Christmas Day sermon

Christmas Eve always seems to me to be the loud, exuberant service, whereas Christmas Day morning is the more quiet, meditative liturgy. When one pays attention to the gospel readings, one notices that they move from the intimate and quiet scene of a birth in humble surroundings to the outburst of the cosmos as described in the prologue to the gospel of John. We move from a very human-focused scene to the immensity of God’s creation. As one who loves paradoxes, I find that the juxtaposition between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day delightful and am always grateful to be able to worship in both contexts.

The soaring hymn of praise that we find in the fourth gospel is for me one of the most beautiful passages of scripture that we have. Poetry, prologue, setting the pathway for the gospel of John, the first eighteen verses set the scene not only for the gospel but for Christ’s disciples, for you and me.

‘The prologue to the Gospel of John is a wistful summary of the unsure dance between being and becoming, between What Is and What Has Come To Be. It offers a poignant commentary on the tension between Creator and created, the Word and the world.’ (1)

The prologue begins consciously with the same words with which the opening verses of the Book of Genesis begins. Whereas the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are content to direct us back in time to specific persons such as the prophets or the first people of creation, the gospel of John takes us back to a timeless moment, before Israel, before the patriarchs, before humanity even. ‘In the beginning’ is a cosmic opening.

‘What is’ in the beginning is the Word, logos in Greek. The Greek word, logos, translates the Hebrew word, dabar, which is used to relate the unseeable God to the world about us. Often times in the Hebrew Scriptures, rather than use the name of God, the word, dabar — word, deed — was substituted. John’s use of logos, which originally meant ‘to gather’ follows in the same tradition. From the beginning of John’s gospel, then, the Word and God become inseparable.

It is God/the Word that is before all time, creating, becoming, bringing into being life, light and humanity. Life, light, humanity… all arriving at the same time, all inter-related, inter-dependent.

But at the same time that the prologue to the gospel takes us back to the beginnings, it also squarely places us in time and space with the description of the Word made flesh, the incarnation of Jesus. In a line that is as well-known and loved as ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,’ the prologue continues by saying, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.’

The Word dwelt in us… that is, the Word became one of us, lived amongst us. God’s dwelling in history reaches its fullest form in the incarnation in Jesus the Galilean, the poor man of Nazareth. What is certain is God dwells in history, then and now. God irrupts, interjects Godself into history… but in such a small and seemingly insignificant way, becoming a child in the midst of the greatest world power of the times, coming to us in a stable.

And yet the prologue to the gospel reminds us that we have not always received the Light, life, and humanity that God has so freely given us. The world does not receive Jesus. But the gospel does not leave us hopeless. No matter what, Jesus Christ is not intimidated by the darkness of the world or of our souls. The Light of Christ — a reality we will jubilantly proclaim in the depths of spiritual and real darkness on Holy Saturday, at the Easter Vigil — is greater than all the shadows of our rejection, our weakness, our poverty. But if we are to dwell in the same tent that Jesus has pitched amongst us by dwelling with us, then we must enter into our own history, too, and nourish our hope and work toward bringing God’s kingdom to fruition.

We are people rooted in history — the history of the Christ child, the history of the church, at the same time as we are rooted in the timelessness of the glories described in the prologue to John’s Gospel.

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As a bit of a digression this morning, but something worth sharing, I want to wander briefly into our history as a parish. Christmas Day this year marks the 150th anniversary of gentle people worshipping God in this building as an Episcopal Church. On Christmas Day, 1857, services were conducted here for the first time, presided by the Right Reverend John Hopkins, First Bishop of Vermont. Just think! For 150 years there has been a faithful congregation gathering in this building to praise God. As you sit on these uncomfortable pews and look at the sloping floor, realise that 150 years ago there was no apse where our altar currently stands, the gallery was open, there was a wood stove in the front. Tomorrow evening, we will mark the 150th anniversary of the consecration of this building and the fact that Bishop Hopkins ordained his son to the priesthood here. Yet we are connected through time with the first members of Saint Mary’s, worshipping in the building that had been moved during the summer months to its current place — and especially by the gift of God-with-us.

How wonderful that the first services here should have been held on Christmas Day, the day upon which we remember what the whole season of Christmas is about: beginnings, openings to larger journeys for us as individual pilgrims, but more so for humanity.

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Just as the word, logos also means ‘to gather,’ let us on this Christmas morning gather up our thanksgivings and gratitude for the Word made flesh who dwelt among us, for the gift of light and life that God has given us by creating us, and by the ultimate self-giving gift of eternal life given us through Jesus Christ.

END NOTE

(1) Wes Howard Brook, Becoming Children of God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994), 52.