John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
Today is the First Sunday after Christmas (and the last Sunday in 2024). We’ve had the gifts and the glitter, the parties, the carol singing, the family feast – and it all, we hope, has been lovely. So, what comes next?
For many of us it seems, it’s just a matter of clearing up the clutter and packing up the Christmas ‘floof’ until next year. [And I’ll admit, the temptation is great!] But Christmas – the birth of God’s child among humankind -- is just the beginning of a long and complicated story.
This is not, remember, simply a story about the birth of a particular child. It’s a story that is told in a very particular way so that we learn important connections from it. It’s tricky from the very start and its tricky parts are the things we learn the most from.
We’re told that the child was born of a unknown teenager of a mother, who is somehow still a virgin. We’re told that the sky was filled with singing angels at the child’s birth, but no one appears to remember anything about this as the child matures into adulthood.
Somewhere in the first couple of years a trio of foreign magician-priests from Persia follow a new star, and find child and present him with unlikely gifts and then blab to Herod about it, which leads to the Slaughter of the Innocents and the family’s flight to Egypt to save the child from state-authorized murder.
At the age of twelve, and back home again, Jesus is teaching the elders in the temple and everyone accepts that and then conveniently forgets all about it.
After this, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph conveniently disappear from public notice until John the Baptist arrives on the scene years later to point out that this Jesus is one whose sandals he isn’t worthy to unlace.
All these stories end up being connected when a voice from the clouds, which can only be from God, announces this person as his own beloved Son.
All the key words from these stories – virgin, Bethlehem, angels, magi -- serve only to affirm that this child is the one foretold from ages past – the one who is promised by prophets – the one who will one day free the Hebrew People.
These are all good stories, but their primary purpose in scripture was always to connect Jesus with these ancient prophecies – to connect Jesus to the past. The one thing these stories leave out is any connection to us, today, — to what comes next.
It is easy to get so caught up in these mini-dramas, and to identify them so thoroughly as the point of Christmas, that we forget that in actuality the whole reason for Jesus’ coming and living among us, is to teach us to live out our lives as God wants us to do – we -- the ordinary people living around the adult Jesus, as well as those of us living our lives 2000 years later.
Jesus lived among us to teach us to feel the things we should feel and do the things we should do in our lives, every day. To accept ourselves as God’s beloved ones and to care for each other, truly and deeply.
And none of these things are in the old stories – they’re all in the “what is yet to come”. As poet Howard Thurmond expressed it so very beautifully in his poem, The Work of Christmas:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and 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 others,
To make music in the heart.
[So -- how do we do that? and where do we start?]
For many of us it seems, it’s just a matter of clearing up the clutter and packing up the Christmas ‘floof’ until next year. [And I’ll admit, the temptation is great!] But Christmas – the birth of God’s child among humankind -- is just the beginning of a long and complicated story.
This is not, remember, simply a story about the birth of a particular child. It’s a story that is told in a very particular way so that we learn important connections from it. It’s tricky from the very start and its tricky parts are the things we learn the most from.
We’re told that the child was born of a unknown teenager of a mother, who is somehow still a virgin. We’re told that the sky was filled with singing angels at the child’s birth, but no one appears to remember anything about this as the child matures into adulthood.
Somewhere in the first couple of years a trio of foreign magician-priests from Persia follow a new star, and find child and present him with unlikely gifts and then blab to Herod about it, which leads to the Slaughter of the Innocents and the family’s flight to Egypt to save the child from state-authorized murder.
At the age of twelve, and back home again, Jesus is teaching the elders in the temple and everyone accepts that and then conveniently forgets all about it.
After this, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph conveniently disappear from public notice until John the Baptist arrives on the scene years later to point out that this Jesus is one whose sandals he isn’t worthy to unlace.
All these stories end up being connected when a voice from the clouds, which can only be from God, announces this person as his own beloved Son.
All the key words from these stories – virgin, Bethlehem, angels, magi -- serve only to affirm that this child is the one foretold from ages past – the one who is promised by prophets – the one who will one day free the Hebrew People.
These are all good stories, but their primary purpose in scripture was always to connect Jesus with these ancient prophecies – to connect Jesus to the past. The one thing these stories leave out is any connection to us, today, — to what comes next.
It is easy to get so caught up in these mini-dramas, and to identify them so thoroughly as the point of Christmas, that we forget that in actuality the whole reason for Jesus’ coming and living among us, is to teach us to live out our lives as God wants us to do – we -- the ordinary people living around the adult Jesus, as well as those of us living our lives 2000 years later.
Jesus lived among us to teach us to feel the things we should feel and do the things we should do in our lives, every day. To accept ourselves as God’s beloved ones and to care for each other, truly and deeply.
And none of these things are in the old stories – they’re all in the “what is yet to come”. As poet Howard Thurmond expressed it so very beautifully in his poem, The Work of Christmas:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and 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 others,
To make music in the heart.
[So -- how do we do that? and where do we start?]
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