unmentionable human pain. Not for the hometown crowd only, but for those on the other side of the tracks, the next town over or halfway around the world. Not for those who believe just like we do, but also for those who are struggling to believe anything at all or have lost their faith.
Christmas comes every year to remind us that it’s all about Jesus, the Christ child. And this is why the star came and rested over the place where the infant Jesus was born. It keeps our eyes on the star. So, gaze at it. Focus on it. Fix it firmly in your mind.
As the New Year is being born, let it be a time when we all will discover that the “points of the star” will stretch themselves into the form of a “cross.” And the star will no longer rest over the place of where the child lay but will come and rest over our lives — and the world we inhabit. For this is the meaning of Christmas.
Rev. Marion J. Miller is senior pastor of Wesley United Methodist Church, Jeffersonville. Contact her at 812-283-3747 or wesley1201@sbcglobal.net.
