The Collect
Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and to be born this day of a pure virgin: Grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit; through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with you and the same Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.
The Psalm
96
Isaiah 9:2-7 + Titus 2:11-14 + Luke 2:1-20
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all . . .~ Titus 2:11
To all the beloved members of the body of Christ who call Church of the Holy Apostles home, to family and friends, and to all who today celebrate our Savior’s birth—God bless you, and merry Christmas!
When I was in seminary one of my professors once remarked on preaching at Christmas:
Don’t stress out too much about what to say at Christmas. Yes, it is one of the church’s two great feasts—it’s one of the big shows—but most people don’t come to church on Christmas hoping that the preacher will explain to them, ‘What is this Christmas thing?’ By which he meant, people know what Christmas is—or at least, we all know what Christmas is
to us. And for better or worse, it’s probably largely sentimental. That’s not bad in itself—it’s just what it is.
Christmas means the big family gathering at the cabin, where we’re always reasonably sure what to expect from everyone, even if it’s absolute chaos. Christmas means the big party we throw every year, with the beautifully decorated home and the spread of specialty foods brought by all our friends, these delights that we look forward to all year. Christmas means singing Silent Night by candlelight in a packed church nave. Whatever it is, Christmas means traditions—it’s predictable, unshakable even. So, don’t try to explain to people what Christmas means—that’s not why they’ve come.
My professor said it all rather tongue in cheek, I think—but I still didn’t really agree with it then. And I certainly don’t agree with it in 2020. What is Christmas in a year when so much of what we always took for granted has been taken from us? What can we say, when “what really makes it Christmas for me” gets cancelled? If there are any silver linings to our predicament (and there usually are, for those willing to look) one is the opportunity, the necessity even, of facing a question we might in normal times deflect: What, after all, is Christmas—really?
We hear proclaimed today in Luke’s Gospel what most of us would call “
the Christmas story.” Indeed, in a time when the stories and language of the Bible are less and less known in the general public, it is still true today that many people are at least familiar with this bit of Luke’s Gospel, and could probably even recall some of its details and phrases.
“What a wonderful beginning to the greatest story ever told”—that’s a line from a song that probably expresses how most of us feel about this story, at least in part because of the happy associations we have with this season. But separated from those associations, it’s hardly a warm and cozy and comfortable beginning. Still it is a wonderful beginning—literally, it is full of wonder. That this is how God should choose to enter our world as Savior and Lord!
O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger!
This Gospel story begins with an imperial decree by a mere man who is a pretender to Godhood, a man grasping at divinity—the Emperor Augustus—it moves quickly to the birth of the true God and Lord, who grasps at nothing, but empties himself to come among us as one of us, in the humblest circumstances.
What is Christmas, after all—really? It is the good news of great joy that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all. And that grace has appeared not as an idea or a system or a decree—it has appeared as one of us. And the Word became flesh and lived among us--that is the astonishing fact of Christmas and what it means.
And choosing to live among us as one of us, he began his sojourn in the way common to us all:
as an utterly dependent baby, unable to walk, unable to talk—“the Word unable to speak a word.”
What Christmas means to me may be predictable year after year (in most years), but what Christmas is really, and what it calls us annually to reflect on, is the entrance of God into our world in the most unpredictable manner imaginable.
Holding together the theological poles of Christmas and Easter, Rowan Williams writes: “It ought to shock us to be told year after year that the universe lives by the kind of love that we see in the helpless child and in the dying man on the cross.”
This has been a difficult year. A year in which, more often than usual, we have continually been confronted with the idea and the reality of our vulnerability, exposure, risk, weakness, mortality. Perhaps we would wish for a God who does not choose to manifest his power in what seems to be weakness—but this is how the Lord has come. My power is perfected in weakness.
Those frightened shepherds, faced with the great and terrible army of angels blazing in the night with the glory of God, announcing to them the arrival of the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord—I wonder what they must have thought when the angel then told them: And here’s how you will know him—he is an infant, just hours old, wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in an animals’ feed trough.
Vulnerable. Dependent. Humble. Among us. Choosing to be among us like this, he closes off forever the idea that we need not be concerned with the vulnerable and dependent—a population that ultimately includes all of us. Choosing to be among us like this, he opens up for us the dignity of what it means to be human, to be a creature whose life is capable of carrying the life of God. Choosing to be among us like this, to be what we are, he calls us to be what he is—and to see in the face of every child, every woman, every man, and you yourself, the dignity of God’s own beloved image.
So rejoice today, and give thanks to God. Because this is what Christmas is, really—Christmas is the celebration that God, the Lord of hosts, our Savior, reveals the fullness of his love for us by choosing to be with us. The way of our healing and salvation begins with a God who embraces us fully, not just empathetically or from a distance, but really, truly, and forever, among us.
Merry Christmas. Amen.
Closing Prayer
O Father of mercy, whose Son Jesus took upon himself our nature, that he might bear our sorrows, be the companion of our journeys, and the forgiveness of our sins; pour out on us your Holy Spirit, that as Christ was born in our likeness, even so we may grow into his; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
