I am not ready for Christmas to be over.
Thankfully, it isn’t! Contrary to the music on the overhead speakers at Walmart, and our neighbors who have started turning off their Christmas lights, and everyone saying “Happy New Year!” now – Christmas is not over. We’re on the fifth day of Christmas – and the season continues all the way to Epiphany, a week from tomorrow. And I’ve convinced my family that we can keep our tree up until Candlemas, February 2 – and if you’d like to hear more about that feast day, Sally James will be giving a talk during the 9:15 hour that Sunday morning!\
But today, we continue to celebrate the nativity of Christ – his coming among us, and the anticipation of his coming again, and the kingdom that we are praying and singing and building into being while we wait. But – five days into Christmas, and three days before the beginning of 2025, when almost everyone seems to have taken their trees down, packed up the stockings, turned off the music and finished the Advent calendars and the egg nog – when we are looking toward a month
and a year that is uncertain and tense, it is in some ways hard to hold onto the spirit, the joy, the light of Christmas.
So it is good to read the words of today’s Gospel, which are the words of the Gospel every first Sunday of Christmas.
Each of the Gospels begins a bit differently.
Matthew starts with… well:
An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab … and so on.
Matthew doesn’t even get to Mary and Joseph until verse 16.
The Gospel of Mark begins in the wilderness, by the river Jordan, with a dove descending from heaven and a slightly crazy prophet:
John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” (1.6-8)
Luke, not surprisingly, begins with angels – first, a visit to Zechariah, the father of John\ the Baptist, and then, the Annunciation to Mary:
Gabriel said to her: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (1.30b.-33)
And in today’s Gospel, the Gospel of John, we begin at the beginning.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it… the Word became flesh and lived among us. (1.1-5, 14a)
There are three wonderful things happening in today’s Gospel – three words to lift from this text and ponder in our hearts – three words that I invite you, at the end of this morning’s service, to carry out into the winter morning with you.
Word.
Life.
Light.
Word. Life. Light.
In the beginning was the Word. John is taking us all the way back to Genesis. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth … John is starting with what we call the Cosmic Christ, the Christ who was and is and will be, who was God, and with God when the stars were born.
But that word – Word. The Word became flesh and lived among us.
“Word” is one translation of the Greek, logos. In the beginning was the logos. Logos holds hosts of meanings, though, which isn’t surprising if it is being used to describe God and God’s incarnation. It can mean message, or proclamation, wisdom, thought, principle, speech, or “the mind of God.”
Another way of translating and understanding logos, which I first found in the writings of Rachel Held Evans, and have since found echoed by others, is in the word story.
In the beginning was the story.
The word or idea of story changes the way we hear this Gospel in some interesting ways. The word Story reminds us that Jesus’ nativity was not isolated, a single event. The word Story reminds us that the birth of a baby in a barn in Bethlehem, to parents who were poor and exiled, without money or a roof over their heads, at the end of a long and difficult journey and at the beginning of another long and difficult journey – that birth, that holy night, was part of a much longer story that began before silent stars shone in the heavens, before Herod and Magi and shepherds and before temples
and pyramids and rivers and mountains.
The word Story is an invitation. For we all live our own story, and each of our stories is connected with the stories of others, and, through faith, with the story of God. We are not merely bystanders. Two thousand years ago, shepherds, an innkeeper and Magi were invited to celebrate the birth of a baby – they all became part of God’s story. And in the years to follow, God kept inviting others into God’s story, through the life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus – disciples, women, children, soldiers, rabbis, tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, widows, teachers, kings.
And God keeps inviting us.
When I preached last Easter, I remembered a movie from the 1980s, The Never-ending Story – and I’m reminded of it today – here we are, back again, following the circle of birth to resurrection, in this never-ending story of God’s grace.
Because the word Story also reminds us that the story that began a new chapter 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem is still going on. The Word – God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is still shaping our lives today, our world, our faith, our striving for peace and justice, our caring for one another, giving us joy in festive times and strength in uncertain times.
That’s where the second word comes in – Life, or Live. The Word became flesh and lived among us. The Greek word for the verb lived – skenoo [skeh – noh’] – can be more closely translate as “tented with,” or “tabernacled with.” In the nativity, the birth of Jesus, God lived with us – God tented with us – God chose – and still chooses – to live with a people who are not settled, who are sojourners, exiles, uprooted and uncertain, on life journeys where there are no clear maps, where the roads can be dangerous, difficult and sometimes hard to discern. God didn’t choose to be born to queen or an empress, protected in the luxurious walls of a palace – God chose to be born to and
among the poorest, the least-known, the most vulnerable. God chose a life that was uncomfortable difficult, emotional, dangerous, and real.
And so life became light, our third word to meditate on. In those dark streets shined an everlasting light, continuing a story begun in creation, a story that lived before the earth, that lived on the earth, and that lives still as a promise to come, heaven to earth come down, 2,000 years ago and forever. Christmas is not over. In fact, it never is. In that barn in Bethlehem, the logos pitched a tent with us, began a journey with us, continued the story with us, has never left us, and will never leave us. God is in every dark street, every childbirth, every war zone, every meal, every winter snow, every celebration, every grief, every string of colored lights, every turn of the new year.
Word. Life. Light. Emmanuel, God with us, story without end. Amen.
December 29, 2024 sermon preached by The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett at Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia.
