title: Sermon for Christmas morning
subtitle: The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway
author: St. Alfred's, Palm Harbor
date: December 25, 2023
Change. Christmas and our relationship to it.
When I was a child I thought like a child. I had dreams like a child. I related to Christmas like a child. When I became an adult I generally related to Christmas like I did when I was a child. I began to have children, and we wanted them to experience Christmas as we had known it. And then especially after I was ordained and had children at home on Christmas morning – children who were especially eager to get gifts unwrapped and surprises unsurprised, we had a rule that before Christmas morning Eucharist everyone could open just one gift – but their daddy had to celebrate the Eucharist so we at a light breakfast and off I went.
Now I'm an old man. Christmas feel different. I see the festivities as if looking on from a distance, and I wonder what happened to Christmas? And what is Christmas? The Christmas spirit? What's it all about?1
Surely as we age we look on Christmas differently. What do we say when the children and grandchildren are all gone and far away and Christmas is all around us but the old ways don't work the way they used to? It turns out that …
Christmas itself wasn't always the way it is today or yesterday.
For the first two centuries, in the Church, there wasn't a December holiday called Christmas or anything else. There were non-Christian festivals. Fire festivals and prayers to the gods and goddesses. Of course there was the cycle of the sun in relation to the Earth. A relationship that we are newly aware of in the consciousness of global environmental change.
As Christianity became the formal religion of theRoman Empire, things began to change with Christmas. The old ways were stamped out while Christmas, i.e. the celebration of the birth of the Messiah, was implemented. There was a helpful emphasis on the newly decreed faith of the Church: Jesus was both God and Human.
Christmas fell in and out of favor over the years, but it became wildly popular in the 19th century because of the confluence of actions by songwriters, storytellers, state lawmakers, artists, and shopkeepers seeking profits. Come the 20th century and there emerges a Christmas as we now remember it. Traditions and customs that help to make the world go round.
But again I ask, what's it all about?
Nativity as metaphor
I wonder sometimes if it might not be just one giant metaphor. What if the story of the Christ child, born in a manger, with shepherds and kings about him, was a metaphor for an even bigger story? I may get in trouble when I tell you that I think that kind of gets at what it's all about. Christmas is about Incarnation. It is about great human longing and the response to that longing by a loving God.
Incarnation and Embodiment
At the heart of it is a story of a great need. Our needs are changing from youth to adult to old age. Our needs change as we age, but longing itself remains. We long:
- for love
- for hope
- for the ability to overcome evil
- for life in the face of the onslaught of aging and disease
- for well-being 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 today – is our celebration of the great remedy from God – the Incarnation.
The word means: embodiment, personification, epitome, impersonation, portrayal.
It means a turning one thing into another. A becoming. A new beginning.
A parable
Throughout his ministry Jesus told stories. There's something about stories. It seems that perhaps that's a little bit of What it's all about. A famous writer of the 19th century told a story. The story is about a king and a humble maiden.
Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents.
And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden who lived in a poor village in his kingdom. How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist-no one dared resist him. But would she love him?
She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? Would she be happy at his side? How could he know for sure? If he rode to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross the gulf between them. For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal.
The king, convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, resolved to descend to her. Clothed as a beggar, he approached her cottage with a worn cloak fluttering loose about him. This was not just a disguise – the king took on a totally new identity – He had renounced his throne to declare his love and to win hers.
A song
Jesus is somehow the perfect "embodiment" of God's response to our great needs. This most amazing truth has been proclaimed from the earliest days of the church. It is about somehow or other God's very self becoming human. One of us.
I took particular delight in a popular song of some years ago. 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, Osborne 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 the singer 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.
"In-carnation"
It is a pregnant and rich concept. On this Christmas day soak it in and hold onto it. Incarnation. God's response to our great needs.
Think of these words:
"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. It connects a noun with a quality. Think of someone who "embodies" the things we long for. The things you need.
- love
- generosity
- self-sacrifice
- service to the least of God's children
- kindness
- gentleness
- gracefulness
- courage
God became flesh to embody those things. Meditate on these and then be them yourself. As Jesus embodies them for you, be that for the world around you.
The big story:
Our God is a great and mighty God. He loves to make things. He loves to love. He is willing to do whatever it takes.
We in this place and this time are the characters in God’s great story. We may be small and insignificant in the larger context of the universe, but we are the most important people right here and right now, for telling the story. Today we celebrate and remember the power and meaning of the Incarnation. And we give thanks. To God.
Alfie (Song by Dionne Warwick)↩
