Emmanuel


Scripture: The First Sunday of Christmas, A.D. 2015 C (Christmas Eve is over here.)

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Congratulations. It’s over now. You’ve made it through.

The decorating, the baking, the shopping, the wrapping, the concerts, the gift exchanges, and all those oddly pre-Christmas Christmas parties—they’re all done. And it’s a bit of a relief, isn’t it? I mean, don’t get me wrong. We all love the holidays. In many ways I feel as though we spend the entire year just waiting for the yuletide to come. But for every heartfelt Christmas special that we enjoy, there’s a comedy or even a horror film about how stressful and awful the holidays can be.

And I think that’s okay. Winter has always been a stressful time. Before artificial lighting, before global shipping, this was the season of darkness and scarcity, when families really did have to worry that they might not have enough food, enough heat, enough resources to make it through the long, cold night. These days it’s not quite so life-and-death for most of us, but the holidays can be stressful in other ways. It’s not easy to travel with family, nor to host a houseful of relatives. There’s pressure to get everything just right, or at least not to screw it up. There are bills, and tightly packed schedules, and the pervasive fear that you just might be ruining your children’s childhood memories. Future therapy. We don’t have a wolf at the door anymore. Instead we have a thousand little domestic ducks all trying at once to peck us to death. But that’s done now. We’ve made it through. Breathe. Now, at last—it is Christmas.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I love the hustle and bustle and excitement of giving gifts, but that’s only the beginning of what Christmas truly is. The radio stations may have stopped playing carols, and the neighbors may have already thrown out the tree, but we as the Church are just getting started. Christmas, as well you know, is not a day but a season. The Octave feast lasts for eight days. The celebration lasts for 12. The season stretches all the way to the Sunday beyond Epiphany, and the greater winter festival goes on 40 days all the way to Candlemas! Christmas has come and it’s not going anywhere for quite some time.

That doesn’t mean that we have to rewrap presents or refill stockings, though you’re certainly welcome to if you wish. But that’s never really been the best part of Christmas. There’s more to Christmas than a consumerist orgy on December 25th. I know it’s truly Christmas in that moment of calm when you step outside into the eerie winter silence, with snowfall gently tumbling all about, with a warm fire waiting for you back inside, with frosted evergreen trees pointing always beyond themselves up into heaven—and you take a deep cold breath and feel, and know, that the world is changed; that the King has come; that the very earth herself has been hallowed by the presence of that Baby in a manger on the other side of the world.

Everything truly is different at Christmas, isn’t it? We all know it, we all feel it. We call it magical, but it’s more than that. It’s sacramental. This is the season when the world seems most as it should be, most as it ought to be. This is the season when God and Man and Nature feel at peace with one another, when all Creation remembers the original harmony that all things once shared with our Creator in the Garden of Eden.

There are so many legends about Christmas—that animals can talk, that fairies come out to play, that reindeer can fly. Silly, perhaps, fanciful legends. But they all point to a deeper truth, which is that this is a world redeemed by the coming of Emmanuel, God-With-Us. We have waited for Him for oh, so long, and now that He has come it may still be cold, it may still be dark, but His light from the East brings us warmth and hope and wholeness and peace. In Christmas, God and Man are made one. The chasm of sin is sealed by grace. The Creator descends to dwell again with Creation, and the entire cosmos in ecstasy writhes! Thus sings the Psalmist:

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His host! Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you shining stars! Praise Him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the Name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He established them forever and ever; He fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.

Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling His command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and women alike, old and young together! Let them praise the Name of the Lord, for His Name alone is exalted; His glory is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for His people, praise for all His faithful, for the people of Israel who are close to Him. Praise the Lord!

Brothers and sisters, forget the stress. Forget the hype. Forget all the holiday clichés that we got sick of when they first started cropping up back in September. That’s all dead and gone. Instead, when you go home this afternoon, take a walk. Make some coffee. Build a fire. Read a book. If there’s some holiday tradition that you didn’t get to, by all means, enjoy it to the fullest. But no matter what you do, whether it’s chores or work or just sitting quietly by yourself, remember that this is still Christmas. Feel the difference, in all the world around you, in your very skin. Christ is here. He is with us, right now, and within all things even unto the end of the age. He has made the common holy. He has made the everyday miraculous. And He has made of you His Sacrament. Praise the Lord.

Merry Christmas, my brothers and my sisters. May we keep it all the year.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


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