Some years back, I was invited to a party at the home of one of my teachers. My intention, as with all parties, was to get in and out as quickly as possible, but this time I found myself having a pleasant conversation with a young woman. By chance, there was a magazine on the coffee table that had Elvis Presley on the cover. Pointing to it, I mused, “Isn’t it remarkable that decades after his death, he is still so popular that he’s on the cover of a magazine?” We talked about his songs and his life, the exuberance of his music, the sadness of his final years, and how his home, Graceland, has become a place of pilgrimage to which hundreds of thousands of people journey each year. I asked, “What do you think accounts for all these people who claim to see Elvis alive? Is it grief? Or does an employee of his record company dress up like him to keep the rumors flowing and the records selling?” To my amazement, this serious and intelligent woman said the last thing I expected to hear: “Well, there’s another possibility. Maybe he’s not really dead. Maybe he is alive.”
I once read that crazy people could sometimes look and sound quite sane, but I had never encountered this firsthand. Was she making a joke? Or was she the sort of person who had an entire room stocked with Elvis dolls? I considered my options and decided it was best to play it safe, so I kept smiling, didn’t make any sudden movements, and started doing the math as to which door was in the most direct line from my seat.
As I drove home that night, I pondered the phenomenon of Elvis sightings. Did the crowds who heard Peter and James and John think they were crazy, with their claims about a crucified criminal come back from the dead and now appearing to his followers? Was it as easy to dismiss reports of the Resurrection as it is to reject claims that Elvis lives?
There are other similarities between Jesus and Elvis. Both achieved their greatest popularity after their deaths; both of their images are seen in refrigerator rust stains, strangely shaped vegetables, and weather-beaten billboards; they are both called “the King.” But the ways in which they are most alike is the sort of places they appear, and the sort of people they appear to. You would think that if Elvis Presley were still alive, he might show up on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, or at the Las Vegas Hilton, or in the office of the president of Sony. But no. With all his wealth and fame, and the legions of fans devoted to his memory, Elvis reveals himself in a Burger King parking lot at 3:00 a.m., to guys named Earl and Steve who’ve had a bit too much to drink. Why?
What of Jesus Christ? Why would God show up in a stable? Why would God rest in a manger? Why would the Lord of heaven and earth consent to be born of a poor woman, cared for by a lowly carpenter, raised in an insignificant town? Why isn’t he born in Jerusalem, in the midst of money and power and status? For that matter, why bother with Israel at all? If God is going to become a man, why not become a Roman? Why become a man in the middle of nowhere, a peasant in a land far from the bright centers of wealth, culture, and empire?
Yet what happens today starts a pattern in Jesus’ life. Already at Christmas, we see in the child Jesus what we will see in the man Jesus. When Christ sets out upon His ministry, people will ask the same sort of questions. “Why do you eat with tax collectors? Why do you let sinners touch you? Why aren’t your disciples law-abiding? Why would the Messiah sleep outdoors, walk the roads of Galilee, and share His days with poor, sick, and sinful people?”
After His death, the pattern continues. The risen Lord does not come once more to the Temple in Jerusalem, He does not appear to Pontius Pilate, He does not reveal Himself in Rome. He shows Himself to mourning women and frightened men hidden in locked rooms and wandering in graveyards, on roads and lakesides and mountaintops far from the strongholds of money and influence. Simply put, when the Son of God rises from the dead, He appears in the first-century equivalent of the parking lot of a Burger King at 3:00 a.m. to guys names Earl and Steve.
But this is just what Jesus told us to expect. He who was born in a stable and laid in a trough promised us he could be found with the ragged people in the raw places, in all the bleak rooms of this fallen world: the cell of the prisoner, the bedroom of the sick, the house of the grieving, the tomb of the dead.
It all starts today. “She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save His people from their sins.” How? How will Christ save us from our sins? Not by an edict, or through the words of an ambassador, or at the hand of an envoy or agent or proxy. Instead, the Lord of heaven and earth, once born in a distant land, frees us from sin by making us His new Bethlehem. Christ saves us by making us His home.
Today, our souls, poor in virtue, can be His birthplace; our hearts, rough with sin, can be His manger; our lives, bound tight in greed and anger and lust, can become the swaddling-strips of His newborn life.
We are His new Bethlehem, far less worthy than His first Bethlehem, far less ready to welcome a king. His first birthplace was only poor, rough, and plain; His new birthplace is vengeful, proud, and envious. The stable was simple, we are sinful; the manger was crude, we are cruel and cold-hearted. And still, Christ is born. Today, he appears in an unlikely place once more: in us—His new Bethlehem.
This day, we are made eternal. Christ is born, and so we will not die. Long after every earthly city falls to ash, we will be His eternal Bethlehem. But we must honor this day as Christ commands.
What is gained if we hasten to Christ like the shepherds, but fail to visit the sick and feed the hungry? What is gained if we sing with the angels, but offer no forgiveness? What is gained if we kneel with the magi, but do not smash the bright idols of our pride, lust, and sloth?
Visit the nursing home, and run with the shepherds. Forgive your spouse, your child, your parent, and sing with the angels. Repent your sins, and kneel with the magi. Christ comes freely, but we must accept Him. His love is unconditional, but our salvation is not. Joseph built a fire and swept the stable. Mary washed the manger and readied the swaddling clothes. Let us, too—we unexpected houses of God, we unlikely Bethlehems—properly prepare ourselves. Contrition and penance, conversion and mercy, forgiveness and service—these are the hospitality the Lord seeks in us this Christmas.
Readings for Christmas Day:
Is 62:1-5
Ps 89:4-5, 16-17, 27, 29
Acts 13:16-17, 22-25
Matt 1:18-25
Fr. Francis Caponi, OSA
Fr. Francis J. Caponi is a Friar in the Order of Saint Augustine. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1989 and received his doctorate in theology from Harvard Divinity School in 2000. Caponi currently teaches theology at Villanova University.
