A Homily preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Christmas Eve, 2025. Texts for tonight: Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2: 1-20.
Try to imagine a Christmas without certain images in your head. No magical star, no wise men and camels, no manger and animals, and not just no religious themes, but no reindeer, no jolly Santa, no Christmas trees, nothing. I don’t think you can, or at least, I don’t think I can. The Christmas story first existed as words on the page, with no illustrations, but that’s never been enough. For centuries, we’ve been imagining and recreating the Christmas story in paintings and sculpture and arts and crafts of all kinds.
If I asked you to name some of your favourite images that you associate in your head with Christmas, it might be an image from popular culture, like Charlie Brown hopefully trudging home with his little tree.
Maybe it’s a favourite Christmas ornament, like this one with a Currier and Ives print.
You might also think of a beloved nativity set or creche, like this one knitted by a parishioner of All Saints.
In our house there’s a treasured crêche, it’s a gift from a dear friend, a set of figures that were hand cast from lead and lovingly painted with tiny brushes. They are absolutely beautiful, not just because of the work that’s gone into them, but because of what they represent.
My thoughts go to the Christmas crêche because I think for many of us, and particularly for Christians, when we think of Christmas art, we think of the birth of Jesus as described in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, which we sometimes call The Nativity. When you think about those stories and how they are shown, it’s like all of human life and all of human hopes and dreams come together in one scene. There’s the newborn baby, which can be a miracle for the family involved, but is an extremely ordinary experience.
There’s the physical world, the blood and messiness of birth, the ordinary animals in the rough little barn, combined with the metaphysical world, the extraordinary star overhead and the angels that are out there announcing the birth, speaking to shepherds like they spoke to Mary and Joseph. There is all of human society, from the exotic and wealthy kings or wise men, to the ordinary shepherds who live rough and dangerous lives. And there is the baby itself, a human child who has somehow come from beyond the veil of eternity, on whom everything depends. As the old hymn says, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
I would say that the appeal of the Nativity image is that we see our ordinary human selves and a loving, rescuing God in the same frame. Take this painting by Georges la Tour from 1644 called The Adoration of the Shepherds.
So framed between Mary on the left (with her adorable and rather ordinary jowly face) with her hands clasped in prayer (a typical posture for Mary in these sorts of paintings) and Joseph on the right are two shepherds. Then there is a servant girl carrying a bowl of water, another ordinary touch, she’s a working girl with a job to do, and then there is Joseph on the right, who is depicted as old, according to the tradition that he was an older man.
No one is talking, everyone is watching the baby, except for the lamb in the centre, which is busy munching hay from the crib. The lamb may have theological significance, pointing to Jesus’ role as the Lamb of God, but here it is just an ordinary, animal, doing what hungry animals do.
It’s often said of this painting that La Tour is showing off his technique as a painter by having all the light in the painting coming from the one candle that Joseph is shielding with his hand.
In a lovely meditation on this image, Sean Rubin writes that
“If you want a materialist explanation, by all means assume the candle is lighting the scene. Most candles don’t shine that brightly, but then again, neither do most infants. Maybe the baby really is just a baby. Or maybe you’re missing the implications.”
And maybe as Rubin suggests, the implications are cosmic, that Jesus is indeed what John’s gospel said he is, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, coming into the world” (John 1:9).
If we look at the two shepherds, the one in the foreground looks like any young man driving around Collingwood in his pickup, just put a ballcap and a puffy coat on him, whereas La Tour gives him a bit of a lacy shirt, we see the collar above his rough coat, because maybe he has a girl somewhere that he dresses to impress, even though he’s a working man. We can only guess at his thoughts but it’s unusual for a young man to stay that still. The man to his left is mostly in darkness, but he has a smile on his face as if he’s found an unexpected moment of peace.
If La Tour meant for us to identify with anyone in this painting, I think we are meant to see something of ourselves in these shepherds. For Christmas has come once again into the business of our daily, ordinary lives. We’re here tonight because some sort of voice, maybe an angelic choir heard even subliminally, something has prompted us to come out of the cold and dark to linger in the light of the crib.
All Nativity images speak to us, but tonight I hope this old painting has reminded us of the greatest gift that the Christmas story offers us: the reassurance tat there is light, and truth, and goodness in the world. Jesus invites us to pause just for a moment, to be still amid the endless chatter and noise of our information-mad world, and to receive this simple message, that we are not alone, that we are loved by God, and that we are forgiven of whatever it is we fear keeps God away from us. Take this message with you when you leave this palce tonight, and like the shepherds, go on your way rejoicing (Lk 2.20), because light has come into the world.
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