From the First Sunday of Christmas
Merry Christmas! Today is the fifth day of the twelve days of Christmas.The last four weeks of Advent we have spent in longing and waiting for the Incarnation of Christ at his birth and in anticipation of his coming again in Glory. But Christmas Day marks the first day of the 12 days of Christmas, or Christmastide, where we are invited to feast and celebrate what a truly life changing event occurred in Christ becoming Emmanuel, God with us. It’s too magnificent to be confined to one day of celebration.
Most of us, myself included, almost celebrate Christmastide in reverse order, where the feasting is over on Christmas night. As Kevin can attest to all my Christmas decor that’s up in November, I have no qualms with early decorations and festivities, as I have come to embrace this temporary beautifying of our homes and lawns as a means in partaking in the hope of a new creation.
But I’ve found that in tuning into the church calendar a bit more provides a slower cadence in my life that helps me revel in the various seasons a bit longer, gleaning the growth and the joy that can come from each one. Giving way to Advent and learning to soak in the true wonder of Christmas will surely be a lifelong practice for me.
This morning our Gospel reading is in John 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
To be completely honest, I have wrestled with this sermon today. I think there is so much commercialized pressure, and I think some of it to be very appropriate, to preach a overly joyful sermon for the first Sunday of Christmas. Christ came and made his home among us! What a joyous and world altering event. If it were not for God’s self-emptying love in sending Christ to us, what helpless state would we all be in right now?
But after speaking with some of you and hearing your stories of how this season can be a painful time instead of a joyful one, and after watching the news and seeing the groaning of creation both here in America and abroad where innocent children are dying in war torn countries, I have been wondering what the good news of Christmas actually means and actually looks like in the midst of a hurting world that’s in process of being fully redeemed?
Kevin mentioned in his brief Christmas Eve sermon that perhaps we have become too familiarized with the Christmas story to the point where the Incarnation of Christ no longer bewilders our spirits and hearts. It’s good news, but why? It’s good news, but the world is still groaning. How do we reconcile these realities?
Eugene Peterson’s translation of John 1:14 says, “The word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” From the way he grew in his mother’s womb, to a presumably very messy, non-sterile birth in a barn in Bethlehem, God saw fit that the story of all creation’s redemption in Jesus began just like the rest of ours: in our most naked and vulnerable state as infants.
And not long after his birth, Jesus and his parents had to flee Bethlehem to Egypt as refugees to escape the genocide of all male infants by Herod’s command. Before the king of the universe could even talk, thousands of babies would sacrifice their lives while his family was on the run. The circumstances he was born into were not picturesque at all.
Malcolm Guite, Anglican priest and poet from the UK said in his book Waiting on the Word,
“As our houses are deluged in a cascade of cosy Christmas images, glittery frosted cards and happy, holy families who seem to be remarkably comfortable in strangely clean stables, we can lose track of the essential gospel truth: that the world into which God chose to be born for us was then, as now, fraught with danger and menace. Indeed, we will not understand the light that shines at Christmas if we remove the dark backdrop.”
I know you’re probably thinking “why so much doom and gloom on Christmas, Adrienne?! Why is the way Christ entered the world good news?” My intention is certainly not to rob anyone of the merriment of the season, but to convey that Christ was born into whatever bleak circumstances we find ourselves in. The state of our hearts, our lives, and our world were not too dark for Christ to enter into.
And we do not dispel the powers of darkness by ignoring them or painting it over with niceties or willing them to go away. We dispel the powers of darkness in our lives by having a revelation that the True Light has come to shine in its midst. John 1 says, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.”
It was during one the the darkest night’s of my soul that I had a revelation of this side of Emmanuel, Christ with me in the trenches. In December of 2018, the twins were just a couple months old, so we were in the throws still with newborns, when Naomi got deathly ill. Her heart had stopped, and she had to be resuscitated with chest compressions and multiple shots of epinephrin after going septic from a common cold.
There was a moment in the midst of utter despair that has remained so pivotal for me understanding Christ’s heart all these years later. Kevin and I were on our knees in a children’s play room just outside the ER waiting to hear from the physicians if they had stabilized Naomi or not. I asked Kevin, “Are we going to get to bring our girl home?” And he looked at me earnestly and said, “I don’t know, but I know it will be okay.” I believe he had a prior understanding of Christ’s nearness to Naomi’s suffering and to ours that I wouldn’t fully grasp until that moment. Christ was with us, in the realest way.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has, “set eternity in our hearts.” Have you ever had that ache and longing in your bones that you were made for another world, and that another world is possible? Because you are and it is! In retrospect 6 years later, I can identify the peace I had in that moment of uncertainty on the hospital floor was Christ truly with me, anchoring me into the hope of the Great Restoration. Eternity was set in my heart in that moment. If Christ came, and Christ died, and christ rose from the dead, then surely Christ will come again.
This was the beginning of my understanding of the good news of the incarnation of Christ. The title “Emmanuel” wasn’t just a nice idea offered to humanity to placate us in our misery. The God of the universe put on our flesh and bone and made his holy dwelling among us and in us. And it’s by His spirit that we can be emboldened to say with all sincerity that all will be well, even if it’s not this side of heaven.
David cries out to God in Psalm 139 with words far better than mine, words that echo the promise of Emmanuel:
“Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.”
“The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.”
It is sometimes much easier to feel Christ’s presence with us in our mountaintop moments or moments of miraculous breakthrough. It’s much more vulnerable and requires faith to say, “Jesus you are with me in my suffering.” It often times feels more like, “God, are you with me at all?” But David says if we make our beds in the depths of hell, if our world is in flames, Christ is there.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
Is life going well for you? Praise God. Emmanuel.
Are you sick or is your body failing? Emmanuel.
Are you poor and hungry? Emmanuel.
Are you in over your head? Emmanuel.
Is your heart broken and in despair? Emmanuel.
Malcolm Guite goes on to say in this same book, referencing the Incarnate Lord, “We have a shepherd who knows what it is like to be a lamb. He has himself been one of the vulnerable flock, he has been misled by false shepherds, and made victim of the wolf. And that is why he is able to wipe away the tears from our eyes, because he himself has wept them.”
Our tears, our sufferings, are not wasted in the kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is able to be an effective high priest precisely because he came to share in our sufferings, and in turn, we share in his. His body, broken for us. His blood, poured out for us.
The angel Gabriel announced to Mary that Christ's birth is good news of great joy for all people. My hope and prayer for us all, and I’d encourage you to pray this as well, is that Christ would give us each greater revelation of what it means for him to be Emmanuel in our lives. Jesus, I believe you are with us. Will you heal our places of unbelief and give us tender hearts to see you in our midst?
And in that revelation, would He then help us to be that to those in need around us. When we practice meeting the needs of the poor, long suffering with those afflicted with illness, and when we care for the widows and orphans among us, we are getting to share in being Christ Incarnate for those people. We get to be active participants in this Good News of Great Joy!
I’d love to close by reading this passage from the Revelation to John in chapter 21:
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Emmanuel, Christ came, and our greater hope still, Christ died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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