When all things were in quiet silence
and the night was in the midst of her swift course,
then thy almighty word leapt down from heaven, from thy royal throne.
I have to confess that this lovely image from the Wisdom of Solomon (18.15) has always captivated my imagination. It captures wonderfully the special mystery of Christmas and complements the extraordinary readings we have already heard. The readings from Hebrews and from The Prologue of John’s Gospel challenge all our conceptions about Christmas. For where in those readings do we hear any mention of a babe born in a manger, any mention of little Bethlehem, any mention of Mary, the Virgin Mother, any mention of Joseph, any mention of ox and ass, of sheep and lambs, let alone camels and kangaroos; well, why not or at least a moose or two or maybe a beaver? And yet, all those images are profoundly shaped and governed by the great thunderous words of The Letter to the Hebrews and by what is, perhaps, the most profound passage of philosophy and theology that has ever been penned, The Prologue of John’s Gospel. It is the great Christmas Gospel.
“Thou hast but two rare cabinets full of treasure,” the poet George Herbert says, and he names them, “The Trinitie, and Incarnation;/ Thou hast unlockt them both,” he says, “And made them jewels to betroth/ The work of thy creation/ Unto thy self in everlasting pleasure” (Ungratefulnesse). The mystery of Christmas enclosed in a poetic nutshell! But one worth cracking open. We behold simply a double mystery, the mystery of God and the mystery of our humanity. Both are locked up together and both are unlocked to view on this holy night.
What on earth am I talking about, you are asking yourselves or at least you should be. Well, I am talking exactly and precisely about the wonder and the mystery of this holy night, the wonder and the mystery of Christmas. Something has drawn you here. It certainly isn’t the pursuit of profit or prestige. Nothing so contemptible in the contemporary culture than religion, to say nothing of the institutional churches. Certainly no commercial or consumer benefit or gain to be found here; quite the opposite, it might seem that the Church is out for your money, more hands in your pocket than the banks. Just joking. Well, maybe.
No. Something speaks to our souls, it seems to me, that draws us towards the idea of ‘truths held sacred’ and all the more so in a culture of darkness and despair. Our culture, our world, our day. It is not that we are simply too much with ourselves, too much preoccupied with a multitude of worries and concerns, what Jesus names, at least in Tyndale’s early English translation, as our “being carefull,” meaning our being full of cares, our busyness, what has more recently been translated as our anxiety. Mightn’t we say Angst r’ us because we are too full of cares about all the wrong things and in all the wrong ways, especially, perhaps, at this time of year? I leave it to you to fill out the ledger in terms of your own lives. The stress of presents and meals, of travel and plans, of parents, of grandparents, of in-laws, of the neediness of children and childrens’ children; the neediness, let’s face it, of us all. No, the greater problem is that we are sceptical and unaware of what speaks to our darkness and despair.
Okay. So you weren’t expecting that. But take a deep breath. It’s okay. The whole point of tonight’s readings and the whole point of this liturgy, this service, is not to judge and condemn. We are all way too good at that already. No need for the Church to get in on the act. Quite the contrary. Here is the counter to all of our angst and distress. It is simply the wonder of God’s engagement with our humanity. Here is the mystery of God, the Trinity, and here is the mystery of God with us, Emmanuel, the Incarnation.
God is God with God and in God, the “one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions;” for such things as “body, parts [and] passions,” belong to our finite world of division, insufficiency, and incompleteness, but God is “of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness;” an holy triad worth pondering, to be sure, the mystery into which we are raised just by those words. God is “the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible”. Wow. Literally mind-blowing! These are words from the first of The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion for Anglicans. (Don’t worry, Anglicans don’t have a clue either.)
And yet all this speaks to the deepest desires of our souls and belongs to the fundamental insight and teaching at least of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and beyond. It speaks to our yearning for something more and something lasting beyond the weary and dreary nature of our lives. Here is more than hope. Here is hope’s engagement with us and our world. Not just God in his majesty and truth but God with us seeking the redemption of our desires, of our sad and sorry lives. “And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” This is the distinctive Christian witness. We don’t come to Christmas to celebrate ourselves. We come in the awareness of the one who has come to us and who comes to birth in each of us when we begin to grasp the meaning of his being and truth.
“And the word was made flesh.” This is the wonder that runs through all the images of the babe in Bethlehem, of shepherds and sheep, of Mary and Joseph, of no room in the inn, of angels, of ox and ass. It is all about the wonder and the mystery of God in himself, the Trinity, embracing us in the Incarnation of his only-begotten Son, God for us, indeed, God with us, Emmanuel.
The great challenge of the Church is to speak about the mystery of God without which we cannot make any sense of the mystery of God with us. Only so can we begin to have a proper and truer sense of joy in the mystery of one another. All because of God with us.
And how does this relate to our text? In every way. The passage from The Wisdom of Solomon is actually a comment on the great Jewish story of the Passover, the story of God’s intervening act to deliver Israel from Egyptian domination. In a way, it anticipates the lesson from Hebrews that “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his son.” In other words, it is about redemption and liberation arising from God himself. So, too, Christmas points us, as our lessons and carols make clear, to Christ as Saviour. Yet he comes not as “a stern warrior,” a warrior-saviour, but in the simple humility of a little child. His coming confounds all the pretence of human greatness. Even more, the babe of Bethlehem is the Christ of Calvary; in short, the lamb of God whose sacrifice at once redeems and reveals.
Here is our Christmas blessing. It is found in God himself and in God being with us. This does not privilege us, meaning Christians in whatever denominational confection we might imagine, because it is really for all. Our task is to live in the love of the God who makes himself known to us in humility and truth. The Word and Son of the Father leaps down from heaven, from his royal throne. And yes, heaven is now known on earth but only through our being raised up in joy and peace and in love. “No one has ever seen God,” John goes on to tell us in what follows from his Prologue, “but the only-begotten Son has made him known.” Something is grasped and made known to us and in us, made known in our humanity, in and through the limitations of our world and day. God engages us and opens us out to himself. He is our life. That is the great joy and wonder of Christmas night.
The wonder and the mystery of God in his great reaching down to us, his humility, requires of us the same humility in being open to God’s gift of himself in Jesus. That compels us to our love and care for one another. For love came down at Christmas. Such is the wonder and the mystery of this holy night. It changes everything, if we will let it.
When all things were in quiet silence
and the night was in the midst of her swift course,
then thy almighty word leapt down from heaven, from thy royal throne.
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Eve, 2018