Christmas Eve December 24, 2015
Is. 9:2-4,6-7 Ps.96:1-4,11-12
Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14
Welcome to the most literal meaning of Christmas. Christmas means Christ's Mass. Mass is from the Latin word missa, which refers to the liturgy of the Holy Eucharist. So Christmas literally means the Eucharist which the church gathers to celebrate on the Feast Day of the Holy Nativity. And if this is the literal meaning of Christmas, we also know that much has been added to and subtracted from Christmas.
For example in many Christian Churches the Mass has been subtracted from Christmas because lots of Reformation churches gave up the Mass and what it meant for the Christians throughout the ages. So there is no literal practice of Christmas by Christians who have given up having a Mass for the Feast of the Holy Nativity. For many Reformation churches Christmas is the time to read the infancy narratives about Jesus since the Reformation for many meant the rejection of sacramental practices and exclusively emphasizing the reading of Holy Scriptures. And many of Reformed traditions have come to prefer the most plain or literal meanings of the words of the Christmas Story in Holy Scripture. Many believe in an actual star crawling across the sky which are able to hover specifically over Bethlehem, rather than appreciating the rhetorical writing forms and genres which were used by the Gospel writers to write persuasively in their contexts. And many of those same Reformation churches skip the Mass of Christmas, as some sort of misguided papist practice of meaningless ritualism.
Historical scholars would tell us that we have no way of confirming an actual birth date for Jesus. The celebration of his birthdate on December 25 was a part of the evangelism of the early Church in replacing non-Christian local festivals with Christian events from the life of Jesus. And at the winter solstice on the shortest day of the year, there needed to be continuity with the festivals of light for the begin of the return to the longer light of day. In times when effective artificial light was lacking the power of and length of the time of darkness had a more pronounced spiritual and psychological affect upon people. Having a strategic festival of light was good for social morale when long darkness dampened the mood, only made worse by extreme cold without modern central heating.
Christmas has added lots of secular and cultural celebrations even while subtracting the fact it is suppose to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Christmas generally incorporates all of the host of festivities during the last month of the calendar year. It turns out to be the commercial event of the year which keeps lots of businesses afloat for the rest of the year. It is a bonanza for charities to ride the waves of giving and stock up their coffers for helping people at other times in the year when the public is not in such a giving mood.
It is ironic how many secular Christmas songs were composed by Jews and so we can sing about White Christmases, a reindeer with a red nose, Silver Bells, chestnuts roasting on the fire, and about being home for Christmas. Certainly non-Christians too have been able to profit on the popularity of the Christmas season, even while they have had to secularize the music to maintain their own freedom of being loyal members of minority religions in America. Think about how many recording artists have sold albums of Christmas music? It is amazing how much music the Christmas event has inspired in all musical styles. Old songs are rearranged rendered in all styles and new songs are written for the Christmas season.
In kiddie culture, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Baba Noel, St. Nick, or Santa Claus has seemingly replaced or over-shadowed Jesus. A portly grandfatherly figure delivering gifts to children plays to both children and adults who support the national past time of looking in on the delight and smiles of children, even if we go into debt to do so.
It is interesting too how Eurocentric Christmas is; the good people of Australia have not arrived at their winter solstice with the shortest day of the year. They could have a feast of sunshine with their longest day of the year.
So here we are at the pinnacle of Christmas in a season which has received many additions and many subtractions. And you can take the cynical route and despise it all. You can simply pick and choose from the entire Christmas menu to your own taste. You can say bah humbug to it all. For me, I choose to acknowledge the person who could cause so much to accrue to the meanings of Christmas. And I will pick and choose freely from the Christmas menu, but I will not neglect the literal meaning of Christmas, which is where we have arrived right now.
And so how is the literal Mass of Christ and the birth of Christ related? How are this Event of Holy Eucharist and the infancy stories of Jesus related?
I would submit to you that the story of the birth of Christ and the practice of the Mass of Christ are both for the same metaphorical purpose. And what might that be? The purpose of the Mass of Christ and the Infancy Narrative derived from the Wisdom tradition of the church to transform the lives of people.
Why are you and I here tonight? We are here to receive the body and blood of Christ under the bread and the wine. And in so doing, the bread and the wine enters us and is broken down and is dissolved and it dissipates and aspects of it literally becomes us. At some point the bread and the wine are no longer the bread and the wine, they are you and me.
And this is the central metaphor of the mystagogy of the early church. Mystagogy is the teaching regarding the Mystery. The mystery of the early church is that Christ is in the human person as the hope of God's glory. The Greek word mysterion translated into Latin is the word sacrament. The sacrament of this evening is the Eucharist, the Mass or the re-remembrance of the mystical presence of Christ having been born into our lives. This is an event of the experience of the Higher Power, with the ability to transform our lives by giving us power to cease to do the bad things we no longer want to do; but also giving us power to engage in the new and creative directions for our lives.
With the sacrament, the metaphors are actually physical elements of bread and wine which are recreated when the creating words of Jesus are said over them. They become then within us the realization of the always already presence of Christ. This is the arising the original image of God upon our lives and we are to continually practice this realized presence because if we forget the image and presence of God in Christ in our lives we can fall into acting in less than human ways, in fact some inhumane ways, or in benignly neglectful ways, or in the apathy of guilty silence in not speaking out against injustice. If we live realizing the presence of the image of our original goodness and blessing then we in empathy treat everyone as those who bear that same image of God and are worthy to be treated with dignity.
Now while many churches have dropped the Mass from their Christmas, they can pretend to be more Christian and more literal by reading the Christmas story as being literal events in all of its recounted details. And what they miss is the fact that the Christmas story is also the mystagogy or teaching about the mystery of Christ in us. The Christmas story was the coded version of the practice of spiritual transformation in the early church.
The Christmas stories in the Gospel were some of the last literature to come to writing in the composition of New Testament writings. The successful Christian churches were groups of people who met in private situations throughout the cities of the Roman Empire. They encoded the mystagogy of their spiritual practice within the Gospel stories as a way for a Christian to be initiated into the Christian spiritual practice. The story was to be the encoding of the mystical experience of having one's life over-shadowed by the Holy Spirit and in this over-shadowing one experienced the event of the life of God being realized or coming to birth within oneself. Thus the cry, "Christ in you, the hope of Glory." This event of Glory is an event of such internal self-esteem, one does not need to over-compensate in a vain search for the elusive "fifteen minutes of fame." St. Paul wrote, "I no longer live, but Christ lives within me." And the early church encoded this message within the Christmas story.
And so in the Christmas story, the early mystagogy, the sacramental story, is encoded in the life of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary is the paradigm of every Christian who has been initiated into the experience of having the life of Christ being born within them.
And so the Mass of Christ, Christmas, is an event of both word and sacrament. In the words of the Christmas story, it is encoded that the life of Christ is born with us by the power of the Holy Spirit. And in the Mass of Christ, the bread and the wine are another form of realization and practice of the fact that the life of Christ is within us.
Thank you for being here tonight for the most literal meaning of Christmas. With all that Christmas has become in our world, there is no reason to subtract the Mass from Christmas. Christ in us is the Hope of Glory. Emmanuel an ancient name assigned to Jesus, means that God with us. These truths have been renewed tonight in this holy feast and so I say to you tonight....Merry Christ...Mass. Merry Christmas. Amen.
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