THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS DAY
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18
(Year C)
Somehow it’s hard to think
about the fact that technically, according to the church, it is still
Christmas. We are still surrounded by the sights and smells of it all, but
Christmas Eve, just a week ago, feels like it happened months ago to me.
While the Christmas
festivities for many can be a very difficult time, I find New Year’s more of a
downer. Another year has ended, another year checked off the calendar of our
lives. We’re a year older, one year closer to the end. This week especially,
has pointed out in many ways how fleeting is time, how precarious is life. We
have seen the death of a beloved president and the execution of a brutal
dictator. This parish has suffered the death of a dear parishioner. More
American soldiers were killed this month in
Everyone at Time’s Square
will cheer in the New Year tonight, but it’s hard to know whether that’s
because they so much want to be freed from all the bad things that have
happened in 2006 or because their hopes for 2007 are just bubbling over like so
much champagne. Sometimes I think that New Year’s Eve parties often give people
an excuse to mask feelings of depression; what with the amount of inebriation
that always accompanies New Year’s Eve.
I am reminded of the words
from Ecclesiastes, “For everything there
is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a
time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to
kill, and a time to heal”. Those words can be comforting or discomforting
depending upon where you find yourself in the scheme of things.
We do not know what it would
mean to live without time and maybe that is why John begins his Gospel with the
words, “In the beginning”. Yet,
somehow we seem to know that the beginning to which he refers is a time before
time, when all there was – was God. He says that in this beginning, which we
can neither fathom nor imagine, even before all that says John, this Jesus, the
Christ of him, the essence of God which filled him – WAS.
The word “logos” or “word” was a very important word to the Greeks. To them it meant
the “Ultimate Being” or “Reason” with a capital “R”. It was viewed as the
ultimate truth or “Other”. In Hebrew the word ‘daba’ means both ‘word’ and ‘deed’. So for John to say, “In the
beginning was the Word” was to imply that not only was God present as this
“Word” but that it was a powerful action of God.
The beginning of John’s
Gospel has always been my favorite passage in the New Testament and I find
myself frustrated every year that all those unknown faces who
appeared on Christmas Eve are not here today to hear it. It’s not that I don’t
like the Christmas story; in fact I’m pretty attached to it. It’s just that
what knocks my socks off, what leaves me speechless,
is the Gospel from John today.
But as much as the words from
John just bowl me over, they don’t help us much unless we know what they
reveal; what they are saying. For whether John’s words, Paul’s words in Galatians
today, or Luke’s words telling of Jesus’ birth that we heard on Christmas Eve,
they all declare God’s great love for us.
William Willomon tells of a young
university student who came to see him right after Christmas once. He had just
had his heart broken by someone he was deeply in love with. Crushed and
confused he said “Why does love hurt so much? Why does it have to
be so painful? Love ought not to be that way”. Willomon said to him, “Oh my dear boy. Love, real love is always
that way; painful. If there is to be love, there must be risk, and if there is
risk there is the possibility of pain.”
We don’t think of that when
we think of Christmas, but indeed the truth that is revealed in John’s words,
in the birth of Jesus, is exactly that. For the world into which Jesus was born
was exactly the same as we have experienced it this last week. He was born into
a world of sorrow as well as joy; a world of executions and people’s time being
up in all kinds of ways. He was born into a world of all kinds of darkness, but
as John declares, no darkness in this world can overcome the light that is God;
the light that God chose to share with us in and through Christ.
If John were writing his
gospel today no doubt his language would be beautiful, his theology deep and
mysterious: and I would be awed by it and inspired by it. But something would
be missing – and that would be the way God chose to come to us, in a tiny
vulnerable infant.
For years my favorite
Christmas carol has been “O Come, All Ye Faithful”. I’ve known it for as long
as I can remember. Yet, I will never forget one Christmas Eve, as I was
processing towards the Altar here at St. Andrew’s, my head still spinning with
liturgical details, I was singing those words and suddenly they hit me so
powerfully I had to stop singing. The words that hit me so powerfully were; “Who would not love thee, loving us so dearly”.
The power of those words so grasped me and moved me I was almost paralyzed by
them. The image of this infant, the reality of God’s love poured into him – for
us – took my breath away.
Once an eight year old girl
was asked why Jesus was called the “Word” and she replied, “Because Jesus is all God wanted to say to
us.” This is the truth that comes to us at Christmas. It is the most beautiful
truth in all the world. I will always treasure John’s beautiful words. They are
profound and deep. So perhaps its best they are
left till after Christmas, when preachers are more empty of words, because it
almost seems irreverent to comment on them at all.
They are timeless and because
they are true it means that all the dark things that happen in time, to us, to
others, God will not allow to be the last word about us. That’s the best and
most wonderful reason we can rejoice and say “Happy New Year”. For this is the
truth,
“From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law was given
through Moses: (but) grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Thanks
be to God.
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett,
D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church