Sermon delivered Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013 (1 Christmas, Year A (John 1:1-18)), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
On this First Sunday After Christmas, we hear a very different version of the Christmas story than the one we heard on Christmas Eve. Rather than shepherds and angels and a family sent to the stable because there was no room for them at the inn, we hear John’s version of “the beginning” of Jesus’s story, a beginning that began not in Bethlehem, but at the beginning of time, before the creation of the world. John’s account is a cosmic creation story, a magnificent theological poem about the very essence of the Divine breaking into the depths of our world: “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
And in this artistic proclamation of the origins of the Christ, the author of John’s Gospel gives us what I believe to be one of the most powerful summaries of the Christian message in all of Scripture:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).
In that one sentence lies the heart of the Gospel: the power of light over darkness, of love over hate, of life over death. Jesus’s Resurrection is the ultimate expression of this truth. Death itself could not extinguish the light that came into the world with the birth of Christ, and it continues to shine through all the ages, despite countless attempts and threats to extinguish it.
This is the heart of the Gospel, the Good News that we proclaim as Christians: that nothing will be able to extinguish the light of God that shines in all creation. The Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans that he was convinced “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). This is the message we are called as Christians to proclaim to a broken and hurting world: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And we are called to proclaim this message precisely during those times when we cannot see the light, when all seems to be darkness, when the world around us tells us there is no joy, no hope, and no love.
Many of us know that Christmastime can bring with it both great joy and great sadness. There’s something about this time of year that has a way of bringing up old memories, of reminding us of Christmases past that were happier or more joyful than this year, of making us acutely aware of the absence of those departed family members whose presence was so much a part of what Christmas meant to us in the past. This is why we gathered the week before Christmas for our first “Blue Christmas” service here at St. Paul’s, to acknowledge and sit with those less-than-merry feelings as Christmas grew nearer.
But now Christmas is here, and sometimes the “blue” feelings show up even more poignantly after the pomp and circumstance of Christmas Eve is over, after all the presents are opened, the family from out of town has left, and all the merriment is over. Although Christmas lasts for 12 days, our culture is done with it the day after December 25th. The trees and lights start to come down on December 26th, and the working world immediately goes back to “business as usual.” This sudden removal of all festivity can sometimes feel like a bit of a “let down” after the “high” of Christmas Day. The Sunday after Christmas and the Sunday after Easter are known amongst church leadership as “low” Sundays, and although we’re usually talking about attendance numbers, we could also as easily be talking about spirits. There is a natural human tendency to feel a bit low after a great high. But the celebration of the church goes on, even when it doesn’t match up with the culture around us. It is still Christmas, and we continue to celebrate the birth of Christ.
It is particularly appropriate during this post-Christmas Day “low” that we hear and affirm that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Because this reminds us of something that is absolutely essential to the Christian life – that we continue to proclaim the truth of the Gospel not only when we feel happy and joyful and confident in the ability of light to overcome darkness, but even during the times when we most doubt it, when we are consumed by fear, sadness, and despair.
The only time we let the light go out in our churches is on Good Friday – in a symbolic recreation of the darkness of the crucifixion, when the disciples thought the light really had gone out, when that light of the world that John’s Gospel speaks of was, for a time, absent. But the light did come back – it burst forth from the tomb in the body of the Resurrected Christ and set ablaze the light that the church has carried ever since, through times of deepest darkness. In the Church, we are an Easter people, a Resurrection people. Except for the one liturgical exception of Good Friday, no matter what else is going on in the world around us, we come to church to see the light. Our calling as Christians is to carry that light even when the darkness creeps in around us and we are certain it will extinguish the light.
This is a difficult task, to be sure, and I dare say it would be impossible for any one person to do. But the good news is that none of us is called to carry the light of Christ alone. We are part of a community of faith, the Church, which is the very Body of Christ, which will go on proclaiming the good news of the Gospel even when we as individuals are not able to proclaim it ourselves. When we fall into despair and find ourselves quite literally unable to say the words of faith, when we have no will power to pray, and when we can affirm nothing but the existence of the darkness around us, the corporate prayer of the Church goes on in endless praise of the One who is the Light even in the midst of the darkness.
When we cannot see the light ourselves, we come to church to allow others to hold it up for us. When we cannot find the words to pray, we allow the community to pray for us until we are able to join in again. We are able to carry the light of Christ through the darkness only to the degree that we are willing to carry one another through the difficult times.
And, thanks be to God, the truth of the Gospel does not depend on our emotional state of being. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” whether or not we believe that is true, whether or not our hearts are in it when we say that statement. Trusting in the truth of the Gospel, a truth that comes from outside ourselves, we can continue to say it, even when the world around us screams that the light has gone out. We light the Advent candles of hope, peace, joy, and love even when the world says there is no hope, peace, joy, and love. We sing songs of praise even in the midst of great loss. We do so because we are an Easter people. We do so because at the center of our faith lies the proclamation of a Truth that is greater than the truth of this world: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Christmas Message 2013: Are you ready for Christmas?
Sermon delivered Christmas Eve 2013 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
“Are you ready for Christmas?”
How many times have you asked or been asked that question, by friends or family or even strangers you greet this time of year? It’s one of the ways we make small talk with each another as the calendar moves closer to December 25th. “Hi, how are you, good to see you. So are you all ready for Christmas?”
When someone asks this, what they generally mean is, “Is your tree up and decorated? Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Have you bought all the groceries you’ll need for Christmas dinner? Are the sheets for your guest room washed and on the bed, ready to welcome family from out of town?” Are you ready for Christmas?
But there’s another layer of meaning to that question that we don’t often think about. It’s probably not what you intend to ask, or what the person is asking when they say it to you, but that question is actually a very appropriate question for the season of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas. It’s a question about preparation. But instead of asking whether we have our physical house in order, we could hear it as a question about whether we have our spiritual house in order. Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready not just for a visit from family, but for a visit from God himself? Have you made room for Christ in your heart? Are you ready for Christmas?
The answer, of course, is probably “no.” No, we don’t have all the groceries bought, no, the sheets are not on the bed; in fact, they’re still in the washer and we’re hoping this service won’t go on too long so we can get home and finish taking care of that, and no, we didn’t manage to get everything on our Christmas shopping list, and we’re worried sick that little Johnny will hate us forever when he discovers there’s no X-Box under the tree. And on top of all that, we’re supposed to be ready for a visit from God himself? No, we’re not nearly ready for that, either.
And guess what? In the classic paradoxical way of the Gospel, this is actually a GOOD thing! Tonight, I’m inviting you to give thanks for all the ways you are NOT “ready for Christmas.” Because a lot of times, the more ready we think we are for something, the less ready we actually are.
The people of Jesus’s day thought they were ready for Christmas, for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. They expected a great king who would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel. They were ready for power, for force, for military victory. But they didn’t get what they were so sure they were ready for. Instead, they got a helpless baby, born to a peasant family in a barn, who grew up to preach peace, to advocate loving enemies rather than defeating them, and who allowed himself to be put to death by the Romans rather overthrowing them.
By contrast, Mary knew she wasn’t ready for Christmas. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, much less the mother of God. “How can this be?” she asks, when the angel appears to announce an impossible future for her life. Joseph wasn’t ready to be a father, certainly not before he was even married, and certainly not to the very Son of God. And when the time came for Jesus to be born, they still weren’t ready – traveling away from home, with no place to stay and “no crib for his bed.” This young, unprepared couple was certainly not “ready for Christmas.” But because of their unreadiness, they were forced to acknowledge their total dependence on God. “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” Mary says to the angel (Luke 1:38). It was precisely the fact that they were not prepared that allowed them to be open to the unexpected movement of God in their lives.
If we think we’re ready for Christmas because there is food in the fridge and there are presents under the tree, because we’ve checked off all the items on our to-do list, we may actually close ourselves off to a real encounter with God. If we think we’ve taken care of it all, we may forget that we need God to take care of some things for us. We may begin to think that we have “done Christmas,” patting ourselves on the backs, forgetting that Christmas is not something we have the power to manufacture, but a pure gift from God.
Our gift-giving this time of year is meant to be sacramental, an outward and visible sign of the free gift of God’s love incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ – which is an inner and spiritual grace that all of our physical gifts can only loosely approximate. But so often, we forget the intended sacramental nature of giving and receiving gifts this time of year, and fall instead into a kind of false thinking in which we take pride in our ability to give gifts, and accept the message of our culture that those with more have the better Christmases; those with the most expensive gifts, with the best family situations, and with the most lavishly-decorated homes – those who are “ready for Christmas” by all secular standards. But actually, those who are the most unprepared for Christmas – those without a tree, without gifts, without a rich feast awaiting them tomorrow – are really the most “ready for Christmas,” in the spiritual sense. Oscar Romero, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador, put it this way:
No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God -- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
The more ready we think we are for Christmas, perhaps the less ready we actually are. Because the more we trust in our own abilities to create a picture-perfect Christmas, to make everything “just right” by secular standards, the more likely we are to forget our need for God.
So if you’ve arrived at this Christmas season feeling harried, worn out, and frustrated, rejoice! Give thanks! This unreadiness is an opportunity to acknowledge your total dependence on God, to admit that you need someone to come on your behalf. Remember that Christmas is not about your ability to give dozens of gifts, but about your ability to receive just one. In all your lack of preparedness, in all your failures and foibles, in those moments, you are truly ready for Christmas.
“Are you ready for Christmas?”
How many times have you asked or been asked that question, by friends or family or even strangers you greet this time of year? It’s one of the ways we make small talk with each another as the calendar moves closer to December 25th. “Hi, how are you, good to see you. So are you all ready for Christmas?”
When someone asks this, what they generally mean is, “Is your tree up and decorated? Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Have you bought all the groceries you’ll need for Christmas dinner? Are the sheets for your guest room washed and on the bed, ready to welcome family from out of town?” Are you ready for Christmas?
But there’s another layer of meaning to that question that we don’t often think about. It’s probably not what you intend to ask, or what the person is asking when they say it to you, but that question is actually a very appropriate question for the season of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas. It’s a question about preparation. But instead of asking whether we have our physical house in order, we could hear it as a question about whether we have our spiritual house in order. Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready not just for a visit from family, but for a visit from God himself? Have you made room for Christ in your heart? Are you ready for Christmas?
The answer, of course, is probably “no.” No, we don’t have all the groceries bought, no, the sheets are not on the bed; in fact, they’re still in the washer and we’re hoping this service won’t go on too long so we can get home and finish taking care of that, and no, we didn’t manage to get everything on our Christmas shopping list, and we’re worried sick that little Johnny will hate us forever when he discovers there’s no X-Box under the tree. And on top of all that, we’re supposed to be ready for a visit from God himself? No, we’re not nearly ready for that, either.
And guess what? In the classic paradoxical way of the Gospel, this is actually a GOOD thing! Tonight, I’m inviting you to give thanks for all the ways you are NOT “ready for Christmas.” Because a lot of times, the more ready we think we are for something, the less ready we actually are.
The people of Jesus’s day thought they were ready for Christmas, for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. They expected a great king who would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel. They were ready for power, for force, for military victory. But they didn’t get what they were so sure they were ready for. Instead, they got a helpless baby, born to a peasant family in a barn, who grew up to preach peace, to advocate loving enemies rather than defeating them, and who allowed himself to be put to death by the Romans rather overthrowing them.
By contrast, Mary knew she wasn’t ready for Christmas. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, much less the mother of God. “How can this be?” she asks, when the angel appears to announce an impossible future for her life. Joseph wasn’t ready to be a father, certainly not before he was even married, and certainly not to the very Son of God. And when the time came for Jesus to be born, they still weren’t ready – traveling away from home, with no place to stay and “no crib for his bed.” This young, unprepared couple was certainly not “ready for Christmas.” But because of their unreadiness, they were forced to acknowledge their total dependence on God. “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” Mary says to the angel (Luke 1:38). It was precisely the fact that they were not prepared that allowed them to be open to the unexpected movement of God in their lives.
If we think we’re ready for Christmas because there is food in the fridge and there are presents under the tree, because we’ve checked off all the items on our to-do list, we may actually close ourselves off to a real encounter with God. If we think we’ve taken care of it all, we may forget that we need God to take care of some things for us. We may begin to think that we have “done Christmas,” patting ourselves on the backs, forgetting that Christmas is not something we have the power to manufacture, but a pure gift from God.
Our gift-giving this time of year is meant to be sacramental, an outward and visible sign of the free gift of God’s love incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ – which is an inner and spiritual grace that all of our physical gifts can only loosely approximate. But so often, we forget the intended sacramental nature of giving and receiving gifts this time of year, and fall instead into a kind of false thinking in which we take pride in our ability to give gifts, and accept the message of our culture that those with more have the better Christmases; those with the most expensive gifts, with the best family situations, and with the most lavishly-decorated homes – those who are “ready for Christmas” by all secular standards. But actually, those who are the most unprepared for Christmas – those without a tree, without gifts, without a rich feast awaiting them tomorrow – are really the most “ready for Christmas,” in the spiritual sense. Oscar Romero, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador, put it this way:
No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God -- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
The more ready we think we are for Christmas, perhaps the less ready we actually are. Because the more we trust in our own abilities to create a picture-perfect Christmas, to make everything “just right” by secular standards, the more likely we are to forget our need for God.
So if you’ve arrived at this Christmas season feeling harried, worn out, and frustrated, rejoice! Give thanks! This unreadiness is an opportunity to acknowledge your total dependence on God, to admit that you need someone to come on your behalf. Remember that Christmas is not about your ability to give dozens of gifts, but about your ability to receive just one. In all your lack of preparedness, in all your failures and foibles, in those moments, you are truly ready for Christmas.
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