Readings for the Feast of the Christ Mass
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka for the Christmas Eve service on Saturday December 24, 2022. Worship Bulletin Here.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
Last Sunday I preached on the messiness of the predicament in which Joseph and Mary found themselves when Mary was found to be with child and the promise that God was with them in their precarious situation, and that God is with us in the messiness of our lives. That was last Sunday and now here we are on the other side of a violent 6.4 magnitude earthquake that has left a real mess here in Humboldt County. I am grateful that many of the messes have been relatively minor here in Eureka and that many buildings, including this historic church, have remained free from major damage; and at the same time, we pray for and seek to help those who have been hit hardest in Rio Dell, Ferndale, and Fortuna. All the items that this church donated for our Project (Re)start bins have been packed and delivered by lay leaders to the Rio Dell Resource Community Center for distribution and we will be packing and delivering more bins in the days and weeks to come, as they are needed. We’re in this for the long haul.
God is with us in the mess and God invites us to embody his loving and saving presence amidst the mess. That is the message and invitation on this Feast of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is the mystery of our God becoming embodied in a vulnerable baby boy, born in a messy, stinky manger so that we might have eyes to see God in the mess and among the vulnerable in our own lives and to embody God’s presence for those in need through the power of his Spirit. That’s the Xmas message: God is with us in the mess and calls us to be with others in the mess.
In his recent memoir, Irish singer-songwriter Paul David Hewson (known more popularly as Bono of the rock band U2) writes eloquently about the mystery of the Incarnation. He remembers attending a Christmas Eve service in the mid-1980s at St. Patrick’s [Anglican] Cathedral in Dublin, where, sitting behind a limestone pillar and listening to the church choir, he tried not to fall asleep since his jetlagged body was “still in some other time zone.”[1] When his wife Ali elbowed him for the third time, he decided to “cold water” himself by “trying to visualize mother and child sharing a delivery room with goats and sheep.” He reflected on “the vulnerable nature of the Nativity, the messiness of childbirth swaddled among [dung] and straw.” [2] He actually used a different word instead of “dung,” but I won’t repeat it here.
“The poetry and politics of the Christmas story,” Bono writes, “hit me as if I were hearing it for the first time: the idea that some force of love and logic inside this mysterious universe might choose self-disclosure in the jeopardy of one impoverished child, born on the edge of nowhere, to teach us how we might live in service to one another is overwhelming. Its eloquence is overwhelming. Unfathomable power expressed in powerlessness. Inexpressible presence choosing to be present not in palace but in poverty.”[3] The God who became incarnate in the messiness of a manger is with us in the messiness of our lives, teaching us to embody his presence in the world by serving others through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Bono read these words from his book earlier this month at another Anglican cathedral: the National Cathedral in Washington DC, where he spoke with author Jon Meacham, right next to the pulpit where Martin Luther King Jr preached his last Sunday sermon. Dr. King, who inspired some of U2’s best songs, also understood the message and the invitation of the Incarnation. He saw our world sick with war and its ominous possibilities and yet he believed tenaciously in the Christmas hope for peace and goodwill and in the promise that God remains with us in the mess. Dr. King carried around with him the words of black theologian and mystic Howard Thurman who summed up the invitation of Christmas beautifully in a poem titled “The Work of Christmas”:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.[4]
Dr. King embodied the work of Christmas and suffered an early death as a result. When this baby boy, whose birthday we celebrate today, grew up, he also suffered an early and tragic death as he perfectly embodied the work of Christmas. But in that death, the message of Christmas rings most loud and clear and harmonizes with the message of Easter: God is with us even in the most disturbing and frightening and terrifying situations, amidst violence and war and earthquakes and winter storms and even death itself. God is with us, leading us to the Light and empowering us to embody his grace and saving love in this life and beyond. Amen.
[1] Bono, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2022), 511.
[2] Bono, Surrender, 512.
[3] Bono, Surrender, 512.
[4] Howard Thurman, “The Work of Christmas” from The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations (Friends United Press: Richmond IN, 1973), 23.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 