“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.
The lowly scene at Bethlehem is rich with meaning and significance. That scene excites the imagination and inspires no end of story and song, of art and music; a great fullness, to be sure. It is a pageant that delights the senses, though, to speak more realistically, I am not so sure about how delightful most of us would find the pungent smells and animal sounds of a real barn. The perfume industry has yet to market eau de stable of Bethlehem! And, when it comes to ox and asses, all the things of pious tradition and imagination that are actually without any mention in the nativity accounts, I suspect that we would prefer their artistic representation, at least as present in our homes and churches. I know there is the urban penchant to get in touch with your rural side by way of live Christmas Crèche scenes. It’s great so long as someone else is there to clean up!
The point is that there is something profound about Christmas that demands our thoughtfulness. There is something profoundly earthy, too, about what hymn and carol sing, even though the biblical narrative, as always, is remarkably restrained and understated about that scene in Bethlehem, so long ago and far away. It deliberately leaves matters to our imaginations. The result is that from the mention of “shepherds keeping watch over their flock by night,” of sheep, presumably, we get a whole menagerie at Bethlehem, a veritable Zoo, in the artistic and traditional representations of this holy night. We are told that the shepherds went to Bethlehem at the bidding of angels to “see this thing that has come to pass”; we assume but aren’t actually told that they went with their flock.
As for donkeys and asses, oxen and goats, peacocks and camels, dogs and cats, and whatever else appeals to the imagination, a veritable Noah’s ark, well, they are exactly that, works of the imagination. But what kind of imagination? The biblical accounts tell of Angels and Shepherds and, then, of Magi-Kings coming to Bethlehem to find a mother and a child and patient Joseph standing by, but did those kings come on one-humped dromedaries or two-humped camels, or did they come on Arabian stallions, majestic and regal, swift and dark? We don’t really know.
We don’t know and we don’t need to know. What we need to know is precisely what we have been given to see and hear. It is the wonder of Christ’s holy birth. What is at work in our celebrations and in all of the artistic representations of Bethlehem is the power and the truth of theological imagination; that is to say, our imagination as governed by the spiritual principles presented in the witness of the Scriptures. And what are they?
This holy night proclaims the mystery. The mystery is the mystery of the Creator and Maker of the whole world and all that is in it, “for without him was not anything made that was made;” the mystery of the one who is “life and the life was the light of men,” for there can be no greater affirmation of the unity of thinking and being; the mystery of “the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world;” the mystery of the truth of our humanity as reasonable and spiritual beings by virtue of our being made in the image of God, shepherds and kings, women and men, in the company of Angels and the holy child; and the astounding mystery of that Light as the Word and Son of God who “was made flesh and dwelt among us;” in short, the mystery of God with us. To what end? That we might “beh[o]ld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” We are made for glory. We are made to be what we behold, changed by what we contemplate.
My text comes from what immediately follows in the great Christmas Gospel. It concerns what is revealed in the scene of Bethlehem. It is altogether too much of a muchness but the difference is that it is God’s muchness and not the muchness of our mindless busyness, our fears and worries, our cares and troubles, our anxieties and concerns, an endless amount to be sure, which results in our being completely overwhelmed and exhausted. We forget from whom we come and to whom we belong. We forget the God of our creation and our humanity.
The scene of Bethlehem is a great muchness but it is the fullness of God’s grace, the grace of “grace upon grace,” the grace that seeks the good and the blessing of us all. We rejoice not in the busyness of ourselves but in the fullness of God who wills to enter into our troubled world to bring us to himself.
The real richness of the Christmas scene of Bethlehem is the richness of God who became poor for our sake. The fullness is the grace of God, not the vain parodies of richness and plenty that consume our world and day.
Never has the world more desperately needed to know the mystery of “the Word made flesh,” the true and fullest redemption of our humanity and our world. Bethlehem offers the rich fullness of our humanity in harmony with God and Man and with the whole of the created order. It has captured the artistic and poetic imagination. It is something theological.
Bethlehem offers the vision of the harmony of God with our humanity and with the whole of his creation. At the same time, there is the insidious reality of all that would undermine that majesty. “He came unto his own” – us – “and they” – we – “received him not;” there is our blind rejection of God. It is a telling comment upon the mystery of human sin and upon the greater mystery of divine love that is the mystery of Christmas.
Bethlehem is the mystery of Paradise restored and that is the meaning of the fullness of all that belongs to that wonderful scene, biblically, artistically, traditionally and, most importantly, theologically. In a way, we cannot fill up that holy scene. It has been filled up for us in the simple wonder of “the Word made flesh,” the truth of God with us, the harmony of God and the world, of God and every creature of the world which he so loved, and the even greater harmony of God and man. Such is the great fullness of the Christmas scene; it is “grace upon grace” now and always.
“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Eve, 2011