Christmas Message 2021, St. Paul's

 

Christmas

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christmas/ChrsDay1_RCL.html

These are not the circumstances I expected for a Christmas message.

Like all of you I was caught off-guard when in the span of 24 hours it seemed clear that we would have to move back to being church virtually.

I am speaking to you now, trying to reach into your homes through the wonder of modern technology, while what most of us are probably most aware of is the distance between us.

I do know, however, that each of us is doing the best we can with the deck of cards that we have been dealt. The wonder of God's work in us is precisely that God takes who and what we are and works with that. God isn't finished with any of us.

Opening

It’s Christmas. The season of Christmas will stretch for 12 days. It’s all around us and its impact stretches as far as we can see. The supply chain, the success of the economy, images of lights and candles, and stories of generosity and self giving, -- all of these are impacted by what happens at Christmas time. Everyone knows it’s Christmas, but what it means is so many different things.

I was surprised to learn long ago that the sort of Christmas that we have been accustomed to was not always the case. Puritans looked down on Anglicans in the early days of our country thinking them beyond the pale because they celebrated Christmas. Many are aware of the traumatic invention of the consumer oriented Christmas of the last century or so. Similarly many are aware of the association of the winter solstice and the date chosen for the celebration of the incarnation.

If we go back 150 years or 850 years the celebration of Christmas was, of course, very different from what we are accustomed to today. So that if everything that we have been accustomed to seems to be thrown out the door with the realities and challenges of the era of pandemic and covid 19, well -- we're not so very different from where the church has been for the last 2,000 years.

Among other things it encourages me to try to focus on The Essentials, on what really matters about Christmas.

The main thing that has stood out for me over the years is the essential theological understanding of what Christmas is all about; namely, "Incarnation".

"In-carnation"

It's a Latin term made up of words for "becoming something" and "flesh". Not very interesting I guess in terms of grammar or the warmth that we get from hearing Christmas music. But it is a pregnant and rich concept soak in and hold on to. Incarnation means something like embodiment, becoming a body, being made manifest in a body.

Think of these words:

• incantation: making song
• illuminate: making light (the in-luminate doubles the consonate and becomes illuminate)
• incandescent: make glowing
• incense: make censing (burning perfume) # "Embodiment"

"Incarnation" is about embodying. In its Christmas usage: at this festival we celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus -- which is to say, "In Jesus we now have the embodiment of God's very self."

Embodiment. Embodies. Jesus the embodiment of God. Interesting word that -- "embodies".

It connects a noun with a quality.

Think of someone who "embodies"

• love
• generosity
• self-sacrifice
• service to the least of God's children
• kindness
• gentleness
• gracefulness
• courage

The list could be extended quite a ways, I think.

I could get lost in each one of those words, thinking of the possibilities and connections, the examples and -- well the embodiments of them.

I'm not so much interested here in how those words might be embodied in my life (or your life) as I am in the basic proclamation of Christmas; namely, that in the Incarnation Jesus embodied God.

These are days when we tend to hear about these kinds of examples. Just the other day I heard about one. ## Nonprofit "Santa’s Workshop Helps Families In Need" read the headline.

https://www.acn.news/nonprofit-santas-workshop-helps-families-in-need/

Cortney Loften has helped others during the holidays for over a decade but started the Red Sled Santa Foundation nearly two years ago. The nonprofit creates a meaningful Christmas by providing gifts and financial assistance to families in need.

The story that I heard on the news was about a project that the nonprofit was doing with a down syndrome group. They were helping the members to create toys and gifts to give to needy children. Because I have known some down syndrome people and I know how much love they have to give. The story brought tears to my eyes.

---

Teacher raising $

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/19/us/north-carolina-teacher-fundraiser-food-winter-break-durham/index.html

Another story appeared recently.

A teacher raised more than $100,000 to purchase enough food to keep thousands of children from going hungry over winter break

(CNN)Turquoise LeJeune Parker ends every class by telling each of her students she loves them.

The 34-year-old library teacher at Lakewood Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina, does everything she can to prove it, and her recent fundraiser, which collected $106,000 to feed her students in need, is her most recent gesture of love.

Winter break can mean weeks of food insecurity for children and their families, Durham Public Schools spokeswoman Crystal Roberts told CNN.

"It's a basic human right. We're not talking about raising money to buy people a vacation; this is food, a very, very basic thing," Parker said. "We need to make sure we take care of our schools, because when we take care of our schools, we're taking care of our community."

Her endeavor, which she named Mrs. Parker's Professors Foodraiser, used the money she raised to purchase, pack and distribute more than 5,200 bags full of food to students at 12 schools throughout the Durham Public Schools district.

The ways in which those characteristics get embodied is really boundless.

• love
• generosity
• self-sacrifice
• service to the least of God's children
• kindness
• gentleness
• gracefulness
• courage # The embodiment of God

The Word was made flesh

One of the gospel passages which is deeply associated with Christmas is not the "Christmas story". It is the Prologue to John's Gospel.

In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
The Word was with God in the beginning.

Everything came into being through the Word,
and without the Word
nothing came into being.

What came into being
through the Word was life,
and the life was the light for all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.

Jesus as "embodiment"

This most amazing truth has been proclaimed from the earliest days of the church. It is in somehow or other God's very self becoming human. One of us.

I was amazed and delighted with a popular song of 25 years ago or so. It was titled "One of us" and sung by Joan Osborne. The opening stanza of the song is:

If God had a name what would it be? And would you call it to his face? If you were faced with Him in all His glory What would you ask if you had just one question?

Then in masterful fashion, she sings the line: "What if God was one of us?"

I was amazed at the popularity of the song at the time. But even more amazed because she is asking one of the most profound Christian questions there is. "What if God was one of us?" Well, that is precisely what the Incarnation is all about. That is what happened. And what does it mean? For us, for the world?

God Himself / Herself is embodied in Jesus.

• God who is beyond gender was manifest in a very real male person
• God who loves and embraces all at all times, from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high, was embodied in a 1st c. Palestinian laborer

God became flesh. It is a most breath-taking proclamation.