Wednesday, December 24 @ 4:00 PM
St. Augustine Cathedral

My dear sisters and brothers,

C. S. Lewis, the Christian author, was a brilliant writer with a great sense of humor. He also taught at the university level. In one of his lessons, while exploring with his students the very mystery you and I are celebrating tonight—the birth of the Savior—he asked his class if there were any questions.

One young man raised his hand and asked, “Why, of all the times and places where God could have entered into the world, was the Savior born in Bethlehem, in poverty, in a manger, with no one else there except Mary and Joseph?”

Rather than be startled by the question, C. S. Lewis responded immediately. Without even blinking, he said, “It’s obvious—because when God decided to enter into the world, He needed to cross enemy lines.”

You can imagine the students had no idea what he meant, so Lewis went on to explain. He explained it in a way that gives you and me a great challenge to take with us as we sit with our friends, our relatives, and our families to share this Christmas feast.

He said that, in the fullness of time, the world had already chosen a king—a king of authority and power, a king who conquered the known world, a king whose name was Caesar. To that king was accorded everything that you and I, through the ages, have given to those with rank, privilege, and power.

And so God, when He entered into the world in His divine Son—the true King—came not with armies or navies, but with hosts of angels, the whispering of shepherds, and the stirring of human hearts. He came to reveal a power that is transformative, divine, and everlasting—love itself.

When God entered into that same world, He chose a place not to confront the world, but to invite it, to inspire it, to whisper to it a better way. And when you consider that to be the heart of what we celebrate here tonight, my friends, we stand before a great mystery.

For tonight is the celebration of love—but a love that God, who is Love, reveals in a whole new way. It is a way the world may not understand, appreciate, invite, or even want.

Yet you and I gather to celebrate the birth of a newborn Savior and King, and He reveals to us what true love looks like. This love leaves no one behind. It is not afraid to be born in poverty, among immigrants, among those traveling with no home.

It is a love not afraid to challenge authority and power so that what some possess may be shared with those who have not. It is a love that comes to a pregnant woman whom the world judged to be out of wedlock, to a family that by any measure would be considered peculiar, if not broken.

It is a love not afraid to be placed in harm’s way, as the Holy Innocents would discover at the hands of Herod. It is a love not afraid to embrace those considered unembraceable, those lost in the shadows.

It is a love that comes to you, to me, and to all of God’s children.

As we gather here this Christmas, as we do every Christmas, we kneel before the Lord, gaze upon the face of Love Himself, and offer Him honor, glory, and adoration—precisely because He recklessly loves us.

Just as we are—frail and flawed, sinful yet strong—He loves us eternally. And not just us, but all of God’s people. Tonight marks the beginning of humanity’s liberation, a liberation that can only come when we kneel before the Lord who crossed enemy lines to reveal the face of God.

So what is the challenge? The challenge, my friends, on this Christmas Eve, as we add our voices to the angels and join generations past in singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His people on earth,” is this:

As God crossed enemy lines, so must we.

For Christ was not born only once. He is born hundreds of thousands of times every day whenever you and I dare to love as He loved, go where He went, and do what He did. We come here tonight to receive the strength and grace of His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity so that we, too, may cross enemy lines every day.

And what does that mean? It means standing with those who have no one to stand with. It means standing with the poor and the lost, reminding them that God loves them, too.

It means standing with those who struggle with anxiety, depression, and loneliness; with the homeless, as Mary and Joseph once were; with the hungry, as they surely were on the road to Bethlehem. To do what our newborn Savior did is to leave no one behind.

That is the most worthy way we can celebrate this great feast.

For when we return home tonight, we will have much to eat, much to celebrate, and gifts to share—and rightly so. These are signs of the abundance of this feast.

But there is one gift we can give Christ tonight. Before we leave this church—whether by visiting the crèche or from the pews where we sit—if we can look upon the face of God once more, eye to eye, and promise that we will do our best to follow His example and dare to cross enemy lines every day of our lives—

That, my friends, may be the greatest Christmas gift we could ever give.