The Magic of Christmas

Gospel: Luke 1: 46-56

Mary's Magnificat proclaims an end to the prophetic age.  No longer will we hear about future promises, for God has come among his people, and Mary's prayer today expresses that finality: God has cast down the mighty from their thrones; God has lifted up the lowly; God has provided the hungry with good things; God has sent the rich away.  These are present and perfect realities God has accomplished in the person of Jesus.

So, why does hunger, inequality, and injustice still exist? Largely because we believe in a magic God and not the God of Jesus.  We falsely believe that God just magics things away just by coming and that we do not have to do anything.  Or, worse yet, we have created a whole set of future prophecies about a final coming of Jesus and kicked it all down the road in order to avoid the real God of Jesus.

For the God of Jesus is an incarnational God, one who requires that these things be done now, not by God magic but by our cooperation with the call and mission of Jesus.  Just as Mary participated fully in this mission by her life of bearing Jesus to the world, so we all must do the same by our lives.  That is the only way the mighty are cast down and the hungry are fed: by us doing the work of Jesus in the here and now.  That is the magic of Christmas: that God came among us to divinize us, to enable us to do this mission to which we are called.