Emmanuel
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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