Sermon for December 31, 2023 – The First Sunday after Christmas
What does the Incarnation mean to you?
Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147:13-21; Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40
Our theology and tradition tell us that it means that God chose to enter into our humanity, in all of its fullness and foibles, its power and pain, its joys and sorrows. It means that God would even experience death itself, only to defeat its determined grip on our lives and turn it into eternal life. But what does it really mean for us, here and now and today, beyond the promise of an empty tomb?
I sat with this question all week, a week that has been for me a bit of a surprising quiet respite following a muted celebration of Christmas…thanks COVID. I sat with this question as Stevie feverishly tore through beautifully wrapped presents to see what surprises were inside. I sat with this question as we had a simple Christmas dinner of frozen pizzas. I sat with this question as I once again read and prayed with the beautifully poetic opening of John’s gospel. What does the incarnation mean to me?
That God was born, was human, means that I matter -- that I am special. Not in some sort of narcissistic, egocentric, kind of way, but because to be human can never be a generalized claim. To be human is to be you as God created you; in all your unique and beautiful ways.
And no, it’s not all about you, but it’s everything about you. The incarnation is this radically reciprocal reality. God’s commitment to being human in Jesus is God also saying, “I am committed to you being you and being fully you.” It is God saying “I love the true you.”
This message, that I matter to God, is one that I need to hear over and over again. Too often I can get lost in my own head and convince myself that perhaps the darkness did overcome the light. But then we hear those opening words of John’s Gospel each Christmas morning and I remember the hope that was born in this Christmas season; the hope of the Incarnation.
The season of Christmas comes at a time when the darkness and cold of the winter season sets in. It comes as a reminder that death and darkness never have the last word over new birth and the brightness of light. It is a reminder that Christ’s coming is in some ways really a returning, an incarnation of the Word that was with God before all things. It is a reminder that original goodness and light were here before the descent into sin and darkness, and that even in our darkest moments we can realize the hope of return and rebirth.
Jesus comes to us in the middle of the longest nights of the year, to rekindle the light of truth in our hearts and enlighten us with love. As Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4th-century patriarch of Constantinople and one of the Cappadocian Fathers puts it, we anticipate “the arrival of God among us, so that we might go to God, or more precisely, return to [God]. So that stripping off the old humanity we might put on the new; and as in Adam we were dead, so in Christ we might be made alive, be born with him, rise again with him… A miracle, not of creation, but rather of re-creation.”
Our yearly anticipation of Christmas is about this hope of re-creation and transformation amidst darkness, hope of being created anew in Christ, a hope made possible by God having lived through one of us, through Jesus. And it is our hope that through Jesus we return to God. The prologue to John’s Gospel offers a glimpse of this hope by painting a picture of the divine dance of the Word and God, in which and through which all things came into being. With the incarnation this hope was born into our world to cast away the darkness.
But it can be very hard to hold on to hope sometimes, especially when we’re suffering and afraid. If you find yourself trapped and struggling in darkness and pain, or suffering in the shadows of a heavy heart, I just want to say… there is hope in the light of Christ that is once again born into our hearts, miracles of mercy and love do happen, regularly, and that the darkness does not overcome the light.
Those horrible, dark, and painful places of the heart where questions and doubts ferment, those long nights without hope, always end with the start of new day. The fruit of Jesus’ birth, the miracle of Christ’s light and love, it truly exists for all of us, and it will one day, soon, deliver us from darkness and pain; as John writes “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
In our contemporary cultural context in which material reality is often seen as more important than spiritual reality, we face the challenges of following the Way, walking in the light, in a world that doesn’t recognize the light.
The demands of the season of Christmas can skew our perspectives and transfigure our hearts in ways that can lead us away from seeing the fullness of the Incarnation that began before time and will come to its fullness at the end of time. Now that the presents are unwrapped and the family get-togethers are over, the celebration of Christmas ends and the work of Christmas begins. We can now refocus our reflective gaze upon the Christ child and remember that through Jesus, the Word made flesh, the light that overcame the darkness, we have a way to return to God. Because the Word was with God and was God, and that all things came into being through him, we are indeed brought into a new creation through Jesus. We can now carry forth that Christmas hope of God’s mercy out into the world and reflect the light of Christ in the dark corners of our world.
As we begin a new year filled with all the hopes and dreams for what may come, may these words from theologian Howard Thurman echo in your hearts and minds:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
