07 February 2018

Sermon Christmas Day 25 December 2017 Proper III, Year B

                                      

         Merry Christmas! I realize that by this afternoon most of the world outside these doors will consider Christmas to be over. I knew someone once who put her tree up on Thanksgiving Day and took it down Christmas Day in the afternoon. By tomorrow, many people will dismantling their Christmas trees and some will already be discarded at the curb on December 26. But here, in church, for twelve whole days, we concentrate on appreciating and entering into the mystery of God come among us in human flesh. This morning’s gospel whisks us away from the manger however, and into a world of power and poetry. John’s gospel asks us to enter a powerful mystery: the mystery that God became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
Contrasting strongly with Luke and Matthew’s familiar Christmas stories of angels and shepherds and mangers and beasts and a baby, John’s gospel is a startling piece of work. John’s gospel whisks away our ideas of the nativity and replaces them with the vast reality of the universe.
         The words of John’s gospel, paint a different reality from the manger and the angels and the shepherds. The reality John’s gospel paints is a poetic and powerful way of telling us that the mystery of Christmas is vast; far greater than shepherds and angels and mangers, and even Christmas trees that end up at the curb. John’s gospel gives us the same mystery that began in the opening of the very first book of the bible: Genesis.
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light.

         Can you hear the echo of what we heard from John’s gospel this morning?
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What came into being in Jesus was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

This is a different picture of Jesus than the ones we get from Luke and Matthew’s gospels. There are no shepherds or mangers or angels here. Instead we get powerful poetic imagery that draws us into a vast universe created by a powerful and awe-inspiring God. Can this be the same God in the pictures we get from Matthew and Luke? Can the same God who separated the light from the darkness really be born as a tiny helpless baby?
         That, indeed, is the most awe-inspiring thing about the story of Jesus’ birth. That the God who separated the light from the darkness is also the God who became helpless flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. The Christmas mystery is not wrapped in a package under the tree. The Christmas mystery is the powerful God who sometimes seems so vast and so far away, and yet in the birth of Jesus comes closer than we could have imagined.
         The Christmas mystery is a powerful and poetic mystery for us to embrace and hold close. God is indeed “out there,” making the stars, separating the light from the dark and living closely and recognizably with us. And God is indeed still “in here” lying in a manger, waiting to be worshiped and served. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

©2017

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