christmas-2020-st-peters.md

Christmas Eve 2020

St. Peter’s, Great Falls, SC

Incarnation as God’s remedy to great need.

There is an ancient tradition, from the earliest centuries of Christianity, that the sin and brokenness of the world as we know it was of such a weight, such a consequence, so much a burden, that the only remedy God had was to send His Son – the Incarnation.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. … Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory—the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father.

So we read from the opening of John’s Gospel. It’s the appointed gospel reading for Christmas morning.

The need for the Incarnation was very great. And in response to the great need that we presented, God made the Word to become flesh. That’s what the word incarnation.

Great need

We’ve become accustomed to great need this past year. There was a great need for treatment of Covid-19. A great need for a vaccine against it. A great need for a remedy to the economic catastrophe that has been slowly unfolding as a result of the pandemic. A great need for the economic catastrophe rolling across rural America. A great need for the global catastrophe more slowly but more universally rolling across the globe. A great need in houses, in neighborhoods, in living rooms, and in homeless shelters, in hospitals overwhelmed, in the hungry, the sick, the dying, … and the list goes on.

This year of our Lord, 2020, has brought us many things that are not happy events. It has brought us need in immeasurable ways. It leaves us with a strong and vivid sense of our need for remedies.

The need …

  • for hope
  • for the ability to overcome evil
  • for life in the face of the onslaught of aging and disease
  • for love in a world that seems to honor avarice and selfishness

“The need is very great” – we can feel it in our bones. We can surely relate to it.

And God said, “I hear you. And I’m sending you Jesus – my beloved son.” Christmas – what brings us together tonight – is our celebration of the great remedy from God – the Incarnation.

The great story

The bidding prayer we heard at the beginning of tonight’s liturgy is written as an introduction and invitation to hearing the great story that we as Christians have to tell. I used it last year to introduce a reading from a very abbreviated retelling of the whole biblical story. Tonight I have not included even an abbreviated version. We’ll have to leave what I left out to a “between the lines” sort of story, listening for the story behind the words.

Last year’s version began “Once upon a time”, and it ended “The prince and princess get married and live happily ever after.”

For decades since I first heard that version I have thought that it was profoundly true to the spirit of the biblical story.

In just the last weeks I have heard another phrase that captures much of our story as well. It comes from the oldest epic poem that we have – at least the oldest that was written down. (Gilgamesh)

It is an old story
But one that can still be told
About a man who loved
And lost a friend to death …

The story we have to tell is an old, old story. But it’s always new. It’s about a great need and an even greater remedy. It’s an old story, but it can still be told because it is true and vast and important. It is the Christmas story.

Music

This year, for me, it was listening to Christmas music that opened up the story. I wasn’t hearing the remedy, God’s gift to us, until I listened over and over again to the music of the season, in preparation for tonight. It inspired me to try to provide some bit of echo of the music of Christmas for us tonight.

Is it nostalgia? Is it a desire for “normalcy” ? These are powerful enough for us this Christmas the year of our Lord 2020. Yes, but it is so much more.

The time is coming – and soon will be – when the pathways will be made straight. When hope will not just be possible but visible and tangible.

4 Every valley must be elevated and every mountain and hill leveled. The rough terrain will become a level plain, the rugged landscape a wide valley. 5 The splendor of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it at the same time. For the Lord has decreed it.” (Isaiah 40)

Hope for the remedy is well founded. The remedy is at hand. God is with us. Immanuel.

Blessed Christmas to one an all.

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