Luke 2:1-14 (Christmas Midnight) 15-20 (Christmas Dawn)

BACKGROUND: This section of the Gospel of Luke shows what a master storyteller the author is. Here we have a story that both captures our imaginations and is filled with theological implications. Though some of his historical facts are incorrect, the author wants to make the point that this is the long awaited Messiah. Caesar Augustus was considered the bringer of peace just as this baby will be. The parents must go to Bethlehem, the city of David, the shepherd king, where people expect the Messiah to appear. The baby is laid in a manger, a feeding trough, and will be food for all.. He is visited by shepherds who have heard an angel song that echoes Is. 9:6. And Mary ponders all these things as an example of a person of faith.
STORY This is a story about how two eighth graders told a pastor what to say in his Christmas homily and how that event became a parish legend. Just before Midnight Mass at Nativity Church, Sr. Pat and her eighth grade class were in a terrible state. The Baby Jesus statue from the church's original crèche set was missing. For the first time in the 75 years that the parish had been celebrating both the birth of Jesus and its patron day, an eighth grade girl, accompanied by an eighth grade boy, was to carry the Baby Jesus in the entrance procession. Mary Anne and Joey, who had been chosen to portray Mary and Joseph (and not because of their names or because they were the smartest or best looking kids in the class but because their names had been drawn from a hat), arrived early to once more (and for about the hundredth times as practices usually go in parish schools) rehearse their roles. They went to take the Baby from its cabinet and he was gone. Sr. Pat was very upset. What could they do? Though she suspected that Ed, the parish grinch who objected to the procession, might have had a hand in the disappearance, she didn't want to make an accusation. Mary Anne and Joey approached her with their solution. "You told us the manger is a feeding trough and reminds us that the Baby is the one who gives us the bread of life each time we come to the Eucharist. Why don't we put all the hosts into a basket and carry it in procession to the manger. Uncle Tom (as they called the pastor) can talk about that in his homily and then we can bring the manger to the altar at the offertory procession." Of, course, the pastor did as he was told and everyone remarked, "What a marvelous homily!"

Then, after communion, the Baby mysteriously appeared back in the manger looking newer and brighter than anyone ever remembered. To this day, no one knows when or how he got there. So now the people of Nativity Parish have their very own Christmas legend which they love to tell to all who will listen.