The following is the homily I preached at both my parishes of Corpus Christi and St Mark's Community of the Deaf at the 'Mass at Night' of the Lord's Nativity.
This
year marks the 50th anniversary of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special broadcast. I’m sure most of you have seen it; I bought
the DVD earlier this week because, as a kid, I never understood the
dialogue—closed captioning was not available to me until I was in high school. (When I finally got my closed-captioned decoder, all of my dreams were captioned for a week!)
There is one scene in the play—the
high point, really—that ought to catch our attention. We all know of Linus, the boy with his ever-present security blanket. In the Peanuts
series and especially in the Christmas special, Linus is berated for always having his ‘blankie’ with him, and refuses
to let go of it.
At one point when Charlie Brown says
he does not understand the true meaning of Christmas, Linus takes centre-stage
at the play they are rehearsing and recites Luke
2:8-16 from memory. It’s the same gospel
we just heard. “And in that region there
were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them,
and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with
fear…” The whole time, Linus is holding
his blankie. But then, he does the
unthinkable. He continued, “…And the angel said to them, fear not…” At that moment
when Linus said “fear not,” he lets go of the blanket, and continued the story,
which we all know so well.
You see, we each have our own
proverbial ‘security blankets’—they can be anything. Our reputation. Our position at work. Money.
Being scared of dying. These are
not bad things. But when they become our
security blankets, we prop up an alternative to Jesus. A counterfeit
messiah. But our counterfeit messiahs
arise from our fears, fears that Jesus was born to relieve. “Fear not!”
This is the most frequent saying
found in the Bible—“Fear not!” or “Be not afraid!” It is found more than 300 times in all of the
divine Scriptures. The Lord is insistent
that we take heart in his care for us and to abandon our fears.
Linus got the message right: “Fear not!”
The moment he said that, he lets go.
The same invitation goes to us tonight:
“Fear not.” Our fears drive us
into a futile attempt at self-salvation, or self-redemption. But the angel that spoke to the shepherds
address us as well: “Fear not; for
behold, I bring you Good News of
great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the
city of David a Saviour. He is Christ the Lord.”
Tonight is when we come to bear in
mind, in the severest way possible, that there is only one Messiah, and it’s
none of us. “Come thou long-expected
Jesus, born to set Thy people free; from our fears and sins release us, let us
find our rest in Thee.” In another carol
we also sing: “The hopes and fears of
all the years are met in thee tonight.”
At the end of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, we
remember that Charlie Brown goes in
search of the perfect Christmas tree—and finds only one real evergreen in a commercial
lot full of aluminum and artificial trees.
But when he goes to decorate it, it still doesn’t go well. He walks away, and the rest of the neighbour
kids decide to try to dress the tree, beginning with Linus. What does he do? He
takes his blanket and wraps it at the base of the tree, thus enabling it to
stand upright. And that is what the Lord
wants to do with all of our hopes and fears, and with all of our
shortcomings: the Lord desires to
transform them into something beautiful.
Just as the Eternal Word was transformed into a helpless infant, also
does He want to transform us from helpless creatures into his children of his
mercy and redemption.
