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, 2025.
Moments before walking the prayer labyrinth a few days ago here at our monthly labyrinth walk, I picked up a quote from a basket of Advent quotes prepared by parishioner Kathryne DeLorme. The quote was from a beloved Anglican author who has been called the “man who invented Christmas,” whose book “A Christmas Carol” did indeed make Christmas the immensely popular holiday that it is today. This Anglican novelist, Charles Dickens, said in the quote, “It is good be a child sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.” It is good for us to be a child sometimes, not childishly selfish but childlike in our wonder and appreciation of that which our adult minds can so often take for granted. At Christmas, God reveals Himself to us as a child beaming of wide-eyed wonder, in awe of the animals around him in the manger, surprised by the visiting shepherds, and resting in the loving care of his mother and father. God came into this world as a child and grew up to become a rabbi who said that if you want to see the Kingdom of God, you must be born again (John 3:3) and if you want to enter the Kingdom of God, you must become like a child (Matthew 18:3). God came to earth as a child so that we might enter heaven in the same way. Indeed, we can begin to enter God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven even now by learning to awaken our Inner Child. Ninety-nine-year-old Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast says, “Nothing could be more important for our well-being on all levels than this awakening. Only our Inner Child can tingle with delight at simple pleasures like bare feet in wet grass, a slide into a swimming pool, or the smells of a picnic. We need to find that child hiding inside us, let it out, let it run about [without clothes], let it have fun.”
This Benedictine monk, who has been called the “grandfather of gratitude” teaches us that is not joy that makes us grateful, but rather gratitude that makes us joyful; and the seed of gratefulness, he says, is the gift of surprise. This Christmas, I invite you to awaken your inner child by letting yourself be surprised. Let yourself be surprised by something that you might ordinarily take for granted. Let yourself be surprised, like a child is surprised, by the splash of color in a flower, by the wondrous gift of your own hands, and by the worlds you see when you look into the eyes of a friend or loved one. “It is good be a child sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”
Another Anglican author who lived about 200 years before Dickens was a priest and poet named Thomas Traherne. Considered the first great Anglican mystic, Thomas Traherne spent years of his life seeking the source of happiness and what he called “felicity”; and he discovered true happiness and felicity in this daily and even hourly practice of surprise, gratitude, and child-like wonder. In his book Centuries of Meditations, he writes, “You’ll never enjoy the world aright, until you wake up every day as if you were in Heaven, until you look upon the skies with celestial joy as if you were among the angels.” May you wake up tomorrow (and every day) as if you were in Heaven; and may you look upon the skies with celestial joy as if you were among the angels.
We are indeed among the angels here tonight; and they are among us. And our Scriptures teach us that even the angels, in all their heavenly knowledge and glory, still look with wonder and curiosity at us and at the way God’s plans of salvation unfold in our lives (1 Peter 1:12) May we be surprised this Christmas and inspired with awe and wonder, like the angels, like the shepherds, like children, and like the mighty Founder of Christmas, who became a child himself. And so, in conclusion, may I offer this simple phrase to kids – to children – from one to 92 (or should I say 102?): although it’s been said many times, many ways, Merry Christmas to you!
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 