Sermons Online ...
Sermon: Christmas Day (C) - 25th December 2009
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 8 &10 am
When it comes to the important business of passing on our Christian tradition, we don’t list laws. We tell stories. For the most important stories, we dramatize and make them tangible. At Christmas we give our children small, carved shepherds, donkeys, angels, a manger, a mother, a father and baby, such as the crib scene below me, to anchor their memories. Our legacy to them is a rich storehouse of images for the tougher times that may lie ahead. This treasury combines both personal stories and the overarching, transcendent story.
The stories of this season are those of birth. Perhaps unconsciously, we will return to them at other times during the coming year. I love to play Christmas carols through out the year, especially in the depths of winter. At times when we feel dead inside, we will turn to those memories of birth and some trace of Christmas will stir within. Then we who were suffering from amnesia will remember who we are and whose we are.
It’s not a process that would fit in a rulebook or on a balance sheet, because it is more closely akin to poetry. The poet knows that everything has the potential for grace, that the divine can reveal itself in the smallest, strangest places. Isaiah would never fit on a ledger sheet, he wrote of the ruins of Jerusalem breaking out in song. It wouldn’t appear in an anatomy text, but John imagined people born neither from human will nor physical processes, but from God. The pragmatists might scoff at such insights, but without such stories, we perish.
So today we celebrate the poetry of new life.
"There is something afoot in the universe that looks like gestation and birth", wrote Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In John’s gospel, it looks like order and purpose, a design established from the beginning. At the designated time, the forerunner appears, then in a burst of light, the Son. The letter to Hebrews calls him "the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being."
As though the brilliance might be too much for human eyes, the story tells all who wish to listen that God comes to us in a form we can handle, the light filtered, the glory toned down. God so honours our freedom that God does not dazzle us with radiance, but comes in what is closest, most intimate, small as a baby.
Another way of telling the story of the festival, is to talk about the joy of the resurrection, of the Christ who is present through his conquest of death and decay entering our hearts at Christmas. This recognition that it can only be the risen Christ whom we encounter seems strange and out of context, yet the atmosphere of the liturgy drives us to make the connection. For this is above all else the day of light.
The collects for the Midnight Eucharist of Christmas and for the Easter Vigil have a close, almost uncanny resemblance. The first says: “You have made this night holy with the splendour of Jesus Christ our Light”, the second, ''You have brightened this night with the radiance of the Risen Christ.'
Both nights are referred to as 'holy night' and the readings of each liturgy focus on light and glory . . .
To tell the story of Christmas by showing the centrality of the symbol of light as common to both incarnation and resurrection is to see how inseparable are the Christmas and Easter mysteries. Together they constitute the basic framework of God's activity in and beyond history and time, as they form the heart of Christian faith and hope. Without Easter, Christmas has no point; without Christmas, Easter has no meaning. Both incarnation and resurrection have significance because in these events God is glorified in the flesh. The flesh becomes the source of light, the raw material of glory . . .
The light of Christ is a persistent light. It shines through the most powerfully oppressive darkness, shines in the midst of devastation and upheaval, yet without explaining them, justifying them or making sense of them. The gospel of incarnation and resurrection is not the answer to a set of questions. It is a persistent and defiant light and its persistence is paradoxical. For the truth of the gospel of incarnation and resurrection is paradoxical. For the truth of the story of the gospel of incarnation and resurrection stands in contradiction to, and seems to be contradicted by, the realities of the world in which there is still no room and where the dead bodies pile up, inexplicably, meaninglessly …
Is the story we tell of the light of Christ, then, no more than an illusory comfort, a false reassurance that all is well when in fact all is clearly unwell in the “demented inn” of the world? Certainly religious light is often of this illusory kind but the gospel of incarnation and resurrection cannot be told in an authentic and truthful way unless it faces the terrible reality of homelessness and meaningless death.
These two realities provide the only possible material context for the light of Christ. For it is as the story of the homeless unwanted Christ of Bethlehem and as the naked condemned Christ of Golgotha that the light shines with its strange persistence and its baffling power to draw people to its shining, enabling them to become dynamic agents in the historical process, lights in the world.
St Ephraim the Syrian told the story in this manner:
“The feast day of your birth resembles you, Lord,
Because it brings joy to all humanity.
Old people and infants alike enjoy your day.
Your day is celebrated from generation to generation.
Kings and emperors may pass away,
And the festivals to commemorate them soon lapse.
But your festival will be remembered till the end of time.
Your day is a means and a pledge of peace.
At your birth heaven and earth were reconciled,
Since you came from heaven to earth on that day you forgave our sins and wiped away our guilt. You gave us so many gifts on your birthday:
A treasure chest of spiritual medicines for the sick;
Spiritual light for those that are blind;
The cup of salvation for the thirsty;
The bread of life for the hungry.
In the winter when trees are bare,
You gave us the most succulent spiritual fruit.
In the frost when the earth is barren,
You bring new hope to our souls.
In December when seeds are hidden in the soil,
The staff of life springs forth from the virgin womb.
This sermon produced using material from ”The Living Spirit”, editor by M Hebblethwaite, Canterbury Press, Norwich and www.preparingforsunday.com/ Living the Good News, Episcopal of East Tennessee