Sermon: Context of Christmas + December 29, 2019

The birth of Christ becomes an ornament to hang on the tree of ‘me and my family’. Nothing political here, nothing Jewish here. Now it is an American story to support the selling of stuff. And for many people nothing religious here either. Maybe Jesus provides some important moral teachings, but he does not connect us to The Divine, the heart of all reality.

This gives us secular Jesus and leaves us trapped in a world where all that matters is matter. No, Spirit, no God, nothing of eternal value intersecting our world to save us.

You might say this is the Star Trek view of the universe—fabulous things to explore but all you need is the logic of Mr. Spock and the morality of Captain Kirk and you’ll be fine.

The Prologue of Gospel of John, which is the first 18 verses of the Gospel, gives us the universal context, all the way back before the creation of the cosmos, to the nature and purpose of God.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

Think about this: The floor underneath us and the roof above us, as also with the ground and the sky, all come into being through the Word and is held in being through the Word of God.

Everything has not just the thumb print of God on it, like an artist’s signature, but also everything has the Artist’s creative power working through it all the time.   

As Paul says in Colossians, using the image “the Son” instead of “The Word”: “all things have been created through the Son and for the Son. 17 The Son himself is before all things, and in the Son all things hold together.”

You might call this the Star Wars view of the universe, where there is this metaphysical and ubiquitous presence called the Force.

But humanity lost the ability to know this and thus lost contact with its deepest nature. In the fullness of time, Jesus appears to bring us back to the God who never left us.

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth…. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace….No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.”

So Jesus reveals both who we are as well as who God is, for he is the one closest to the Father’s heart. Jesus comes to the last, the least and the lost—which includes us.

For Christmas I received several pictures of our family taken at my daughter’s wedding in February. In the years ahead it will be fun to look at them with the grandkids, who are in the pictures, and telling them more about each person in the photographs.

I will say that’s Great Uncle Andy who lives in Atlanta and works for Delta and that’s Great Aunt Mary Jo, Andy’s twin who also lives in Atlanta and works at the Georgia Supreme Court.

But the deepest thing I need to say is that there is an essential part of who we are that is not picked up by the human eye or the camera.  

This deepest fact of who my brother and sister truly are can only be seen with the eyes of faith that looks beneath the surface of things into reality.

Our truest self is found in the Word of God, our creator and sustainer, who is Jesus, who is a healer and a forgiver. This is your character, your nature, and mine. This is who we are. This is what we are made for: to carry the healing and forgiving of Jesus into the world.

Sure, you can use a wagon to store junk in the garage, but it’s true nature and purpose is to carry happy children across the yard, and even like I used to carry my grandkids to R.J. Julia’s Bookstore in Madison CT.

We are made to be instruments of healing and reconciliation.

So I think of the Roman Catholic chapel at the prison in Concord. When you walk in you see a statue of Mother Theresa who visited there back in the 1980s; you see Greek Orthodox icons of the resurrection that I’ve talked about so much, with the Risen Jesus holding the wrist of Adam and Eve as he lifts them out of Hades to join him in the Resurrection.

Then, along the left-hand side of the wall are these large three-dimensional Stations of the Cross. The writing on them I think is Polish. 

All these images are portals that the Word of God shines through.

One of the inmates says their mission in prison is also to be portals of Christ to other inmates who see themselves and this universe as hopeless and lost.

You and I are also portals of Christ, the Word of God.

Which means every day we must renew and deepen our faith in the Christmas Story of the Prologue of John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth…. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace….No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known.”

Merry Christmas!