CHRISTMAS EVE REFLECTION 2024 

By Rev Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

St Andrew’s on the Terrace 

How can this Christmas in 2024 be different from all the other Christmases you have celebrated in throughout your lifetime?  Perhaps you are young, and you haven’t got many Christmases to compare with, but I know many of you are my age and older and you have many Christmas stories to share for a lifetime both good and bad, happy and sad.  But how can this Christmas be different?  I think back over the last 6 decades and I’ve had a variety of Christmases.  I spent 4 in the U.K. with friends and new families that I made over there.  I’ve had Christmas in Samoa and Australia and 3 here in Wellington.   

My family in Auckland had an early Christmas 2 days ago on Sunday afternoon, my what a wonderful occasion that was with 11 of 13 great nieces and nephews and their parents and my siblings altogether in our family home.   

As we reflect on the profound mystery of Christmas, our hearts are filled with both the beauty of the season and the painful realities of our world wounded by ongoing conflicts and despair. The land where Jesus Christ, the prince of peace, was born remains engulfed in turmoil. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East and several regions across the world are marked by extreme levels of violence, destruction, and loss of countless lives. These conflicts not only devastated human lives but deepened the scars on the planet, which is already groaning under the weight of exploitation. 

Today, the fragility of our world is a stark reminder of our shared vulnerability. Families are displaced, homes are reduced to rubble, and lives are cut short. Democracies are becoming dysfunctional, nations are turning towards authoritarianism, and the very fabric of our existence is increasingly becoming fragile and vulnerable. 

In such a time as this, what does it mean to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a vulnerable child in a humble manger? How does this fragile incarnation speak hope into our wounded world? Human fragility and the earth’s vulnerability are not failures to be overcome but sacred truths to be embraced. 

Christmas in Vanuatu will be a time of grieving and coming to terms with loss, devastation, sickness and disease.  It is the same for the island of Mayotte in the French interior that was devastated by Cyclone Chido including Mozambique, Malawi and the Comoros.  At the time of writing Cyclone Chido was heading towards Southern Africa.   

I watched the film “Mary” by DJ Caruso on Netflix (who has seen it?).  Some of it is based on scripture but a lot of it is imagined, the screen writer has filled in the gaps about possible scenarios that may have happened and emerged with the impact that a betrothed virgin becoming pregnant and not to her fiancé would have had on her local community.  The religious communities in particular the Zealots were in a murderous rage and seek to find Mary and kill her.  Then after the birth of Jesus King Herod who has heard that there is a now new king, a messiah.  No one can outstage King Herod, as far as he is concerned he is the Messiah.  So, in his fits of rage and jealousy he commands his soldiers to go and kill all the newborn infants in Bethlehem.  In the movie, Mary and Joseph are caught up in this siege but manage a daring escape on horseback through fire back to the temple where Jesus is received by Anna and Simeon.  The film Mary gives a realistic view of possible scenarios that could have occurred outside of the biblical narratives and removes the romanticism of the nativity scenes we see on Christmas cards and confronts us with the harsh reality of hatred, violence, jealousy and the place and non-status of women in Middle Eastern cultural society.  For me personally, I had to watch the movie in snippets I couldn’t sit through the whole ordeal in one sitting.  I encourage you to watch it and see it as fact of perhaps more fiction.  Some reviews hate it and call it right wing funded Netflix biopic.  Others say it is fantastic.  King Herod’s portrayal by Anthony Hopkins gets a one for realism and accuracy.  Some of it also seems a bit far-fetched, but I will leave you be the judge of it for yourselves.  

But have you ever wondered to yourself, why did God choose this young woman Mary, who was getting on with her own life, minding her own business?  When you think about it, it could have been anyone from any context?  Is that blasphemous?  The term the immaculate is used in the film to suggest that Mary herself was an immaculate conception, a miracle baby.  The Roman Catholic church continue to revere her as Mary the immaculate because she was born without original sin.  She was different to us because Catholics believe that all humans are born with original sin, but Mary was the exception.  Most protestant churches reject the immaculate conception, some Anglicans also accept it as a pious devotion too.  For me, Mary was an ordinary young woman, she wasn’t pious or perfect she was chosen because she represented the innocence and vulnerability of the human race.  She was to become the bearer of God incarnate; the word become flesh.  The reality is God’s love isn’t just for the pious and the perfect. 

God’s love breaks in on us precisely when everything else is going on, precisely when everything else is chaos and commotion, precisely in those days when it is the last time and last place, we would expect God’s love to be:  

in the critical care unit, in the homeless shelter, in the women’s refuge.  

where people’s hearts are breaking, where people are struggling for justice.  

in the choice between war and peace, in the decision between generosity and greed.  

in the moment of love when everything seems loveless, in the flash of hope when everything seems hopeless,  

in the sudden joy that breaks through even the deepest sorrow.  

It is precisely into these contrasts and contradictions, the Christmas story tells us, that God’s love comes; it is precisely such contrasts and contradictions that God’s love holds together, just as the ancient story tells us it did in a stable in Bethlehem; and suddenly the world is hushed, and the chaos pauses for a moment, and in the Gospel narratives the angel appears, and the heavenly chorus sings, and the Saviour is here, and new life begins. That is the story of God’s Incarnation; this is the time in which God’s love is embodied for us.  

Jesus’ birth teaches us that compassion is the pathway to healing and justice. It also teaches us that true strength is not found in domination but in the willingness to love and show compassion. The story of Christmas challenges us to see the suffering of others not as distant tragedies but as shared burdens that call us all to respond. This is the kenotic (self emptying) message of the incarnation that we need to embrace. 

In this season, when the shadow of conflict darkens our societies, we are reminded that Jesus’ birth is actually to confront the world’s brokenness with courage, love, and compassion and to bring peace. This is how we can spread the transforming hope in this broken world. This hope takes root in the community. It grows when we stand in solidarity with those who suffer. 

Christmas invites us to the radical mystery of Kenosis—God emptying Godself, taking on human fragility, and entering into the brokenness of our world. In the vulnerability of a newborn, Jesus revealed the power of God’s solidarity with the suffering humanity. His birth under the shadow of socio-political and religious oppression was a divine proclamation that love, compassion and care are the true solutions to the cycles of violence and despair.   

As I look around I am conscious of the fact that we do not know everyone hear tonight.  I do not know the particulars of what most if not all of you bring with you to this place, on your heart, in your soul on this night of all nights – your contrasts and contradictions, what joys and what satisfactions, what heartbreaks and disappointments, what frustrations and what fears, what loves and what hopes, what dreams and what plans are part of you this night.  

But whatever you bring, this timeless story of God becoming one with humankind in the most vulnerable manner imaginable – in the contrasts and contradictions of a baby born in poverty in a violent and oppressive society – May the Prince of Peace be born freshly in our hearts and through our actions, inspiring us to create a world where every person and the planet itself can flourish. 

I wish you all a peace-filled Christmas!  Amen. 

– perhaps for the first time – that you and I and all people are held in the heart of God for ever and that this Christmas 2024 can make all the difference.   Amen.   

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