Christmas - 2007

Very often when I was growing up in my family with five siblings, one of my brothers or sisters – never me! – would nag my parents with the whining questions, “When are we going to have lunch?” or “What are we going to have for dinner?”

These questions would often draw forth from my mother the exasperated observation – “All you people ever think about is food!”

I was calling to mind this memory today as I was thinking about the fact that the name “ Bethlehem ” which we associate so closely with our celebration of Christmas is a name which means “house of bread.”

How interesting is it that Jesus would be born in a town whose name reminds us of food!

At Christmas, we remember that no matter how old or how young we are, we are all ultimately and always children of God.

And like children, one of our greatest needs is to be fed.

Christmas is many things to many people – today we might think of how we are fed by God by what happened so long ago in the town of Bethlehem, in the place whose name means “house of bread.”

We might begin our reflection on the event that took place at Bethlehem – the House of Bread – by recalling that Jesus was placed in a manger at the time of his birth, the manger that was the place where the animals came to eat their food.

Jesus, the newborn Son of God may have been placed in a manger to remind us that God is the origin and the sustainer of all things in the world of creation – the earth, the animals, and even the physical life that we enjoy.

At the House of Bread, in Bethlehem , angels sang “Hosanna in the highest” and shepherds came and worshipped and adored the newborn Son of God – a reminder of how we sing carols of praise and worship and venerate images of a manger scene and Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child at Christmas.

But the life of worship and adoration was not a permanent condition for Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the angels or the shepherds.

The shepherds returned to their work, angels came to Joseph in dreams with words of warning, Mary pondered the events that took place in the life of Jesus, and Jesus himself would ultimately become the Bread of Life for the world.

We might think of our parish church as a House of Bread, not only on this Christmas night or in this Christmas season, but each and every day of the year.

Here we come to worship and adore our God, not in images and statues, but in the Eucharist, the Bread of Life, which we reverence as the presence of Christ in our midst and which we receive in our lives so that each one of us can become a House of Bread, a bearer of the Body of Christ in the midst of our world, and perhaps even a person transformed into the image of the one whose Body and Blood we share.

Like the shepherds, we often leave this church, our House of Bread, to return to our world of work and the daily tasks for which we are responsible each day.

Like the angels, we announce good news to others – sharing with others our accounts of the good things God has done for us.

Like Joseph, we are called to be guardians of the children of God in our midst, protecting the lives and the dignity of those who are threatened, ignored, or neglected in our world – the unborn, the immigrant, the elderly, and those who are poor.

Like Mary, we are called to be people of prayer – pondering the Word of God and observing the example Jesus has set for us.

And like Jesus we are meant to make what is divine and human one within our own lives – thanking God for the gift of our human nature and for the opportunity to share in his divinity through our Baptism and our sharing in the gift of the Eucharist.

Bethlehem was the first House of Bread, welcoming into our world the one who to this day feeds us with his Word, with the sacraments, with his example, with his healing and forgiveness.

Our church is our House of Bread where we meet this Savior in Word and Sacrament, in one another and in the ones we serve both inside and outside the walls of this house.

And each one of us is meant to be a House of Bread, a bearer of the one who nourishes and sustains us with his love, as we share God's life and love with all we meet.

It might not be a bad thing for us to always be thinking of food – if the food we are thinking of is the nourishment, the grace, the peace, and the love that sustain our lives, gifts which were given in abundance 2000 years ago and which are renewed every day of our lives by the Savior who was born in Bethlehem, the town whose name means “House of Bread.”

Thomas P. Ferguson
December 25, 2007