Brief synopsis of the readings: As is my tradition I’m using the readings from Mass During the Night (previously called Midnight Mass). Christmas gives us different readings for the vigil mass, the mass at dawn and mass during the day. We begin again from Isaiah who proclaims that those “who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Previous burdens have been lifted because a child has been born whose “dominion is fast and forever peaceful.” Luke’s Gospel tells the story of Joseph, Mary and their unborn child needing to go to Bethlehem to obey the wishes of the Roman Emperor. They were not able to find a room and stayed in a barn where Mary gave birth to Jesus. An angel then appeared to nearby shepherds and told them not to be afraid because a great thing has just happened. A “savior has been born for you who is Christ the Lord” and they will find him in a feeding trough.

Let me be the latest person to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Tonight we celebrate, as I’ve said, an event that changed the course of history, that we’re still trying to understand. We call it the Christmas miracle, but calling it a miracle almost feels like it diminishes its importance. We throw around the word “miracle,” I believe, a little too much. In 1980 the U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the heavily favored Soviet Union to win the gold medal in the Winter Olympics and it’s known as the “miracle on ice.”

A miracle isn’t simply something unexpected or unusual. A miracle is something that seemingly comes out of nowhere and is so disruptive that it causes us to rethink and reimagine our previous beliefs. This can be a tough sell these days because our beliefs can be entrenched. We have benefited greatly from the things we have learned from logic and science but it’s easy to think that these are the only sources of truth. When we think about faith we can fall into thinking that those are things we’re told to believe or fantasies we’ve inherited from somewhere else.

I love our 3rd President, Thomas Jefferson, for his intellect and all that he’s provided to us. In 1962 President Kennedy hosted a dinner of Nobel Prize Winners and said this: “I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” President Jefferson’s beliefs are ultimately mysterious but we know that he took the 4 Gospels and edited out those things he didn’t believe; the result is called The Jefferson Bible. He removed all accounts of miracles and healings and the book ends with the death and burial of Jesus. There is no account of Jesus rising from the dead.

President Jefferson refused to believe that God would create a world of physical laws and then violate them to heal blindness or raise the dead. Simply put he refused to believe in miracles and that all truth could be found through scientific observation and experimentation. I find that limited view of God sad, that God cannot be bigger than our limited imagination, that God will not provide to us anything outside of our view of him.

Christmas tells us that God relishes in blowing our expectations and imagination out of the water. Our world is forever wonderful and mysterious because God is not done with us yet. There is nothing unique about the time of Jesus: pick any point in history, any place in our world and we can see how easily discouragement can seep in. We can convince ourselves that we’ve seen the last sunset and there is no sunrise coming, that we’re foolish for thinking otherwise.

And then, one cold and lonely night a child is born. All births come to us with limitless promise and few sounds are more beautiful than the cry of a newborn (except, possibly, for the newborn who is still trying to figure out what’s going on). And the sunrise comes from a place we never expect, a place limited only by our imagination.

So let us let our imagination know no boundaries. Albert Einstein once said that “[i]magination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Christmas tells us that on that night long ago some shepherds witnessed the birth of a child who gives us eternal life.

But Christmas also tells us that eternal life resides in all of us, and each of us. Jesus wasn’t simply “the guy with the key” to Heaven that lets us in the door. Jesus is this, but he is also the living God with the flashlight who will show us the way if we choose to follow. And let’s be clear: following is not without risks. Following Jesus demands that we never decide we know all we need to know about ourselves and each other. Following challenges us to see that our compassion does not have an end date and that our capacity for mercy is never full.

For Baby Boomers like me and hopefully everyone since, it means that the 1965 TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas speaks to a profound truth. There are no blockheads, all Christmas trees need a little love and when Charlie Brown asks for the true meaning of Christmas, Linus has it right. If it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, Linus takes Charlie Brown’s question, walks out onstage and recounts the Gospel we read tonight from Luke.

The days and weeks after Christmas often mark a bit of a letdown after all the preparation. It’s a time to return gifts we didn’t want, try not to think about the things we wanted but didn’t get, and hope the January credit card bill won’t break us. But it can also be a time for us to recognize that the world has changed and we have been given a share of the divine light. It’s not an easy road and it will go on after we’re gone but it’s the best path forward.

Merry Christmas!