St. Charles Episcopal Church, St. Charles, IL

December 25^th 2011 ~ Year B

John 1:1-18

The Rev. Elizabeth G. Meade

To listen to the sermon as it was preached on Christmas morning, click here.

Merry Christmas.

Last night, Jess Elfring preached at our Creche service… and she started this way:

Do you remember what it was you wanted for Christmas so badly three years ago?

Not last year – or two years ago…What was the “one thing” you wanted for Christmas three years ago?

And then she said… I don’t remember either.

You see, Jess’ point was, we get so embroiled in what we want, so embroiled in the latest, the next, the hot item of the “Christmas Season” that there will always be a newer, shinier, more advanced model to hope for – to NEED. But let’s face it, by next week, by New Years Day, the packages will be gone, the greens will be getting g a bit dry, and the empty Christmas tree will be looking a bit forlorn. The frenetic pace that ramps us up to “Christmas Day” will be fading away, and things will be returning to normal.

But is that what God wants from us? Normal? I can’t imagine that God wants Christmas, 2011 to just fade away. Much has been made of the commercialization of Christmas, but in my heart, I think God wants us to get more from Christmas than we are getting.

The same thing was happening in the days that John wrote to day’s Gospel. John was writing to the Jews of the Diaspora after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70. The baby Jesus had been born a long time before, and in fact, had already died when John wrote the Gospel. Greek culture at this time had become so pervasive in the world that a worldly sophistication – and maybe even a cynicism – had replaced the people’s child-like dependency on God. The people of John’s day had become thinking, reasoning, rational people influenced by the culture that fathered such philosophical greats as Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. The God that had played so heavily in the lives of their ancestors had been reduced to a minor character in their busy lives.

I imagine God has that feeling about us today. We are so distracted by things, aren’t we?

The internet has brought us the information superhighway. Television gives us news from around the world 24 hours a day. And cell phones have all but robbed us of any quiet time we may have once had in our cars or on the train. We are so utterly accessible, so utterly distractible, that there is less and less time for quiet contemplation; less and less time for God.

As Christian people, however, we are invited by the church to step away from the commercialization of the world, and to spend time during Advent watching and waiting. Watching and waiting for not a sentimentalized re-enactment of a birth of a baby who was laid in a manger so many years ago, but watching and waiting to see if it is this year, THIS Christmas, when we will begin to see and understand the relevancy of that event in our own lives today. Sure it’s nice to think about that baby being born in that manger, and the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night… but if it’s only that…… then those who say the church has become an irrelevant, albeit quaint anachronism in this high paced sophisticated world of ours, would be right.

Jesus, John tells us, wasn’t just another new baby born 2000 years ago.

John states, “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” Jesus: The Word.

In the consumerism and merrymaking of mid-December – in the plastic yard figurines and in the blinking lights – John reminds us that this God – the God who formed the world, hung the moon, and set the planets on their courses – THIS God came into the world to give us a Christmas present that won’t fade from our memories three short years from now.

He was, and still is, the light in the darkness that the darkness could not overcome.

In our sophisticated and information saturated lives, do we see his relevance?

Do we see, in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas shopping season, God coming into our hearts?

God being birthed in us?

God coming into a still busy and still broken world through us?

Do we see Emmanuel – God with us?

The task set before us is not an easy one. We, like the Jews who had been so distracted by the sophistication of Greek culture, are called to the hard work of finding what these ancient stories might be saying to us today. We are called to look at Mary, a young and utterly powerless girl of 12 or 13, who said, Yes” to God, even when what God was asking her to do was inconvenient.

We are called to look at Jesus, God, the WORD made flesh, wonder whether that small baby could conceivably be born anew in us this week, even if it’s inconvenient for us; even if the world tells us that its irrelevant.

The Good News is that it’s not too late. Even though Christmas, 2011 will soon fade away, and what you wanted for Christmas this year will be a forgotten memory three years from now, the 12^th verse of John’s first chapter is brimming with hope for us. It says,

 “But to all who received him, who believed in his Name, he gave POWER to become Children of God.”

That’s the key to the Christmas message for us.

We need to RECEIVE and BELIEVE, and accept the POWER given us to become children of God.

THAT’s the Christmas gift God has for you and for me.

If we feel vaguely disappointed in our consumer Christmas extravaganza, it’s probably because we haven’t believed and received and accepted that power. We have, once again, let our worldly concernsoverpower the mantle that is God’s Christmas gift to us:

And what is the mantle that God has given us? To be called Children of God.

Children empowered to change the world; to bring hope where there is no hope.

To bring food and shelter to those who have none.

Essentially, what God has done is given us the gift of being God’s agents in the world;

the power to act against injustice and oppression as God’s agents.

To be God’s representatives to the sick, the lonely and the destitute.

It’s been a tough year. Gabby Giffords was shot in cold blood. A tsunami devastated Japan and caused a nuclear meltdown of epic proportions, and terrorists are still trying to kill us. Contrary to popular belief, we are still at war, and there are no fewer foreclosures this year than there were last year.

And yet God has given us the power to change all this; the power to bring hope in the face of all this ugliness. Just as the little baby lying in that manger so many years ago was a light shining in the darkness, so are we.

Christmas for us becomes about accepting the power God has given us.

For claiming our inheritance as sons and daughters of the kingdom.

For choosing light over darkness, even when it’s inconvenient.

Mary said yes – and God came into the world. God with us – Emmanuel. Say yes.

God be with you.

Amen