Sermon for Christmas Eve
“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”
Christmas, it seems, is all about excess, about fullness. At least, in our material culture we want it to be about more and more, whether it will be or not is our contemporary anxiety and worry. Christmas sometimes seems to be altogether too much of a muchness, whether it is gifts or food (or books!) or drink or parties or more and more anxieties. The pressures can be altogether too much; the pressures are great to get it all just right, whatever that means.
The paradoxes are even greater. Christ is born in a lowly stable. We want the glitter and glitz, the dazzling brightness of gold and silver, of rich silks and perfumes, of gadgets that whirl and whizz, of wine and chocolate, of all manner of sensual delights. We want the more and more of all that delights the senses only to find that it is, perhaps, really all too much, a sensory overload, and yet empty and nothing. We are caught up too much with ourselves only to find that we have missed the real meaning of Christmas. We have missed the real paradox of God’s great little one who brings us so much and more than we can ever embrace and comprehend, so much and more spiritually.
It is not about the stuff. It is about God with us, “the Word made flesh,” the mystery of Emmanuel, the great blessing which is the extravagance of God’s grace, even “grace upon grace.” “Of his fullness have we all received.”
Lost in the desire for ‘stuff & things’ (sounds like the name of a new chain of stores), we forget the greater mystery. It is not the mystery of matter, an endless succession of stuff and things; no, Christmas is the mystery of God’s embrace of our world and humanity. It is the mystery of human redemption and the redemption of creation itself. The extravagance of Christmas is God’s embrace of the material world, its redemption, we might say, that allows the world of our material pleasures to become the greater vehicles of heavenly grace, if only we will behold and see.
