“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”
The hustle and bustle of Christmas Eve gives way to the contemplative quiet and wonder of Christmas Morn. What seems long ago and far away is present and now. Everywhere is Bethlehem. “And so it was, that while they were there” – in Bethlehem – “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first-born son,” Luke tells us. Here is the son who is “the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth,” as we heard last night from the heights of heaven in John’s Prologue. From the heights of heaven to the lowliness of little Bethlehem. This is the wonder of Christmas morning.
The wonder is the unity of God and Man in Christ with the whole of creation. The three great masses of Christmas present to us the fullness of this wonder and delight. There is the Christmas Eve proclamation and celebration of the eternal Sonship of Christ who is the Word made flesh. There is the story of his actual birth made known in the angelic “tidings of great joy” in this morning’s Gospel. There is the Christmas of the Shepherds to whom the angelic news from heavenly heights is proclaimed and made known to us in Christmastide. Bethlehem is the place of these great wonders. It is paradise restored but also something more. It inaugurates a new vision and a new life.
The new vision and the new life is what has been made known to us in God’s self-giving love. What is made known is God with us and God for us. “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord,” the Angel says to the Shepherds. “The glory of God,” as Ireneaus says, is vivens homo, our “living humanity” but alive only by beholding the vision of God; for “the life of man is the vision of God.” Bethlehem is the place of the vision of our humanity alive in the shining glory of the Lord. Alive in Christ, “the word made flesh” whose glory we behold, “the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.”
But it is not our humanity alone in itself. It is not just us. Nor is it just the mighty and the powerful of the world, the privileged elite. In the quiet of Christmas morning, we are in the company of shepherds and angels with “a multitude of the heavenly host.” And only so are we with the holy Child who comes to us, the one who is the union of God and Man and who “defines for us what it is to be God and what it is to be human, in one, at the same time”. The Angel proclaims something great and wondrous; strong words of proclamation that point to a wonder and mystery. Through what the Angel proclaims and makes known we see the unity of the whole of creation with its Creator. The Angels, too, are part of that order. They do simply what belongs to their office and being, to their ministry. They are the messengers, the audible and visible thoughts of God made known to us.
“Fear not”, the Angel says, “for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy”. It is the office of Angels to bring the words of God to us. Here is the greater wonder, the wonder of that Word being with us in the intimacy of the birth of Christ, the intimacy and wonder of the Word made flesh. Here, as Paul’s Epistle to Titus puts it, is “the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himself for us.” That community between God and Man signaled in the uniqueness of Christ reveals a wider community, the community of the whole created order at one with God, the Creator; a host of Angels and the company of redeemed humanity.
Heaven and earth are united in the simplicity and the lowliness of Bethlehem. “Though thou art least among the tribes of Judah,” as Micah the prophet says. “Though thou art not the least among the princes of Judah,” as Matthew the evangelist says. Bethlehem is at once the least and the greatest of cities and places. For here in Bethlehem is a union of opposites, a resolution of the apparent contradictions between prophet and evangelist, the reconciliation of all differences in Christ.
In the Christian imaginary Bethlehem symbolizes the yearnings of our humanity, “the desire of the nations,” as it were. Here is the truth of every environmental concern, the unity of humanity with the order of nature, at one with beast and animal, a veritable menagerie in the imagination of the artists building on this wonder. Here is the vision of every social and political concern, the unity of man with man, of man and woman, of adult and child, of rich and poor, of shepherds and kings; in short the unity of the human community. Here “the hopes and fears of all the years” are made visible in the simple scene of Bethlehem. Here the “things into which Angels have longed to look” are made known to us. The things that belong to the very heights of heaven are here for philosophers and peasants alike to think and sing. God in Christ. as Irenaeus puts it, “harmonizes the human race to the symphony of salvation;” to the vision of wholeness and completeness which is the glory of Christ.
What we have been given to see we are given to sing with “a multitude of the heavenly host”. Such is the vision of our humanity redeemed and sanctified, at one with God and his Angels, at one with God and the whole of his creation; all gathered into one at Bethlehem in praise and worship. The song the Angels teach to the Shepherds, they in turn teach us to sing. “The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be? / My God, no hymne for thee?” the poet George Herbert asks and answers: “My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds /Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.” We sing the Gloria Dei. What we sing is more than mere words. The words become our lives, living the vision of what we sing. “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, good will toward men.”
In the quiet wonder of Christmas morning we come like the Shepherds at an Angel’s bidding to worship and adore. What we have been given to see, we are bidden to sing. Our worship is our life. For what we sing that we must also be, the Word made flesh taking flesh in us by the tenor of our lives. And all because of what we have seen and heard, all because of the Angel’s word and message.
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”
Fr. David Curry
Christmas Morn, 2023