Merry Christmas!
Bah! Humbug!
Not expecting those words? This immortal phrase of Ebenzer Scrooge was my mantra during my atheist days. Even though my family did not really believe in God, we still celebrated a secular Christmas. We never went to church and it had nothing to do with Christ, but it was still Christmas to us. It was month of family gathering and gift giving.
When I was kid I loved it. I loved the special Christmas Music. I loved the special Christmas episode of Charlie Brown’s Christmas that came on the TV. I loved the pile of gifts I received. But somewhere around the age of 15 I started to notice just how stressful it was.
I began to tire of spending hours in the car every weekend in December to visit someone different. I found trying to figure out what to give someone for Christmas was nerve wracking! I noticed that beneath the veneer of holiday cheer that most people had a high stress level boiling right below the surface. Then I began to notice the letdown that happened on the 26th. The day after Christmas the decorations came down and people stopping singing carols.
That’s when I began to loathe Christmas.
By the time I was in college I spent the en tire month of December plain old grumpy and shot a dirty look at anybody that dared to say Merry Christmas to me. I didn’t like the holiday and I let people know it.
When I became a Christian I didn’t realize how much this part of the year would change for me. During that first year as a Christian, when that first December rolled around, I was shocked by how much I was looking forward to Christmas. That year December was truly amazing, because Advent really meant something to me that year. I was eagerly awaiting the first time that I could celebrate the birth of Christ. That December was a month of prayer and excitement for me. When that Christmas morning dawned, it really was different. For the first time, December 25th was not about opening presents, and complaining about what I did or did not get. It was not a day of wondering what to do after I opened the presents. It was a day that began at church where I was able to proclaim Alleluia! Christ the Lord is born!
The amazement that God was actually a little child at one point carried me through the following few weeks as if I was floating on clouds. I was just so amazed at liturgically making present the fact that God was born as one of us. That he cried the same way I did. He needed His Mother the same way I did.
Wow! Was pretty much all I could say.
As the years have gone by, Christmas has not become any less amazing for me. Sure, I became aware again of the stress that engulfs any human living in the Western Hemisphere during December, but the mystery of the Incarnation began to unfold.
And now, in sure proof the God does have a sense of humor, I am here in this pulpit. The man who screamed Bah! Humbug is now preaching to you in the pulpit of The Church of the Nativity, a church named in honor of Christmas.
In many ways there is no better name for an Anglican Church. It has been said that Roman Catholics are defined by Good Friday, the Eastern Orthodox are defined by Easter Sunday and Anglicans are defined by the Feast of the Nativity, the day we call Christmas.
The savings works of Christ through his death on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday are well know to us, especially here in the Deep South where our Baptist brothers focus so much on the atoning death of Christ.
Unfortunately, the doctrine of the Incarnation, the theological doctrine that emerges from the Feast of the Nativity, is not spoken of nearly as much as the atonement and resurrection. Yet the Incarnation is just as theologically shocking as they are. As St. Athanasius put it, on this day, Jesus “assumed humanity that we might become God.” (On the Incarnation, 93)
That is a statement that scares the daylights out of most Protestants. Many people hear this and scream “heresy!” So let me be very clear about this, there is one God, and we at best can partake in the divine energies, better known as being filled by the Holy Spirit, but we will never become Him.
What it means is that God’s dwelling amongst us, as a human being, is part of how humanity can become reconciled to God. It is the beginning of Christ’s work that ends with his resurrections and the promise of His return. Jesus’ beginning here on earth harkens back to our beginning as God’s created being.
In the beginning God made man and woman, and said that we were good. He made us in His Image, as His most beloved creation. He gave us a perfect place to live in where we could share in His good creation and live in mutual love with Him. Being made in His Image, we reflected back His Love, and took on His characteristics. He was capital “G” God, and we were little “g” gods, the creation he made that mirrored Him.
Then he gave us a choice: to follow Him or to follow our own will. We chose own will, and in that moment we stopped bearing the clear image of God. We let loose death and pain into the world and became a cloudy reflection, a distorted image of God. Through this cloudy image we could no longer see God clearly, so we focused on our own wills and the evil we had let loose instead.
God in His infinite love for us gave us our second chance to bear His image clearly. To accomplish this He emptied himself and took the form and the flesh of a human. God was born into the world that was afflicted with death and pain because our own wrongdoings, yet he came not only as one of us, but as the original one of us to live in the world we had tainted. Jesus was born the new Adam. Being fully God and fully man, Jesus bore the perfect Image of God in His human flesh, undistorted and clearly, just as we did in the beginning. Jesus, the new Adam, became the first human since the fall of Adam to bear the Father’s image as God had originally created us. Jesus, the second Adam, is the second chance for humanity.
In the Sacrament of Baptism we know that we are joined to joined to Christ. We often hear about how this joining frees us from everlasting death because it joins us to the One who beat death and rose on the third day. The lesser known aspect of Baptism in this day and age is the union we have with the One who bears the perfect image of God.
We are connected and joined to He who lived just as God intended us, able to perfectly reflect back the Love of God to God Himself and the world around Him.
This process of union takes time. Although baptism immediately makes us sons and daughters of God, the ability to begin to recover our image is a process. Through this union with Christ we, gradually over time, are able to be sanctified, to be aided by the Holy Spirit to bear more and more of His image clearly.
The ancient analogy for this is a sword in a fire. When you place a sword into a fire, it will gradually begin to heat up, to turn red and become hot. The sword absorbs the fire and takes on the characteristics of the fire, while still remaining a sword. In our union with Christ at baptism, we are the sword who is put into the fire of the Holy Spirit. Over time, by saying yes to the Lord’s grace, we take on His characteristics. We begin to glow with the red hot heat of the Holy Spirit, yet we still remain human.
This is what the Feast of the Nativity really means for us. When God was born to us 2010 years again as baby, He opened the gates and lead us onto the road back home to God.
My first Christmas as Christian was a milestone for me on my journey back home to God. I may never get there, but by His grace I pray that I may bear His image more and more as I let the Holy Spirit guide me back home.
I pray that this Feast of the Nativity will be a blessing to you all. That it may be a day when you say yes again to God’s grace, and allow Him to take your hand, and lead you back homewards.
Merry Christmas!
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