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Christmas Morning
December 25, 2005
Delivered by Dora J. Odarenko, Seminarian
Isaiah 52.7-10
Psalm 98
Hebrews 1.1-12
John 1.1-14
Please pray with me: Dearest Lord, on this, your most special morning, let us turn with all our hearts towards you and to the gift of your great love and joy, so that your light may live in us as you have wished it to do since the beginning of time. We ask in the name of the Trinity: Creator, Redeemer, and Peace-Maker for the world. AMEN
From this morning's Gospel: "But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God" (John 1.12).
My mother was a hard worker, wonderfully generous with her time and resources. I can hear her saying, "Here it is, eleven o'clock at night, and I'm still in the kitchen." But even more, at the end of such long days, I remember her quoting an old hymn, "Joy cometh in the morning." She meant a heavenly joy, and it was her staunch faith that this would be so.
Today has brought us a morning of great joy: Christmas Day that is on a Sunday. I'm so glad that we're all here, that we have taken the time to be here in peace and joy together. There was less traffic in my little town than usual when I left early this morning, and there seemed to be such a quiet over the landscape, as though for this time at least the world was breathing more gently. This is a day to smile at strangers and receive a smile in return, a time when we can look around with more innocent eyes.
Oh I know that in households with children there has been commotion for hours, and I realize that many of you were up late with preparations and rose early as well. But even if the day is minutely choreographed, it is a day of dancing for those we care for, for those with whom we are in relationship.
It is also a high feast day, however we spend it, a day when there has been a commingling of heaven and earth, each touching the other so that-at least for now-- nothing is quite the same. I am convinced that the very atmosphere is different spiritually; it is not just cultural. Even at day's end-if you are like me-you may resist being drawn more and more back to earth. I long for the music and twinkling lights and fellowship and memories of Christmas-and the moment for putting up my feet and savoring the day--to continue; I long for the love and joy to continue. All these things are angels' song to me. I want to continue to sing them.
I wonder whether the shepherds felt this way when they returned from the manger in Bethlehem. After a night unlike any other-that began in shock and ended in joy--they had no choice but to go back to their fields and their sheep, the cold and the dark. But I like to think they went back with a difference-and that they went back singing. Luke tells us that "they returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen" (2.20). I know that at least some of them continued doing so.
The opening of the Gospel of John that we heard this morning-John's Prologue--is also a song. It is, in fact, a monumental hymn that glorifies and praises the gift of Christ's coming among us. So powerful is it that we hear it every Christmas. John's Gospel doesn't include the story of the Nativity in the way Matthew and Luke do, but the Prologue contains his version of the Nativity and its solemn and beautifully constructed verses are a poem to Christ: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was turned toward God, and what God was the Word also was. 2. He was in the beginning with God."[1]
These verses stress the relationship, explained to Mary and to the shepherds, between the Father and the Son. Instead of the story of the birth and promise of a baby, verse 14 in John tells us that the Word, the Son, 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. And the glory with which the angels envelop the shepherds becomes the Light that fills John's Prologue and that shines throughout the Gospel of John: What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people (1.3-4).
I am nourished by John's Prologue at Christmas because it places Christ and the event in Bethlehem within the story of all that God has done and continues to do in the world from the very beginning. John's opening words are echoes of the first chapter of Genesis: "Then God said, "Let there be light" (1.3). Like Genesis, John's Prologue shows God acting through the Logos, through powerful speech, powerful words.
The Logos is complex, but it is so wonderful that it need not overwhelm us. For Greek readers and listeners, the Logos was "the divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe and links the human mind to the mind of God."[2] Its feminine synonym is Sophia or Wisdom. In late Judaism, Sophia became a separate being through whom God created the world and who asked permission to come to earth. Although God agreed, the earth rejected Wisdom, and so Wisdom became the book of Moses.
The shocker in John-and its brilliance--is that Logos is no longer a book, but the person of Jesus Christ, who took on our flesh, our mortality and all its limitations.[3] Throughout the Old Testament, flesh and all that is fleshly is the very antithesis of God: flesh is grass. But the mystery of the Annunciation, of the birth in Bethlehem, and of Christmas is that the Logos became this flesh, totally identifying with humanity, except for sin. Moreover, the Logos lives or dwells among us by literally pitching his tent in our midst. I love to remember that image of the incarnation as heavenly-designated campout. Of course Christ must be everywhere that we are.
Whether or not the events happened just as Luke and Matthew tell us they did in Bethlehem, the stories reinforce our faith. They make our faith grow. The Bethlehem story can be misunderstood, taken simply as a beautiful story of long ago, a story that draws us in as wonderful stories do, but that can also have something of the fairytale about it. And so Christmas becomes a nostalgic time. In like fashion, John tells us-warns us--that Jesus, the Word made flesh, is misunderstood: He was in the world, and the world was made through him; yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not."[4]
We may be nostalgic for Christmas, but Christmas is not a time of or for mere nostalgia. John next verse includes me and you. It gives us our own marching orders, our hope--and our continuing Christmas: But to those who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God (vs. 12). Receiving and believing go together. And just as in the Annunciation and the Bethlehem stories, we respond best with our hearts. These stories tell us to listen and to look: God is among us, ordinary and imperfect as we may be. John adds to that by telling us that in receiving and believing we become what God intends, the beloved children of God.
Celebrating Christmas means that we allow Christmas to continue to happen in our lives. The Good News is that when we prop up our feet this evening, the experience-and the love and joy-are just beginning. Saying "yes" to this experience will transform our lives and the lives of those around us. It will transform a world that is weary and sad, that all too often is still laboring at eleven o'clock at night.
And the best of all is that we are not self-made. We don't have to do it all ourselves. We can receive because our God is the one who offers, who speaks. Through that Word-- through the birth of Jesus-- God gifts us, receives us, enfolds us as God's most beloved children. And in turn, the beauty of our Christmas worship and of our Christmas Day is loved by God because it is filled with our love for Him and for His Son.
In a reflection on "Christmas Gifts," Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, captures the joy of our best work today: "Today, as we celebrate the Father's gift to himself of his everlasting Word and the Father's gift to us of that same Word in Jesus Christ, as we celebrate that unimaginable flowing forth of joy, generosity, and compassion, all we can do in response is expose ourselves to the shock of it, allow ourselves to be opened by it, and, stumblingly, make such gestures as we can of generous, joyful love."[5] AMEN
1 Translation by Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., The Gospel of John, Sacra Pagina Series, Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., Editor (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1998), p. 33.
2 The HarperCollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, Wayne A. Meeks, general editor (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), note to 1.1, p. 2013.
3 HarperCollins Study Bible, note to 1.14, p. 2014.
4 Translation by Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., 33.
5 Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness: Sermons and Reflections (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cowley Publications, 1995), 25.
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