24 December 2016
Text: Isa 7:10-14, Mic 5:2-5a, Isa 9:2-7, Matt 1:18-25,
Matt 2:1-12, John 1:1-14
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
Christmas
is a time of nostalgia and memories, memories triggered by ornaments and decorations
and repeated family rituals, by familiar sights and smells of the season. And in calling to mind these memories from our
past, we are reminded of our family members who are no longer with us, as well
as the realization that the babies have become children who have become
grownups who have become grandparents. The
passage of time is a mystery, for when we are young, it creeps along at an
agonizingly slow pace (especially waiting for Christmas to come), whereas as we
age, the years seem to fly by.
The
series of readings traditionally read and pondered on Christmas Eve call to
mind memories of the distant past, memories of our fall into sin, and of our
deserved mortality and condemnation as a result of our transgressions.
But
we also ponder God’s acting in a way that defies reason. He is willing to suffer for our salvation. He is willing to die that we might live. He, the Divine, is willing to become human so
that humanity might intermingle with the divine. And He does this through love: the Son is of
the Father’s love begotten, and through a mother’s love is a Son born to all
the world, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.”
Just
as we participate in family rituals, including sights, sounds, touch, smells, and
taste – so too does our family the Church. Our senses call to mind the working
of the Lord in human history, through the prophets of Israel, the people to
whom they preached were they through whom the Lord would take flesh, the people
who would be the down-payment on the redemption of the whole world.
“The
Lord spoke to Ahaz,” and his oracle was recorded by Isaiah: “Behold, the virgin
shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” For seven hundred years these words were read
wherever God’s people gathered, waiting for the fullness of time when the
prophecy would put on flesh, when the ritual would be replaced by the reality.
The
city of Bethlehem, today a hotspot of violence and terror, was in the days of
Micah the prophet, a sleepy, inconsequential village. But the little town of Bethlehem, the village
whose name means “House of Bread,” would become the breadbasket of salvation,
the place where the Bread of Life come down from heaven would emerge from His
mother, that same flesh to be multiplied miraculously in space and time, even
unto our very age where we gather tonight, participating in the miracle of the
incarnation anew.
Isaiah
also spoke of darkness and light. The
darkness of sin and death are to be illuminated by the light of the Christ, the
light of the star of Bethlehem, the light of the hosts of heaven appearing to
shepherds, the Uncreated Light of light who is “very God of very God.” Indeed, “the people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light.” How many
memories we have, dear friends, of holding candles and singing “Silent Night”
with our children and our loved ones as time passes. And how many memories we have of candles lit
in churches while services have gone on from the days of the apostles until
today. Even in places where candles were
too expensive or where our brethren had to meet under the cover of darkness to
escape persecution, the Light of Christ still shone brightly in their hearts
and in the Word of God proclaimed among all who gather around the Lord Jesus.
And
in the fullness of time, the Holy Spirit came upon the virgin Mary, and the
Father brought forth a Son according to the flesh, and His name was “Immanuel
(which means God with us).” The angel of
the Lord warned Joseph not to divorce his betrothed, for she had been faithful
to him, and the Lord had used her to faithfully bring the Savior into the
world.
And
that world has never been the same, dear friends. For more than a few Jews living in Bethlehem
were affected by this great and mighty wonder. Gentiles from the east, the Magi, came bearing
gifts: “gold and frankincense and myrrh,” royal gifts for a royal Child. “And they fell down and worshiped Him,”
worshiping the God in the form of a baby.
All
of those prophecies became reality in the incarnation of Jesus. All of those memories: rituals of words
confessing His coming, and rituals of actions, our bodily responses in worship,
brought alive in our senses of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste,
generation after generation, century after century, all were brought to their
fullness in a single quantum of space and time, that one redemptive and
creative moment when time froze, when the universe halted for less than a
nanosecond, when the past met the future in the present and in the presence of
God’s physical conception in Mary’s womb, and then in the revelation of the
Christ child at His birth. How utterly
remarkable and beyond human reasoning and understanding, dear friends!
For
the coming of Jesus is where past, present, and future meet, where the entire
universe finds its fulfillment in a single human cell. This fleshly incarnation of Jesus unites the
time of “In the beginning,” when the Word was creating all things with the
Father and the Holy Spirit, with that moment when “The Word became flesh and
dwelt among us.”
Nothing
was ever the same after. For Christ came
to restore a broken world, to cure human disease, to end all of creation’s
struggle and strife, to restore peace between God and man, and to raise us from
death unto eternal life in a new and incorruptible body, not the body of a
spirit or of an angel, but the glorious body of humanity: male and female
bodies created in the very image of God, a flesh and blood body redeemed by the
flesh and blood of Christ, by our Immanuel, of Him who is truly God With Us!
Let
us revel and celebrate these Christmas memories! Allow these rituals to bring richness to the
reality of life! Take in the candles and
music, the sights and smells, the hugs and the smiles, the joys of being
together, and even the pain of separation – and allow these memories to point
you to the Christ Child, to the Word Made Flesh, to the Lamb who went to the
cross to redeem you, to the Great Physician who has come to heal you, to the
Good Shepherd who gathers all of His sheep promising them resurrection in a
body, even as our Lord took upon Himself a body in the womb of Mary, a body willing
to be put to death at the cross, a body that rose again from the grave, a body
given to you in the Most Holy Sacrament: His true flesh and blood, that the
divine might mingle with the human, and the human might be elevated to the
divine.
Let
these sights, sounds, touch, smells, and tastes trigger memories of the prophecies
and their fulfillment in Christ. For “the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of
the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Amen.
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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