Paul Mast is an author, adventurer and the one-man performer of the show “Mark Twain.” The following was included in “Street Sabbatical,” a journal account of his street encounters and conversions with the homeless population.
Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” is a story about the relationship of this feast with faith and culture:
“The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season!
“Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
“It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
“It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
“But I think that the most likely reason of all
“May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.”
This story hints at the cultural limits placed on this feast. It is not moveable. It belongs in December. It has certain extravagancies and glitter linked with the economy. On the level of faith the story is about the simple and unadorned birth of Jesus Christ. It is linked with receiving by faith the mystery of the birth of the Son of God through Word and Sacraments and celebrating that through all the seasons of life. While the culture extols Santa Claus sliding down the chimney, faith celebrates the Son of God climbing down from heaven and making a home in the hearts of humanity.
These two traditions should not be seen as rivals. Rather, they enhance each other. They both are refractions of the Light within and are meant to change hearts in order to extend the Spirit of the Christmas beyond just a shopping season.
In one sense the Dr. Seuss story is intended to market that kind of a Christmas spirit. Hidden between the lines of his poetry is an attitude. Christmas is more than a season of the year. Rather, it is a disposition of the heart. The sad reason why the Grinch was not so disposed was that his heart was two sizes too small. Dr. Seuss as a storyteller weaves pieces of theology into his story. The Grinch’s heart was small because there wasn’t room for others. Cardiologists would recommend a heart transplant. Theologians would speculate he needed a conversion, a spiritual heart transplant. It’s the kind that replaces hate with love.
The scripture readings for the feast of Christmas invite us to celebrate again how large God’s heart was for humanity. The tender words of Isaiah are reminders of the “darkness” and “gloom” that had visited every generation of Israel’s longing for the Messiah. These heavy emotions kept the hearts of the Jewish people small by the absence of hope for a long-awaited liberator.
But in the Christmas liturgy, Isaiah’s words are a promise kept and a prophecy fulfilled. In his oracle we can see ourselves as the people who once “walked in darkness” and on whom “great light” has shone. Our exile of sin has come to an end. Christ the Savior has freed us. This new and idyllic future will come as a “child….an only begotten son.” He will wear titles reserved for kings: “Wonder-Counselor,” “Prince of Peace.”
The joy of deliverance from darkness and gloom in the painful past stands in contrast to the transcendent future of rejoicing as in the gathering of an abundant harvest or the celebration that follows a military victory. The child whose birth is celebrated in this oracle will transform human lives – hearts will be free to hold more hope, to grow in the capacity to hold more of the child who wears the face of God. The people whose hearts were once small by too much gloom and darkness will grow to hold “great light.” The Grinch in them will be transformed by the presence of the divine making a home in their newly transplanted hearts.
The Letter of Saint Paul to Titus is a reminder of God’s affection for us. Paul addresses Titus with the affectionate word, Beloved. It’s God in Paul’s heart speaking to the heart of Titus. It is full of the good news of how God took the initiative to become one of us. This is grace not requested but unconditionally given; a grace that transforms darkness into the glory of salvation. The name of the grace is Jesus Christ the savior.
Our response is gratitude so the heart can retain its luster whenever we “reject godless ways.” This keeps our heart large enough to care for the presence of God dwelling there, growing in faithfulness and right-living as a prelude to awaiting the next gift of God: the “appearance of Christ when he returns in glory.”
Finally, Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus begins with details about civil authorities ordering a census then builds to a betrothal and pregnancy and an extraordinary birth. The savior-child is born without a midwife or the adoring attention of extended family. His first cradle is an animal’s feed trough. The heart of the divine was humbled by beating in a child surrounded by lowly characters with a chorus of heavenly voices proclaiming peace upon the earth.
The God-child comes to live among both the poor, like the shepherds who first welcome him — and the mighty — who rule the world into which he is born. Jesus is a savior for all humanity. Being born homeless sends a message to the lowly that are homeless and to the mighty who have the power to reverse their stigma.
Street Sabbatical shifted my horizons about preaching the mystery of Christmas. The crib, with all of its popularized symbols, has taken on new meaning. The event of God getting out of the sky and coming to earth enfleshed in a child born homeless, speaks new meanings to me about God’s special love for them. As my heart has grown into behaving more compassionately with the homeless, the luster of the culture’s spin on Christmas has lost some of its addiction in the faces of beggars who received pieces of my compassionate heart. In return I was given a larger heart by the God-child for growing new seeds of compassion for others.
During Street Sabbatical, God rescued me from becoming a Grinch. With the heart of a God-child transplanted into every human heart we are saved from having a heart two sizes too small. That helps me see that God planned for the first Christmas to be a one day event and then afterwards to begin the process of growing spiritually through the seasons of life. His son’s birthday is similar to ours. It’s a day filled with remembering, storytelling and celebrating. But the next day the growing-in-faith process continues. This is the spiritual piece in Christmas that gets lost by the hype and glitter of the culture.
We turn a year older and through the seasons of that year of aging we grow morally, intellectually and emotionally in order to have something to show for the year of growth at our next birthday. Similarly, every Christmas is a call to reflection and action on how the God-child, enshrined in our hearts at his birth, invites us to grow our hearts more like his throughout the seasons of life anchored like bookends by our birthday from one year to the next. This spiritual growth, measured by how much compassion we give and receive is the best prescription to keep us from having a heart two sizes too small.
Isaiah, Paul and Luke stir in us today the truth that the savior of humanity was born homeless. Every time we meditate on our own homelessness before the Christmas crib compassion wiggles it way out of a symbolic Christ figure and into the arteries of our hearts. If the heart is two sizes too small, divine compassion opens those clogged arteries transplanting them with the spiritual medicine of hope and love for the poor. Then we are free to hear the heart whisper, “whenever you welcome the homeless in your hearts, you welcome the homeless Christ child resting in their hearts.” What remains then is giving the divine gifts of hope, light and peace away throughout the seasons of the year. Remember to put the homeless on your list, both on the streets and in your houses. In doing so you grow spiritually in not missing the Christ-child hidden in their humanity and in the mystery of how God will transform yours when you meet and behold and serve the divine in others.
Amen.
