December 1998 Issue

It is no easy task to form a sermon for Christmas. We think we know the story so well, we have heard it so often, that there is little new to our ears. And if it is hard to find the new, how can we also find the Good News we are called to proclaim? But in fact, we really do not know the Christmas story as well as we think, no matter how often we have heard it, or how deeply we love its moving and touching components. For Christmas has become so muddled in the American mind, so encrusted by all sorts of extraneous customs and emotions, that the central truth of this feast, namely that the Word became flesh, is all too often obscured, even forgotten in the warmth of pageants, and the claims we have permitted by the ever-increasingly secular aspects of this holy time.

The preacher also faces an ambivalence some know only too well: The emotional drain that this entire season makes on many of our congregations, and frequently on the pastor as well. More than one pastor in a congregation finds Christmas a very difficult, even unpleasant time. On the one hand, in the liturgical churches a battle has been going on since early December: Why can't we sing Christmas carols on the first Sunday of the month, just like they do in the church down the street? That battle, and its attendant skirmishes, is nothing, however, in comparison to the pain we feel for others (and for ourselves?) who find this season almost a burden: The member who has lost a spouse since last Christmas; the childless couple who may feel a certain emptiness at this otherwise joyous time in the lives of children; the single person who is left uninvited to any family feast; and on and on. The recognition that Christmas is a tapestry with its threads of gold and silver to be sure, but also its deeper, darker threads is something which the preacher must keep in mind. It is to this pastoral ambivalence that a word must be spoken.

Today's reading from St. John is among the loftiest portions in all of Holy Scripture. We know it as the prologue, although in fact it is as much summary as introduction. Raymond Brown has suggested that only after the entire content of the Fourth Gospel has been studied (we may say, reviewed) can the prologue be understood fully.¹ We might apply Brown's insight in this way: If this sermon is preached on the Sunday after Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, then we are likely to find the mood of today's service more sublime. Metaphorically, the angels have returned to heaven, and their jubilant song is now a cherished echo. It is left for those who heard the glorious music of the night sky and who raised a chorus in reply now to "make sense" of what happened. That, of course, is the overarching purpose of St. John's account of the Good News: To help us see that in Jesus there is a fullness of grace and glory, of light and life. And we might follow on the thoughts of Irenaeus, that in the Incarnation, God became what we are in order that we might become what God is -- and thus be filled with that same grace and glory, light and life. It is not, of course, our grace, our glory, our light or life, but the divine grace imparted to us in the Word now made flesh.

It seems that not only is John referring to the historical events of our Lord's birth, and its eternal significance, but he is also elevating our understanding of that mystery to ways in which we might participate. If Irenaeus is right, then the Incarnation is something which involves us as well: To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. [John 1:12] This all-encompassing invitation now unites in Christ's Name all those for whom this season is an ambivalent one. It underscores the joys of those who already experience Christmas as a joyous time, and it offers an invitation of hope to those who are "excluded" from the feast, by reason of their loneliness, their despair, their guilt.

And the feast goes on. The preacher may well have the wish to weave into the sermon the subtle tones of sacramental theology which give such strength to this Gospel. If that be the case, well and good. If, on the other hand, the preacher does not put too fine a sacramental point on this sermon, there is still a significant observation to share in conclusion, which points out the ongoing meaning and hope of the Incarnation. It is well-expressed in the last verse of John Betjeman's (1906-1984) poem, Christmas. Writes this English poet and devoted Christian,

"No love that in a family dwells,

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

Can with this single Truth compare

That God was Man in Palestine

And lives to-day in Bread and Wine."

It would seem that this observation captures a most important theme and truth which the preacher might well proclaim, in this season of ambivalent joy.

The Reverend William M. Shand, III