Sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas

admin | 3 January 2010

“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”

There is a rich fullness to Christmas, to be sure. We have had, perhaps, our fill of Christmas in too much eating, too much drinking, too much feasting, too much partying, too much snow, too much everything; even, it may seem, too much Church! (And, perhaps, for some both near and far, too much Curry!) There is, indeed, a rich fullness to Christmas.

It is something which one day cannot presume to capture nor that even twelve days with all the festivities of our social, family and communal gatherings can ever hope to exhaust. Such things belong, to be sure, to the rich fullness of this season, but only as attendant events. They circle about the central scene of Christmas. In a way, they are our poor attempt to capture something of the rich fullness of the Mystery of Christmas.

There is but one poor, humble scene of Christmas. It is the stable of Bethlehem. And yet, therein lies all the rich fullness of Christmas. That poor, humble scene contains a great crowd of scenes, a great gathering of Christmasses; in short, it opens to view a rich fullness of grace, even “grace upon grace”. There is more here, we may say, than meets the eye. It is altogether something for the soul. We are bidden to ponder the Mystery of the Word made flesh. The attitude of the Church is an essentially Marian attitude. “Mary kept all these things” – all these wondrous things that were said about the Child Christ by Shepherds and Angels – “and pondered them in her heart”. And only so can they come to birth and live in us.

There is the Christmas of the Shepherds, the Christmas of the Angels, the Christmas of Mary and Joseph and Christ’s holy birth, the Christmas, too, of Christ’s heavenly, eternal birth for “there was not when he was not”. And, shortly, there shall be the Christmas of the Gentiles in the coming of the Magi, without which, too, we would not have Christmas. For in their coming Christmas is “omni populo”, for all people. With the coming of the Magi, it is Christmas still and yet again. Christmas is more Christmas, not less, a richer fullness than ever we had envisioned. All come to Bethlehem.

“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem”, the shepherds say, “and see this thing which is come to pass”. What is this thing? This thing is the Word made flesh, the child “wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” which “shall be a sign unto you”, the angel had said. This thing is literally “that which is spoken” (το ρημα), which has literally happened (το γεγονος), which “is come to pass”, come to reality, as it were. “Hoc verbum, quod factum est”, as the Latin Vulgate puts it, thereby making inescapable the connection to the great Christmas gospel, “and the Word was made flesh”, “et verbum caro factum est”. Words illuminating words through the illumination of the Word who is Light and Son, the Light and Son of God. “This thing which is come to pass”, the shepherds say, is that “which the Lord has made known unto us”.

Something heavenly and divine is made known in the earthly and human realities of Bethlehem. God’s Word redeems the words of our human discourse, the words of our life together with God and with one another. The American poet and farmer, Wendell Berry, observes, in a collection of essays entitled Standing by Words, that the two great diseases of contemporary culture are the disintegration of communities and the disintegration of individuals. He makes the important point that both forms of disintegration relate to the disintegration of language. Bethlehem is the place, at least theologically, of the beginnings of the reintegration of language, of word and meaning, of names and things, the place of the reintegration of souls and communities of souls precisely through the great reaching-down of God’s Word to us, the Word made flesh taking shape in us, recalling us to the greater unities of our lives together. At the heart of that reintegration is the meaning and the purpose of the Church signified as the Body of Christ at Bethlehem.

The stable at Bethlehem is the great stage upon which the pageant of human redemption is played. This fullness of significance is not something hidden from view. It is made plain in the dance of story and song which weave in and out of the rich tapestry of glory in the proverbial twelve days of Christmas: there is the Martyrdom of St. Stephen; there is the contemplative vision of St. John the Evangelist; there are the heart-rending deaths of the little ones, the Holy Innocents, who die in the name of the Christ who has come to die for them and for us; and there is the Circumcision and the Naming of the Holy Child, “his name was called Jesus” by Angels, by Joseph, by Mary, and so by us. There is blood in Bethlehem, the blood of our redemption.

And there is both a journeying to and from Bethlehem: the coming of Shepherds and Angels, on the one hand, and, the Flight into Egypt of the Holy Family, on the other hand. There is, too, the comings and goings of the Magi-King’s. Is it not all a wonder, all this rich fullness of Christmas? Is it not a wonder to behold? Such is the rich fullness that belongs to that poor, humble scene.

But to behold that scene is not to stand afar off as mere spectators, as those who look and pass but do not stop and see. No. To behold is to enter into what we behold, to be with what we see; in short, to become what we contemplate. Such is the double grace of Christmas, wonderfully captured in John’s profound phrase “of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”.

There is the grace of our beholding the wonder which we are given to see. But there is, as well, the additional grace of our being with what we behold. The Mystery of Christmas is not some distant and remote scene, long ago and far away; it is played ever so close to home. It is the Mystery of Emmanuel, the Mystery of God with us. We are given to see and we are given to be with what we see.

In prayer and praise, in pageant and song, in Word and Sacrament, we participate in the Mystery which we behold. The Mystery of God with us is the Mystery of our being with Christ. Such is the rich fullness of Christmas. It is the fullness of the grace of Christ for us. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is all captured in a phrase.