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Christmas Day
Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7 We have no time to lose. Jesus has been born in Bethlehem. He came into this world amid a blaze of glorious heavenly light. Angels sang and shepherds came and left Mary pondering all these things in her heart. Now it is our turn to continue God’s praise to the end of and into all eternity. The Church must be about the business of worshipping Almighty God. It is our responsibility to tell same the good news that the shepherds told as they returned to their flocks. In the City of David a Savior has been born who is Christ the Lord. It is our turn to “Sing to the Lord a new song” -- to “proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day.” But wait – what about those other people we talked about yesterday who are on the stage of history with Mary and Joseph and Sweet Baby Jesus? What will the Emperor think if people everywhere begin to praise the Newborn King? What will our families and friends think? In his book The Mystery of Christ, Thomas Keating sets forth this dilemma. He says, “In the light of the Christmas-Epiphany Mystery, we perceive that union with Christ is not some kind of spiritual happy hour. It is a war with the powers of evil that killed Jesus and that might kill us, too, if we get in their way.”[1] He continues, “Because we live in the human condition, the divine light is constantly being challenged by the repressive and regressive forces within us as individuals and within society, neither of which wants to hear about love, certainly not about self-giving love.” In order to evaluate our own place in this struggle, we would do well to ponder what is at stake. We could spend some time thinking about what was on the line in the birth of Jesus Christ. God appears to have been living by the motto “no risk – no return; high risk – high return” because in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God bet the whole farm. God had one chance to roll the dice and he took it. Once Jesus had been conceived in the womb of Mary, there was no turning back. You can’t unconceive someone once they have been conceived. Mary made a dangerous trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem - probably in her last trimester. Mary gave birth to Jesus in an unconventional situation. She was dangerously close to Jerusalem and the treacherous King Herod who was determined to destroy the Newborn King. God obviously considered that we are worth the risk. God created us for fellowship with him. We broke that relationship with God through our own sin. God loved us still, so God reached out with all that he had. The love within the Holy and Blessed Trinity is so strong that it burst forth into the world in the person of Jesus Christ. We who have been baptized into Christ have been exposed to that light. That burst of divine light is still shining in all of Jesus’ followers. Our daily lives can be permeated with the divine light that first shown in Bethlehem. This light presents us with the truth about ourselves and about our need for God. Its beams cut across our hypocrisy and all our pretensions. It humbles us and brings us down to earth with a thud of reality. Standing in that light, we realize that God is God, and we are not God. If we live in this light, our everyday duties can take on a sacramental quality, as we offer our lives and our work to God. It is no wonder, then, that the forces of evil will fight God’s love tooth and nail. These forces would like the world’s peoples to continue to roll around in the squalor of sin. These same forces of evil are probably beside themselves with glee over all the wars and cruelty that are afoot in the world right now. They are probably thrilled at all the power struggles going on within the churches. Jesus came on that first Christmas with full intention of sticking it out and dwelling among us. He finally “gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.” (Titus 2:14) Now that we know this about Jesus, we have no time to lose. It’s time to get to work. Amen. [1] Keating, Thomas, The Mystery of Christ (New York: Continuum, 1999), 17
On the grounds of Honey Creek
The Rev. Linda McCloud, Pastor |
