Month: December 2024

“She shall bring forth a Son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS.”

The readings for the Sunday after Christmas provide an extended commentary on the radical meaning of the Incarnation. It is at once the redemption of our humanity and its restoration. Isaiah’s prophecy quoted in the Gospel about the Son born of the Virgin being named, “Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us,” finds its fullest meaning in Jesus as saviour. Note the emphasis – JESUS is printed in capital letters twice in this Gospel passage from St. Matthew.

The Gospel complements Paul’s theological reflection on the birth of Jesus Christ. While the Gospel gives the circumstances of his birth as being “on this wise,” particularly emphasizing Joseph’s dilemma and its solution, the Epistle offers a theological account of its meaning and purpose. It is “when the fulness of the time was come, [that] God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law.” These are the two makings that illuminate the meaning of Christmas about the divinity and humanity of Jesus. “‘God sent His Son” – there His divine [nature]; ‘made of a woman’- here His human nature”… “That from the bosom of His Father before all worlds; this, from that womb of His mother in the world” (Lancelot Andrewes, Xmas 1609). The Son of God is not made of a Spirit but made of a creature, made of a woman, “made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin” (BCP, p.79).

As Irenaeus so wonderfully puts it, Christ is “that pure one, opening purely that pure womb [meaning Mary], which regenerates our humanity unto God and which he himself made pure” (Adv. Haer. IV. 33.11). His conception and birth which are about his being with us in the truth of our humanity is through the purity of Mary, the emblem of our true humanity considered simply qua human. That purity of our humanity belongs to the sinlessness of Christ. It is “but ex muliere, and no more; of the Virgin alone by the power of the Holy Ghost, without mixture of fleshly generation. By virtue whereof no original sin was in Him, just born He was, … and no law could touch Him”(Andrewes). In her we were never the better for factum ex muliere, for his being made of a woman, made of the pure substance of Mary. The classical and orthodox teaching is repeatedly and constantly that Christ is like us in all respects save sin. All this belongs to the first making, made of a woman.

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“These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”

The Christmas Feast of Holy Innocents operates on at least three levels. There is, first of all, the overarching and controlling concept that the Holy Innocents are “the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb” of the redemption of our humanity. There is, secondly, the purported event of Herod’s fear of a rival to his political power that leads to the slaughter of “all the children that were in Bethlehem” – the harming and destruction of those who can do no harm, hence the innocent – understood as the precipitating event of the flight into Egypt of the Holy Family and as fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophecy about mourning and loss, on the one hand, and Hosea’s prophecy about the God’s love and compassion that delivers Israel, on the other hand. This aspect highlights the theme of loss and mourning as leading to redemption and restoration. And, thirdly, there is the moral application of the whole event in the Collect in which “babes and sucklings” who are weak and helpless are strengthened by God and, though infants, who are by definition unspeaking, nonetheless, “glorify God by their deaths.” This becomes the basis of the moral charge to us about “mortifying and killing all vices” in ourselves so that being “strengthened by grace, the innocency of our lives and the constancy of our faith, even unto death,” we, too, “may glorify thy holy Name.”

In one way, it is all rather complex, a bit complicated, and profoundly troubling. It offers a reflection on a way of understanding the interplay of scriptural passages, particularly between the Hebrew Scriptures and the emerging Christian writings. It is, a rather disturbing and disquieting story that challenges our thinking about the radical meaning of Christmas. It is meant to be troubling and yet realistic about the forms of human suffering, especially of the little ones, the ones who can do no harm and yet are harmed by others, subject to agendas and purposes in relation to which they are simply collateral damage and regarded as disposable, as nothing worth.

This is the theological challenge of Holy Innocents Day. It points us to the radical meaning of human redemption. It suggests in no uncertain terms that the little ones, whether born or the unborn, are the children of God, creatures of a loving Creator in spite of the evil of others, socially and politically. A 15th century Latin carol found once again in the 16th century Scandinavian collection known as the Piae Cantiones, memorably recalls this story, making reference to Herod in his fear and fury: “all the little boys he killed/ at Bethlem in his fury.”

That this should be an essential part of Christmas shatters all our assumptions about Christmas. It teaches us about the deeper meaning of Christ’s sacrifice for the redemption of the whole of humanity. It means the radical overcoming of all our evil and folly. It teaches that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus,” imaged here as the Lamb of God, on the one hand, and the Son of God who comes out of the Egypt of ancient captivity to liberate us from all evil, on the other hand. That is meant to provide comfort and strength for us in the face of the heart-rending losses of children and infants for whatever reason in the disorders of our day.

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“These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full”

Nowhere is the doctrinal paradox and meaning of Christmas more wonderfully and clearly stated than on the Feast of St. John the Evangelist. He is the theologian par excellence as the early Church recognized. Like the eyes of an eagle soaring high into the sun, John sees most deeply into the mystery of God. We largely see through the eyes of John. His Gospel symbol is the eagle, just as in many of our Churches, the Scriptures are read from an eagle lectern.

His witness and writings enlightened the Church’s understanding of “the light of [God’s] truth” that the Church “walk[ing] in the light of thy truth … may at length attain to the light of everlasting life,” as the Collect puts it. Life and light, just as we heard on Christmas Eve from the Prologue of his Gospel for “in him was life, and the life was the light of men.” This morning we read from his 1st Epistle and from the last Chapter of his Gospel. Beginnings and endings even as the Revelation of St. John the Divine, which might also be reasonably attributed to him, proclaims Jesus as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. It is really all about our being gathered into the life and light of God.

What that means for us is signalled in these readings. What is it? It is our joy, the joy of our fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ in the bond of the Holy Spirit. It is from John especially that we learn the meaning of the Incarnation and the Trinity. John teaches us the most about Jesus as the Son of the Father and about the Holy Spirit, sent from the Father in the name of the Son (Jn. 14.26), and sent by the Son from the Father to us (Jn. 15.26). He who is the eternally and only-begotten of the Father, comes from the Father into the world and leaves the world and goes to the Father (Jn 16.28). This exitus, going forth, and reditus, returning, is our joy and our salvation, not the “conversion of the Godhead into flesh,” thus ceasing to be God, but “by taking of manhood into God” (Athanasian Creed, BCP, p. 697). Such is the doctrinal paradox of the Incarnation that Christ is true God and true man.

Something of these deeper theological truths, born out of the writings of John, are signalled to us in these readings this morning. The Uncontainable becomes contained, the uncreated Creator becomes a created being but without the annihilation of either. The distinction of Creator and created, of God and Man is held together in the unity and truth of God. The Epistle emphasizes the very truth of the Word made flesh: “that which was from the beginning” – from the eternity of God – “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled” is nothing less than “the Word of life” to which “we have seen and bear witness,” John says. That life which was manifested, made known, is “eternal life,” made known for our fellowship in that eternal life of the Trinity. That life is light for “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all,” for this is “the light [that] shineth in darkness, and the darkness overcame it not.”

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