| The Gospel reading for the Mass of Christmas day is taken from the prologue of John's Gospel, and it includes what is probably the best-known line of the New Testament: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." God's Word became flesh, entering into the temporality, finitude, muck, and mud of our human condition. This incarnation of God is the hinge upon which the whole of Christianity turns.
But the prologue from Matthew's Gospel—the genealogy of Jesus stretching back to Abraham—gives us a further feel for the texture of John's rather abstract statement. If the Word truly became flesh, then God had not only a mother but also a grandmother, cousins, eccentric aunts, and weird uncles. If the Word truly dwelt among us, then he was part of a family that, like most, was fairly dysfunctional, a mix of the good and the bad, the saintly and the sinful, the glorious and the not-so-glorious. And this is such good news for us. For it shows that even from this motley crew—from Jacob to Ruth to David to Rahab—the Christ can come to be born.
This is the very heart of Christmas! God himself pushed into the dysfunctional and ambiguous family of man. And he continues to join us, even though we, like so many of his Israelite ancestors, are unworthy of him. Like them, we are flawed, compromised, half-finished. But he becomes our brother anyway. That's the amazing grace of the incarnation that we celebrate at Christmas. God is still pleased to become flesh in our dysfunctional human family.
May God richly bless you this Christmas season and throughout the new year.
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