Christmas
Eve A December 24,2016
Isaiah 9:2-4,6-7 Psalm 96:1-4,11-12
Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14
The Padre was eating breakfast at the local diner and next to him a lapsed church goer wanted to make small talk. He said to the Padre, "Father, I quit going to church because every time I went to church they would read the same passage from the Bible. And so the Padre asked him, "What Bible passage was read every time that you went to church?" And the man replied, "The story about the birth of Christ."
Tonight is Christmas Eve and yes, we have read the story about the birth of Christ and yes I will preach about it. I'm not going free lance on Christmas Eve and chose another Bible story. And if you just come to Church at Christmas, chances are the church will always have the same Bible passage.
At our earlier service the little children did their Cecile B. DeMille's version of the Christmas Story and the answer is still the same to the question, "Where does the little two year old angel go in the Christmas Pageant?" Wherever she wants.
Christmas certainly is the most popular Christian holiday because we have "childified" it. We make Christmas all about making it happy for children and even though there is R-rated material in the Christmas story, like the slaughter of the holy innocent, we give that bad event another day instead of Christmas.
The Christmas Story does give us occasion to be child-like. It is as though we all sit like children watching a Disney movie and just enjoy the story.
I like that too, but you know me too well to know that I am hung up on words and upon thinking about how words function. I'm hung up on whether words and stories make good sense. I'm hung up on whether this ancient story has relevance to people in our world today, even as people are leaving faith traditions in droves because either the ancient stories don't seem relevant to peoples' lives or because they are not being presented as having current relevancy.
The Christmas Story is presented in different ways in the New Testament and in the Gospels. In St. Paul, the Christmas Story is: Christ is born in you, the hope of Glory. Because I am so hung up on words, my favorite Christmas Story is in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John has the Primordial Christmas story. Long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the Gospel of John traces the origin of Christ before Bethlehem: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were created by the Word and the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us.
I like this because, I think this is the main truth about life and humanity. All human life as we know and understand it happens because we have words; because language is our destiny. As human beings we cannot help using words or being used by them in an environment of words into which we as babes were born.
The magnetic energy of mutual desire between human beings draw out of us words as we communicate with each other about the world in which we live. The basic function of words is to set values. Values are set by comparative difference. An apple is not an orange. They have different values and meanings and these values and meanings are what is registered in the use of words.
Now if word is about setting values and meaning, how do the supreme values and meanings come to be established in our lives? How is that we have come to say love is the best of everything? How is it that we come to believe it is a supreme value to establish our society upon values of justice written the words of the law?
When something great or unusual happens it has a way of drawing from us the words for what is best and greatest. When we can encounter events and people who wow us with their unique character or behavior then we are drawn to use words to confess supreme greatness. And the duration of such confessed greatness becomes the foundation events of creative advance in humanity.
Jesus Christ was an event. He could not be invented or contrived. He could not be ignored. Jesus Christ made an impression. The impression was so profound on so many people that he was not bound within just one time period in history. He was destined to be remembered.
The church of people who knew about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ continued to know the deep sense of a personal presence of Christ within their lives because of God's Holy Spirit. They were totally baffled by this staying power of the presence of Christ in their lives long after Jesus could no longer seen.
The profound impact of the life of Jesus gave this world a new example of what was best and greatest and the early Christians were inspired to write about the greatness of Jesus in many ways. The Christmas Stories are stories about confessing that Jesus was great from the beginning of his life even before his actual ministry, his death and resurrection proved his greatness.
The way in which high values come to human beings in their language experience is when a person catches the attention of humanity to inform the superlative case of human values.
2000 years ago there appeared a person in human experience; he was different from Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Alexander the Great. He was different from Caesar Augustus. He was different from Rabbis Hillel and Shammai. He was so different that a significant number of people were compelled to use language in the superlative about him. They were compelled by his example both in his life and in his afterlife of the Holy Spirit to use language to confess his greatness. They preserved in writing their language of the confession of the greatness of Jesus Christ. The language about Jesus Christ is the language of the human superlative.
The New Testament writers had to look for the vocabulary from their existing cultural situations to provide the comparative language from which to speak about Jesus.
If one is going to speak about Henry Aaron and homeruns in baseball, who do you make reference to? You make reference to Babe Ruth.
If one is going to speak about Tiger Woods in golf, who do you make reference to? You make reference to Jack Nicklas.
In every field when a new prodigy or genius or brilliant person arises, one uses the past great people to give a frame of reference.
The writers of the New Testament had social and cultural frameworks from which they could draw upon to try to tell the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ.
Caesar Augustus was the Savior of the Roman World, he proclaimed to be miraculously conceived as a child of Apollo, he was the Peacemaker of the world, he was a god and the son of a god, his adoptive father/uncle Julius Caesar. He had the ratifying propaganda from the Roman Senate declaring his divinity.
The New Testament writers also had the witness in the writings of Hebrew Scriptures. Along with all of the great heroes, Isaiah further said a young maiden would bear a child named Immanuel. The prophets spoke about a messiah, a suffering servant, someone from the lineage of Jesse and David, someone from Bethlehem, someone from the house of Judah, someone who would be Wonderful Counselor, a Prince of Peace and someone who would have the Spirit of the Lord upon them.
You and I have inherited a long list of agreed upon titles and understandings regarding Jesus Christ. In the early decades after Jesus left this earth, his followers were still in search of a wide range of ways of speaking about Jesus. We wrongly, assume the comparisons with all of the saying from the Hebrew Scriptures was so certain and precise. The language was comparative and not precise; Jesus was his own person and he was more than was found in the messiah language of Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scripture language was a fitting language of comparison so that he could be differentiated from everyone else in his surpassing greatness.
All of the propaganda mythologies which accompanied the famous Caesar were but words of comparison and the New Testament writers consciously compared Jesus Christ with the traditions of Caesar and to the Roman Gentile audience, the confession was that Jesus Christ was much greater than a Caesar and when it came to true divinity, Jesus was the exemplar par excellence of what divinity would be like in human manifestation. The mythologies of the Caesar were but pale in comparison.
We have inherited the Christmas Stories as the confession of the early churches about the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ in everyway. When it came to Jesus Christ, a new superlative language had to be invented even while they used the fulfillment of the messiah tradition as a main model and they used the discourses regarding the greatness of the Caesars as a ways of promoting the confessed true divinity of Jesus Christ.
The Roman senate ratified, voted upon the divinity of the Caesars. The angels and hosts of heaven proclaimed the divinity of the Christ Child, but more important was the one by one ratification of Jesus Christ within the hearts of Christians who experienced that Christ had been born within them by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.
As much as we can tout the credibility of the witness of the New Testament about the importance of Jesus Christ, there is still required a continuous ratification of the birth of Christ and the confession of his divinity. Why? If there is not a contemporary ratification we are left with the question of the 13th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart who asked: What good is it that Christ was born in a stable in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago if he is not also born in me?
And this is the question that is valid for us and will be valid in the future. The birth of Christ, his divinity, his messiahship is not yet finished because his birth, divinity and messiahship still have a future in humanity. You and I are a part of this continuous ratification of the birth of Christ and of his significant divinity. Too many people just worship the past tense of the birth and divinity of Christ as it is locked up in the language of the Bible.
Tonight you and I are asked to ratify again the birth and the divinity of Christ in our lives. In this way the Christmas story is not simply some more cultural information for mythologists to study and classify, the Christmas story is about the renewal and transformation of our lives because we have known the birth of Christ within us. The Christmas Story will continue to be relevant as long as people ratify it by embracing a path of continuous transformation of our lives because of knowing that God's life is found to born within us.
Christmas is for children and it is for us who can know the child-like freshness of God's presence within us. May God grant us all to know afresh the birth of Christ in our world and in our lives on this silent, holy night. Amen.
Isaiah 9:2-4,6-7 Psalm 96:1-4,11-12
Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14
The Padre was eating breakfast at the local diner and next to him a lapsed church goer wanted to make small talk. He said to the Padre, "Father, I quit going to church because every time I went to church they would read the same passage from the Bible. And so the Padre asked him, "What Bible passage was read every time that you went to church?" And the man replied, "The story about the birth of Christ."
Tonight is Christmas Eve and yes, we have read the story about the birth of Christ and yes I will preach about it. I'm not going free lance on Christmas Eve and chose another Bible story. And if you just come to Church at Christmas, chances are the church will always have the same Bible passage.
At our earlier service the little children did their Cecile B. DeMille's version of the Christmas Story and the answer is still the same to the question, "Where does the little two year old angel go in the Christmas Pageant?" Wherever she wants.
Christmas certainly is the most popular Christian holiday because we have "childified" it. We make Christmas all about making it happy for children and even though there is R-rated material in the Christmas story, like the slaughter of the holy innocent, we give that bad event another day instead of Christmas.
The Christmas Story does give us occasion to be child-like. It is as though we all sit like children watching a Disney movie and just enjoy the story.
I like that too, but you know me too well to know that I am hung up on words and upon thinking about how words function. I'm hung up on whether words and stories make good sense. I'm hung up on whether this ancient story has relevance to people in our world today, even as people are leaving faith traditions in droves because either the ancient stories don't seem relevant to peoples' lives or because they are not being presented as having current relevancy.
The Christmas Story is presented in different ways in the New Testament and in the Gospels. In St. Paul, the Christmas Story is: Christ is born in you, the hope of Glory. Because I am so hung up on words, my favorite Christmas Story is in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John has the Primordial Christmas story. Long before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the Gospel of John traces the origin of Christ before Bethlehem: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things were created by the Word and the Word was made flesh and dwelled among us.
I like this because, I think this is the main truth about life and humanity. All human life as we know and understand it happens because we have words; because language is our destiny. As human beings we cannot help using words or being used by them in an environment of words into which we as babes were born.
The magnetic energy of mutual desire between human beings draw out of us words as we communicate with each other about the world in which we live. The basic function of words is to set values. Values are set by comparative difference. An apple is not an orange. They have different values and meanings and these values and meanings are what is registered in the use of words.
Now if word is about setting values and meaning, how do the supreme values and meanings come to be established in our lives? How is that we have come to say love is the best of everything? How is it that we come to believe it is a supreme value to establish our society upon values of justice written the words of the law?
When something great or unusual happens it has a way of drawing from us the words for what is best and greatest. When we can encounter events and people who wow us with their unique character or behavior then we are drawn to use words to confess supreme greatness. And the duration of such confessed greatness becomes the foundation events of creative advance in humanity.
Jesus Christ was an event. He could not be invented or contrived. He could not be ignored. Jesus Christ made an impression. The impression was so profound on so many people that he was not bound within just one time period in history. He was destined to be remembered.
The church of people who knew about the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ continued to know the deep sense of a personal presence of Christ within their lives because of God's Holy Spirit. They were totally baffled by this staying power of the presence of Christ in their lives long after Jesus could no longer seen.
The profound impact of the life of Jesus gave this world a new example of what was best and greatest and the early Christians were inspired to write about the greatness of Jesus in many ways. The Christmas Stories are stories about confessing that Jesus was great from the beginning of his life even before his actual ministry, his death and resurrection proved his greatness.
The way in which high values come to human beings in their language experience is when a person catches the attention of humanity to inform the superlative case of human values.
2000 years ago there appeared a person in human experience; he was different from Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Alexander the Great. He was different from Caesar Augustus. He was different from Rabbis Hillel and Shammai. He was so different that a significant number of people were compelled to use language in the superlative about him. They were compelled by his example both in his life and in his afterlife of the Holy Spirit to use language to confess his greatness. They preserved in writing their language of the confession of the greatness of Jesus Christ. The language about Jesus Christ is the language of the human superlative.
The New Testament writers had to look for the vocabulary from their existing cultural situations to provide the comparative language from which to speak about Jesus.
If one is going to speak about Henry Aaron and homeruns in baseball, who do you make reference to? You make reference to Babe Ruth.
If one is going to speak about Tiger Woods in golf, who do you make reference to? You make reference to Jack Nicklas.
In every field when a new prodigy or genius or brilliant person arises, one uses the past great people to give a frame of reference.
The writers of the New Testament had social and cultural frameworks from which they could draw upon to try to tell the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ.
Caesar Augustus was the Savior of the Roman World, he proclaimed to be miraculously conceived as a child of Apollo, he was the Peacemaker of the world, he was a god and the son of a god, his adoptive father/uncle Julius Caesar. He had the ratifying propaganda from the Roman Senate declaring his divinity.
The New Testament writers also had the witness in the writings of Hebrew Scriptures. Along with all of the great heroes, Isaiah further said a young maiden would bear a child named Immanuel. The prophets spoke about a messiah, a suffering servant, someone from the lineage of Jesse and David, someone from Bethlehem, someone from the house of Judah, someone who would be Wonderful Counselor, a Prince of Peace and someone who would have the Spirit of the Lord upon them.
You and I have inherited a long list of agreed upon titles and understandings regarding Jesus Christ. In the early decades after Jesus left this earth, his followers were still in search of a wide range of ways of speaking about Jesus. We wrongly, assume the comparisons with all of the saying from the Hebrew Scriptures was so certain and precise. The language was comparative and not precise; Jesus was his own person and he was more than was found in the messiah language of Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scripture language was a fitting language of comparison so that he could be differentiated from everyone else in his surpassing greatness.
All of the propaganda mythologies which accompanied the famous Caesar were but words of comparison and the New Testament writers consciously compared Jesus Christ with the traditions of Caesar and to the Roman Gentile audience, the confession was that Jesus Christ was much greater than a Caesar and when it came to true divinity, Jesus was the exemplar par excellence of what divinity would be like in human manifestation. The mythologies of the Caesar were but pale in comparison.
We have inherited the Christmas Stories as the confession of the early churches about the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ in everyway. When it came to Jesus Christ, a new superlative language had to be invented even while they used the fulfillment of the messiah tradition as a main model and they used the discourses regarding the greatness of the Caesars as a ways of promoting the confessed true divinity of Jesus Christ.
The Roman senate ratified, voted upon the divinity of the Caesars. The angels and hosts of heaven proclaimed the divinity of the Christ Child, but more important was the one by one ratification of Jesus Christ within the hearts of Christians who experienced that Christ had been born within them by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit.
As much as we can tout the credibility of the witness of the New Testament about the importance of Jesus Christ, there is still required a continuous ratification of the birth of Christ and the confession of his divinity. Why? If there is not a contemporary ratification we are left with the question of the 13th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart who asked: What good is it that Christ was born in a stable in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago if he is not also born in me?
And this is the question that is valid for us and will be valid in the future. The birth of Christ, his divinity, his messiahship is not yet finished because his birth, divinity and messiahship still have a future in humanity. You and I are a part of this continuous ratification of the birth of Christ and of his significant divinity. Too many people just worship the past tense of the birth and divinity of Christ as it is locked up in the language of the Bible.
Tonight you and I are asked to ratify again the birth and the divinity of Christ in our lives. In this way the Christmas story is not simply some more cultural information for mythologists to study and classify, the Christmas story is about the renewal and transformation of our lives because we have known the birth of Christ within us. The Christmas Story will continue to be relevant as long as people ratify it by embracing a path of continuous transformation of our lives because of knowing that God's life is found to born within us.
Christmas is for children and it is for us who can know the child-like freshness of God's presence within us. May God grant us all to know afresh the birth of Christ in our world and in our lives on this silent, holy night. Amen.
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