Behold A New Thing

Sermon for Christmas Day

Saint Peter's | Arlington, VA

Luke 2: 8-20

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Merry Christmas! Gloria, in excelsis deo!

“Down in a lowly manger,” the final verse of ‘Joy to the World’ concludes, “the humble Christ was born, and God sent us salvation that blessed Christmas morn.”

As we celebrate the message of Christmas today, we hear its entirety in these familiar carols. From these timeless tunes bursts forth the fullness of God’s good news!

In his fourth-century theological reflection On the Nativity of Christ, St. Gregory of Nazianzus puts it this way:

“Christ is born, give glory; Christ is from the heavens, go to meet him; Christ is on earth, be lifted up... “Let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice,” for the heavenly one is now earthly. Christ is in the flesh, exult with trembling and joy...”

In much the same manner as the words we’ve sung together and those of the gospel lesson, St. Gregory suggests this birth of “a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger” has cosmic implications for our lives. It is a rupture of time and space, which Madeleine L’Engle suggests, is Love taking the risk of birth even while “a comet slashes the sky to warn that time runs out and the sun burns late.”

From this precious moment in a manger, the “wonders of God’s love” ripple throughout all of creation—causing all of “heaven and nature” to sing... Or, to sum it all up bit more simply: the birth of Jesus is the “reason for the season.”

And so, each year with this pithy reminder ringing in our ears, we then set forth to remember and retell the story with many well-honed rituals—like the comfort of traditional foods, the wonder of twinkling tinsel, and the truly awe-inspiring: ugly sweaters and matching red and green dinosaur pjs.

Now, perhaps you can’t help but wonder: just what difference does all of this make in our lives? Beyond the considerable investment of time and treasure each year, that is...

St. Gregory continues with the following:

“...this is the festival we celebrate today, in which God comes to live with human beings, that we may [return] to God...that laying aside the old human being we may be clothed with the new...”

A metaphysical wonder unfolds at the nativity of Christ. There the Divine comes to dwell in human flesh—and into a single body both essence and existence are interwoven together.

The practical part is this: when God—who St. Gregory likens to “a kind of boundless sea of being,” or in another theologian’s words, when the Ground of Being—is birthed in human form the healing of human persons becomes possible. We too are birthed into new life.

For many theologians during the early centuries of Christianity, the Feast of Christmas Day was considered essential to God’s work of salvation: just as much, if not even more so, than the resurrection into new life we celebrate on Easter Sunday.

More than merely the commemoration of Jesus’ new birth, to celebrate Christmas is to participate in our very own new beginning. Our ontological nature and therefore our lives are reshaped in light of Jesus’ incarnation and his life lived in the power of love.

So, wherever we may be fragmented within ourselves, Christ’s birth returns us to wholeness. Where our lives are estranged from Love, Christ’s birth reunifies us to its very source—within which we live and move and have our being.

This wonderful mystery of transformation is beautifully captured by Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poem, As Kingfisher’s Catch Fire:

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

Each and every created thing, Hopkin’s poem suggests, offers to the world the gift of the essential nature it bears within. And in bringing forth what the Quaker tradition might call the “spark of the Divine,” it sings in a way only it can.

The poem continues…

I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces.

In the same way that kingfishers catch fire and tumbled stones ring in roundy wells, we too have a critical gift we are created to bring forth.

But even still: while the Divine draws us toward itself, it is a choice to receive this grace and to participate in our own new birth. And it makes all the difference in the world...

Because when the lives of over 20,000 Palestinian people are extinguished...

...when synagogues are graffitied and faithful worshippers harassed by death threats... ...when Bethlehem is closed for Christmas and Jesus lays in a manger of rubble...

Whether or not we assent to the thing the Ground of Being desires to do in and through us is imperative. Because what good is the gift of salvation if we do not claim it? Of good news for a new way of being if we do not live it?

So, as we dwell on the wonder of this nativity together, I leave you with this invitation:

—Picture a manger, at its center a crib cradles a baby

—Gaze on the new life lying there, merely hours old

—Notice the tiny and delicate toes and fingers

—Imagine this newborn child...is you

—There you lie, lovingly swaddled in bands of cloth

—Surrounded by parents and a multitude bearing witness to the miracle that is you

—Reacting, enveloped in the Love that is your very essence

Now, as you celebrate this day, hold onto this image. Live in light of it—so that whatever wounds might linger within might be healed, so that you might become a source of healing for others. And let yourself be swept up into a total transformation.

And in doing so: inhabit your life. Whether it be with family and friends, food and pajamas, may new birth bring the abundant life for which you are created. Whatever wounds might need be

The event of Christ’s birth marks a new beginning—through which new beginnings continually unfold. Just as Jesus the Christ child is born, so too are our own lives.

Let us make haste to go and behold the new thing that awaits.

Merry Christmas, Beloveds!

Amen