A
Homily for the Sunday after Christmas Day
When the fullness of
the time was come,
God sent forth his Son, . . .
—Galatians 4:4–5
. . . and they
shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
—Saint Matthew 1:23
Merry Christmas! In the Church’s
reckoning, Christmas is not
one day, it is twelve days; and today is the sixth day of Christmas. We, who decked our hall in somber purple
while the world outside was gaily—but prematurely—decorated for
Christmas, now
continue the feast even as the world outside takes down the trees and
tinsel
and boxes its decorations up until the holiday shopping season begins
anew next
October (if not sooner). In the old
carol, today is geese-alaying day.
One cannot be entirely sure what the
world outside was celebrating. Much of
the news commentary has been concerned with the disappointment that the
revenues of retail stores rose only 3.6% over last year and with the
prospect
of redemption—in this case, redemption of billions of dollars worth of
gift
cards.
What we are celebrating here is
nothing less than the meeting of heaven and earth, the intersection of
the
eternal with the temporal. A child was
born in
The theological meaning of Christmas
is precisely that the Christ-child, Jesus, is Emmanuel, God with us. This is the basis of Christianity; this is
the extraordinary claim of Christianity; this is what sets Christianity
apart
from all of the religions, and cults, and belief systems of the heathen
world. If Christianity were wrong about
this, it would be wrong about everything.
The child born in a stable at
There is a hymn that the Church has
sung for sixteen hundred years. (It is
hymn number 20.) It is traditionally
sung during the Gospel procession on Christmas day, and it begins this
way:
Of the Father's love begotten, ere
the worlds began to be,
he is Alpha and Omega, he the
source, the ending he,
of the things that are, that have
been, and that future years shall see,
evermore and evermore!
At his word the worlds were framèd; he commanded; it was done:
heaven and earth and depths of ocean in their threefold order one;
all that grows beneath the shining
of the moon and burning sun,
evermore and evermore!
In
this hymn the Church acknowledges that the Christ-child, the babe of
There is threeness
in God. Human language is not well
adapted to talking about God, and so the threeness
of
God is expressed in different ways. In
the first book of Torah, called Genesis, it is written that in the
beginning, when God created the
heavens and the earth, God spoke: God
said, let there be light and there was light.
God spoke all of creation into being.
And last of all God said, let us make man in our own image; and
so he
created man, in the image of God he created him, male and female he
created
them.
And the Apostle John, when he wrote
his Gospel wrote that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God,
and the Word was God. Because three
things are necessary for speaking: there
must be a speaker, and there must be what is spoken, and there must be
that
which carries the spoken word the way human breath carries human speech. God created all things by speaking: what he
spoke was the Word, and the Word was carried on the breath of God (for
which in
English we use the word Ghost or Spirit, both of which mean “breath”). But both the Word and the Spirit are God, just as the speaker is God.
And so the Apostle wrote in the
Gospel and we affirm whenever we recite the Creed, that it was by the
Word
(that is, “by means of the Word” or “through the Word”) that God
created all
things, visible and invisible, seen and unseen.
And it is this very Word of God, through whom all things were
made, who for
our sake came down from the heavens, who
was conceived
by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, who became Emmanuel,
God with
us.
Another way of expressing the threeness
of God is to speak of God the Father, and of God
the Son, eternally begotten of the Father, begotten of the Father
before all
worlds; and of God the Holy Ghost, who is the love of the Father toward
the Son
and of the Son toward the Father. And
these three are one God, co-equal and co-eternal. And
it is the only-begotten Son, begotten
before time began, of whom the Apostle Paul wrote when he said that
“when the
fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son.”
When God came to pitch his tent among
us, he came as a human being, born as all human beings are born, born
of a
woman. When he was conceived (which we
commemorate on the feast of the Annunciation in March) and when he was
born
(which we celebrate at Christmas), he became the son of Mary; but he
did not
then become the Son of God—the Son of God he had always been . . .
Who, being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to
be equal with God: but made himself of
no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in
the
likeness of men: and being found in
fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death,
even the
death of the cross. Wherefore God also
hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every
name: that
at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and
things in
earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess
that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This, again, is the great message of
Christianity, that when God the Son came to pitch his tent among us, he
came as
the child of a particular woman, a member of a particular family and
tribe; he
was born a Jew, subject to Torah, the law given to Moses.
And he was born at a particular time, what
As
Christianity is the religion that
proclaims the incarnation of God. And
all of us who are baptized are baptized into the life, death, and
resurrection
of Jesus Christ, our Emmanuel, God with us, so that we too, in all our
fragile
humanity, become participants in the life of God. As
we were taught in the catechism, in
Baptism we were made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors
of the
kingdom of heaven.
And the Son of God, who pitched his
tent among us, who became Emmanuel, God with us, has not left us here
alone,
but, as he promised, remains with us to the end of the world. He is incarnate now in his mystical body, the
Church, the blessed company of all faithful people.
And he is incarnate now in his
sacramental body, the Eucharist. The
eternal Word, by whom God made the heavens and the earth, and
everything that
is, becomes present for us under the outward and visible signs of bread
and
wine. But though we see, and touch, and
taste those outward and visible signs, our hearts and souls know that
in the
Sacrament we receive Christ himself, Emmanuel, God
with us. Thanks be
to God.
30 December 2007
See a list of the Deacon's homilies.