by CCW | 3 January 2021 08:00
Christmas is more than a three-day wonder or even a nine-day wonder. The festival of Christmas extends to twelve days, an octave and a half, as it were. The readings from the Octave Day of Christmas are appointed to be used until the Epiphany. The Gospel reading from St. Luke continues directly from the Christmas morning Gospel. The shepherds, having heard the angelic Gloria, make their way to Bethlehem.
Along with the poetic, prophetic and philosophical reading from Isaiah, these readings bid us ponder more carefully and more thoughtfully the wonder of Christ’s holy birth. The shepherds say one to another, quite literally, “let us now go even unto Bethlehem and see this saying which has happened”, capturing something of the very idea of the Word made flesh, the very wonder of Emmanuel, the great Christmas name of Jesus, we might say. The emphasis of these readings is on that which is heard and seen and which occasions two things: the “mak[ing] known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child”; and the sense of wonder “at those things which were told” by the shepherds.
The quiet focus of this Gospel reading is on the activity of Mary in relation to the making known and to the sense of wonder. Her activity is the profoundly spiritual activity of the Church. It is, first and foremost, about contemplation, the highest activity of the human spirit, as Aristotle teaches. Mary is the theotokos, the God-bearer, the one who bears God into the world, the mother of God, as the orthodox faith confesses. Not the source of divinity which she cannot be but the human source of God becoming man in Jesus Christ. What that means concerns the more radical meaning of what it means to be human and in ways that challenge and counter our contemporary assumptions about the autonomous self. That more radical meaning is captured wonderfully in Mary’s fiat mihi at the Annunciation, “be it unto me according to thy Word”, her willing acquiescence, her ‘yes’ to God so central to the mystery of God with us. But it is equally captured in this Gospel reading: “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”. That is to attend to God in his Word and in his Word with us.
Pondus meum, amor meus. “My love is my weight”, Augustine famously says in his Confessions (Bk. 13). The entirety of his being, he has come to recognise, is defined by the love of God, just like Mary. Her activity here is the activity and mission of the Church. It is about our constant and steadfast attention to the Word of God and to the motions of his grace in our lives. To keep all these things and to ponder them in our hearts is to pay serious attention to all that is said concerning this child.
These readings bid us to pay attention to the titles and/or names that are attached to this child, the babe lying in a manger. Isaiah offers a wonderful set of titles or names that swirl around the prophetic promise of a child and a son. “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace”. These are all titles or names of prominence that come to be understood in relation to Christ’s holy birth. They are modifiers of the name Jesus which he is given at his circumcision. This is the Jewish ritual of spiritual identity that is the Old Testament counterpart to what will become Christian baptism. Both rituals, circumcision and baptism, are also naming ceremonies and both in the context of the relation of our humanity to God. For the Jews, circumcision signals in the flesh of males the fundamental bond with the God who is beyond all nature; for Christians, baptism signals our incorporation into the life of God in Christ Jesus. Both signify the inescapably physical or embodied aspects of human reality but as enfolded in the ultimate spiritual reality, God.
Here the circumcision of Christ affirms emphatically the reality of his being made man and his being born into a particular culture and context which is inescapably part of what it means to be human. Yet through the particularities of cult and culture we are awakened to the wonder of what is universal and to the forms of humanity’s participation in that wonder. In the Christian understanding, the Christmas festival in all of its richness affirms the nature of the Incarnation and its radical meaning for the redemption of our humanity. As Bishop John Hackett (17th c.) nicely puts it, “Christ was man born of woman to redeem both sexes” which conveys a wonderful sense of complementarity and interdependence that counters the abstract individualism underlying our contemporary confusions about sexual identity. If we really want to begin to understand what it truly means to be human we have it in Mary’s “keeping and pondering all these things”, all the things that are said concerning her child, all the things that belong to “this saying which has happened”, this Word which is made flesh.
The Gospel attests to the realities of Christ’s humanity and to the reason for his becoming man. He comes as saviour, hence the significance of his being named Jesus. It means saviour. His saving work means sacrifice, hence the blood of Christ outpoured for us, first, in his circumcision and, then, in his passion, and wonderfully but disturbingly anticipated in the blood outpoured of the holy Innocents of Bethlehem. In other words, there is blood in Bethlehem, even the blood of Jesus. Such is the dynamic and logic of redemption. It challenges all and every sense of our own completeness.
His name is given from eternity. “His name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb”; even before all worlds. His name which is above every name, Paul will say, is sacred and holy All the names mentioned by Isaiah act as modifiers of the holy name of Jesus. Here his name is in capital letters as signifying its importance.
Importantly, the name is given by the angel to men. The Christmas story shows the wonderful converse between God, angels, and men, a wonderful way of gathering everything around and into the mystery of God. The divine names point us to the one who is beyond all names as the source of the being and knowing of all things. God in a way names himself but he does so through his creation, even through us. The angel in a dream bids Joseph to name the child Jesus. The point is that his name is not something invented by us, as if in naming God we have taken God captive to our agendas and concerns. It is the exact opposite. It is about how we are constantly being gathered into the infinite love of God for our humanity.
That gathering of our hearts and minds is what is signalled in Mary keeping all these things and pondering them in her heart. And so may we in the contemplation of these things made known in Bethlehem.
Fr. David Curry,
Second Sunday after Christmas, January 3rd, 2021
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2021/01/03/sermon-for-the-second-sunday-after-christmas-7/
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