The Four Trees of Christmas

Merrcy Christmas, Bellarmine. Since we are here in Our Lady of the Woods Chapel the university, I thought it would be appropriate to preach about trees tonight.

The Christmas tree has become a central symbol of the holiday.  Bellarmine has a beautiful, evergreen up on the quad that’s at least 50 feet tall.  Every Advent, it is strung up with lights and the university hosts a lighting event every year in late November.  Kate and I have taken our kids there the last few years.  We have some wonderful pictures of our kids’ faces lit up by both the lights and with joy at looking at the tree.  Last year, our oldest, EJ, got to help Dr. Donovan flip the magic switch that illuminated the tree. 

It’s well known that German pagans worshipped oak trees before they became Christians and this might have something to do with the tradition.  However, they rapidly transformed the Christmas tree into a symbol of Christ, who is ever green. Who is a source of life even in the dead of winter. And who brings light into the darkness.

For Germans in the Middle Ages, the tree also became a symbol of the Tree of Paradise in the Garden of Eden. In those times, December 24^th was a day dedicated to Adam and Eve our first parents in the story of Genesis.  Rather than Christmas pageants, Germans enacted “paradise pageants” and decorated their trees with apples and with candy molded into the shape of Eucharistic wafers.  Eve would take fruit from the Christmas tree—symbolizing sin coming into the world.

But the candy wafers were given to children to show the redemption to come on Christmas Day through the Christ-child.  Jesus who would liberate us on another tree—the cross. 

The wood of the cross is the tree that is always hanging before us: a symbol and instrument of our redemption.  It unites the wood of the manager and all of the other trees of Christmas into Christ's plan to draw us all into one.  

The fourth and final tree is Jesus’ family tree.  Matthew begins his gospel with the words, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”  He then gives is a three-page-long genealogy of Jesus, tracing his lineage 32 generations back to the patriarch Abraham.  I chose not to torture you by reading that long list of unfamiliar, difficult to pronounce names.

Matthew beings in this way for two reasons.  The first is that Jesus, who is God incarnate, came from a family, and a family with a long history.  You know, God might have chosen to create a messiah in the same way he made Adam and Eve—out of the dirt and with no parents.  Like them, he might have skipped childhood altogether and begun life as an adult. 

I can picture him like Clint Eastwood’s cowboy, “The Man With No Name” from the old spaghetti westerns.  He has no family, no story.  He has come onto the scene to dispense justice and save the day.  That’s all you need to know.

But, no, in Matthew we learn critical to Jesus’ identity is his being a son. He is a son of Abraham and David—showing his Jewishness and his royal lineage.  He is a son, too, of nobodies and unsavory types. A son of notable women, who make it onto this patrilineal list. And a son of non-Jewish Gentiles, showing that God’s plan of salvation includes the whole human family.

Hearing that long genealogy makes us feel exactly how long salvation history stretches, and viscerally how long the wait for a Messiah took.  At one point in history, Jesus family looked like a stump of a tree—a cut down, ruined lineage, when the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was deposed by Babylon.  By Isaiah prophesized that from the root of Jesse, a new sprout would grow.  And at the end of the family tree, we hear finally – finally!—Emmanuel, God is with us.  As we come together as families at Christmas, it is worth recalling that Christmas itself began with a family. 

Matthew wants us to see that Jesus’ coming is a new beginning—a new creation—a new genesis. Every Christmas, we celebrate again this new beginning.  We year—perhaps every moment of our lives—we need the Christ child to be born anew. 

Christ is always new.  Christ is always being born. Christ is always present in us, leading us to a new beginning, to our own new birth. 

As the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart wrote “The birth (of Christ) is always happening, and yet, if it does not occur in me, how could it help me? Everything depends on that.” 

We might ask ourselves, how is the birth of Christ occurring in me?  Where do I need a new birth? A new beginning? 

Sometimes, we get to a point in life, where we think we can’t change.  We ourselves can’t have a new beginning—we are too old, too set in our ways.

Christ is always new.  Christ is always being born.  And so, as we return tonight to our the image of our first tree – the Christmas trees.  I invite you as you return to your home to pause at your own Christmas tree— and I invite you to pray to Christ: Lord, begin again in me.  Jesus, the Christ-child, be born tonight in my heart and in my life.  Amen.