by CCW | 25 December 2021 08:00
Click here to listen to an audio file of the Service of Mattins & Ante-Communion for Christmas Morn[1]
Wonderful words. It has been a kind of challenge for me to think about how various scriptural passages in themselves might be understood to lead us into the whole mystery of Christ. This is a counter to the kinds of literal and fundamentalist readings of Scripture which overlook the deeper logic of the understanding. It is about what is in principle universal revealed in and through the conditions of the finite and the particular.
Christmas is the greatest expression of this idea though not in a triumphal way. It is enough to say that the Gospel simply makes explicit in a certain way what is present and moves in the great ethical traditions of the world’s religions and philosophies; things about which technocratic culture knows nothing and has nothing to say. There is no wisdom in technology, in the technocratic culture which we all inhabit. This does not and cannot mean denying or fleeing from the techno-world which we have created. It means finding ways to overcome the idolatries of the human imagination and the will to power which bring before us such a confusion of good things and evil things. The question is about us and about what defines us.
The whole of the Christmas mystery speaks to this concern. In the celebration of the Word and Son of God made flesh, something powerful and profound is being said about our humanity. It is captured quite movingly in the Christmas readings such as those for Christmas morning. This year, owing to the restraints imposed by Public Health, and, then, even more, the complete suspension of ‘in-person worship’ by the Bishop, Christmas Eve was, sadly, a ‘silent night’ in empty churches; so, too, the quiet of Christmas morn is the almost unbearable silence of empty churches from which I am speaking to you. All we can do is to ponder the readings and pray the liturgy; we are reduced to reading and thinking about the great meaning of Christmas in our isolation and remove from one another. It is quite paradoxical that the celebration of Christ coming to us in the body of our humanity should take the form of our being disembodied and apart from one another. Does that mean a separation from the body of Christ?
Yes and no. The mysteries of the Faith cannot be reduced to the physical and the material but neither do they deny the realities of the body and the world. This is the great danger of our times, the danger of a kind of technological flight from the world and our humanity that runs counter to the strong affirmation of creation and of our embodied existence which is so much a part of Christmas and the Christian faith. Audio and zoom church services are no substitute for being together in worship; at best, they are a kind of make-do interim solution that is limited and restricted. At worst, they contribute to a shallow and incomplete view of our humanity which ignores the fulness of our corporate life. Our life together in the body means more than merely our technological connections, remote and disembodied. Our church building like our bodies do matter; they are not nothing. They belong to the sacramental and doctrinal understanding of our faith and devotion, our service and sacrifice.
‘In-person worship’ is itself a rather curious and ambiguous phrase. What would non-person worship mean? Nothing. ‘In-person worship’ is not an extra; worship is about our lives as persons and as such means our connection and interaction with other persons. It cannot mean a denial of the body. The intention of these audio services is to connect us in person at least in one way however limited.
“The grace of God … hath appeared to all”, the Epistle to Titus reminds us and teaches us about how we should live “in this present world”, not in some gnostic flight from the world and from one another in fear, a world which has become polarized and divided by animosities and accusations, a world of them versus us. “The glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ”, Paul tells us, is for the redemption of our humanity “from all iniquity”, and for our sanctification, God “purify[ing] unto himself a peculiar people”. Peculiar (περιουσιον) here does not mean odd or different but proper, proper to what belongs to the fulness of our being persons. Luke’s Christmas Gospel is about the birth of Christ in the midst of a world of taxes and inequalities, of hardships and sorrows, an inhospitable place where “there was no room for them in the inn”. It is about good news brought to lowly “shepherds abiding in the field” by “the angel of the Lord”; yet it is news for all people. It speaks to the deeper realities of ourselves as persons.
Christ’s holy birth engages the whole of our humanity. It is for all. That is the “good tidings of great joy”. It has to do with what we are told we shall find, namely, “a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes”. The babe who is God with us, God made man, has come to a world wrapped in fear. Yet God wraps himself in the things of our world. The angel message about Christ’s Incarnation begins with the same word which announces the Resurrection; “Fear not”. That word speaks to our world wrapped in fear and worry about one another. It awakens us to what is universal even in the midst of the uncertainties and limitations of our world and of ourselves. It is about great joy found in our worship of God. For “there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host” all engaged in praising God. It is a vision of redeemed humanity, one with the Angels, saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
God is for all. What is made known by angels to shepherds is not something private and restricted to a few; it is in principle for all. Such is the great good news of Christmas. It speaks to the whole of humanity. It speaks to what it properly means to be persons in the fullest sense. With patience and a spirit of forbearance we put up with these interim measures by reminding ourselves about what properly belongs to our life together as persons in the body of Christ. We are reminded of what we would receive sacramentally though isolated from one another and from the fullness of the liturgy. Christ in the sacrament, as Lancelot Andrewes suggests in a lovely image, is like Christ wrapped in swaddling clothes; it speaks to the fullness of God’s engagement with our humanity and thus to the fullness of ourselves as persons. To be reminded of this even under our current restrictions is the “good tidings of great joy which is to all people”.
We are reminded of the significance of being together which is something we are learning we cannot take for granted. And for that may God be praised. It is, we may say, a gift of the Child Christ. I wish you all a blessed Christmas.
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Morn, 2021
(under lockdown restrictions imposed by the Bishop[2])
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2021/12/25/sermon-for-christmas-morn-10/
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