Christmas Sermon

Given by the Very Rev. David Bird, December 25, 2008

"So tell me what you want, what you really, really want for Christmas. “

Of course, rarely do we say. It’s too embarrassing. We know too well we shouldn’t want for more.   Whatever the reasons, most of us don’t wish to answer the question: "So tell me what you want, what you really, really want for Christmas."

The British writer, Stephen Cottrell, tells a wonderful story of how we can be caught out. A British government minister was asked this question by a newspaper which was running an article on what famous people really, really, really wanted for Christmas. He knew what he really wanted but didn’t want to appear too grasping.  So he said that he rather liked those bottles of stem ginger that you see in the English shops around this time of year. And so the newspaper article ran: 'We asked leading figures what they wanted for Christmas. The Archbishop of Canterbury said he wanted an end to the violence in Iraq. The Dali Lama said he wanted peace in the Middle East. The Pope said he wanted an end to poverty. The Minister for Trade and Industry said he wanted a jar of stem ginger!

"So tell me what you want, what you really, really want . . . "–if you dare!

No person of faith would for a moment doubt that at Christmas we have received, if not what we really, really, really want but rather what we really, really, really need. 

Make no mistake about it.  Tonight we celebrate the most crucial belief of Christianity: that in Jesus of Nazareth, the Ideal became Real.

How should we live?  “Look at him,” thunders John’s Gospel–in less direct words, of course.   “When all things began, the Word, already was; and what the Word was, God was.”

Luke put it less abstractly and more picturesquely.  He tells of a  couple traveling 80 miles with nowhere to rest their heads on the night of the child’s birth.

There was, of course, no inn of the romanticized fables of our Christmas celebrations.  The eastern khan was like a series of stalls opening off a common courtyard.  Travelers brought their own food; all that the innkeeper provided was food for the animals and a fire by which to cook.

The town was crowded.  There was nowhere else but just such a khan for the Babe of Bethlehem to be born.  In the common courtyard, surrounded by the animals, symbols of God's love for all creation, the Word of God entered the world.

And the animals shared with the babe.  We all know what the manger is, with a cradle, straw and the baby Jesus placed therein.  But what does the word, “manger” really mean?   "Mangez, mangez, eat, eat," the French say.  It is from the same Latin root as manger.  Yet rarely do we depict the Christ lying in the trough, the animals eating place.

This is God's complete identification with the world in Jesus Christ’s most unusual birth.  God’s fullness has stepped down to us, to all creation, and will show us how to live.

We began this service with what is often seen as a Christmas carol: “Once in Royal David’s City.” But originally it was an everyday hymn to be sung throughout the year. Written by an Irish Bishop’s wife, it stressed the most important fact of Christianity--the very basis of our faith--that the fullness of God is represented in Jesus of Nazareth.

“For he is our childhood’s pattern.

Day by Day like us he grew . . ."

You get it.

There is always a strain in popular Christianity that wants to make Christianity a religion of ease and magic, not far different from the mythical dying and rising gods of Greek religion.  But it is not: the center of Christianity is the Christ. 

Want proof?  Only one bishop has ever been convicted of heresy in the history of the Episcopal Church. When William Montgomery Brown was convicted of heresy and removed from holy orders in 1925, what finally finished him off was this: he likened Jesus Christ to Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, symbols not real human beings.  Jesus of Nazareth is indeed a symbol of how we should live.  Much more than that, he is the actual expression of the life of God in an identifiable human person.

The birth of Jesus of Nazareth is the breaking in of God’s distinct and sovereign way of life on earth--a world in which there is no distinction of race, gender or color; a realm where all creation derives from the creative energy of God.

Luke is also clear that though we may not “really, really, really want it,” the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth is what we really, really need. For centuries, lands and cultures with even a smattering of Christian knowledge have affirmed the message of Luke’s Gospel: that we do not “pass by on the other side” when we see another person in need.  Parents, siblings, aunts and uncles have gone forth to seek the one “lost sheep” of the family.  Children have heard of the inconsiderate and selfish child who, having already demanded his inheritance from his father and squandered it, is yet welcomed back by a forgiving parent: “for this my child was lost but now is found.”   Traditional Episcopalians crave to sing again, “he has but down the mighty from their thrones and has exalted the humble and meek”–all this and so much more is given us only in Luke’s distinctive Gospel.  No wonder we have long read only John and Luke for Christmas.  They’ve got it.  They have understood the message.

If, like the poor minister for trade and industry in Britain,  we are conscious of being discreet, what we really, really want may be a bottle of stem ginger, but in Jesus of Nazareth we have received again this night what we really, really need.  What we really, really need is for the good news of the life of Jesus Christ so to permeate our being, our lives, that we may become children of God and heirs of God’s sovereign way of life.

So what do we really, really want at Christmas?  Hopefully what we really, really need: Jesus of Nazareth.  O come, let us adore him. 

AMEN

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