“When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son,
made of a woman, made under the law”
Some can’t wait for Christmas to be over; others want it to last forever. Yet however much Christmas has been co-opted, if not hijacked to every other agenda imaginable, it has an undeniable hold on our imaginations and our lives to one degree or another. It has a global reach and presence in very different cultures in our world and even among non-Christians. Why? Because of its catholicity, dare I say, meaning something universal and in its fullness. The word, fullness, is a repeated feature of the Christmas mystery.
There is a fullness of things in heaven and earth, a double fullness, we might say, but one which is captured in the central mystery. For in “the Word made flesh”, as John puts it “(we beheld the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth”; a fullness contained in a parenthesis. In the readings for The Sunday after Christmas we have “the fullness of the time” which is just as much “the time of fullness”. The twelve days of Christmas are unique, not just an octave such as at Easter, but an octave and a half, ultimately culminating in Epiphany on Tuesday of this week. With Epiphany, Christmas goes global. What is proclaimed as “good tidings of great joy for all people” reaches far, far beyond a tiny corner of the world. With the coming of the Magi-Kings to Bethlehem, Christmas is omni populo, literally for all people, itself a kind of fullness.
But what does all this fullness mean? Quite simply, fullness belongs to God and to our being gathered into the life of God. Fullness speaks to the highest truth and dignity of our humanity; it cannot be constrained to ethnic, cultural, political, social, economic, and linguistic communities and cultures. This sense of the fullness of things is theological, not merely sociological. In a radical sense, the Christmas mystery at Bethlehem never goes away but signals the whole purpose of God’s revelation in the gathering of all things into unity in God. Like the Magi-Kings, we may leave Bethlehem and return to our own places, but, perhaps, as T.S. Eliot suggests, “no longer at ease” because the Christmas mystery at Bethlehem always remains with us. The point is that we are changed by what we have been given to see.
This sense of the fullness of things is not just about the signs of God’s Word and Son but about the truth which the signs signify; the things signified, as it were. “For that thing which is conceived in Mary,” as the angel counsels Joseph in this morning’s Gospel, “is of the Holy Ghost.” It is not a human or social construct.
Something more and something much greater than what belongs to human presumption, even in the illusions of technological progress and the delusions of human self-perfectibility, are set before us in the mystery of Christmas. That is why we need the twelve days of Christmas: to fill our minds and hearts with the richness and the wonder, again signalled in a parenthesis, of what was done. “The birth of Christ was on this wise,” Matthew tells us. The birth of a child and son from the Virgin Mary who, as Isaiah says, “shall be named Emmanuel, which being interpreted is God with us”, is the wonder and the fullness of Christmas. Jesus is Emmanuel.
Bethlehem is a crowded scene, a fullness of images, to be sure. It is a kind of paradise restored but only through its radical meaning in the harmony and unity of the whole of creation gathered into that humble and lowly setting with the Creator of all that is; another kind of fullness. That radical meaning has to do with the purpose of the Incarnation, of God’s being with us, and what that means for the understanding of our humanity. That has to do with Christ’s Passion and Sacrifice signalled in The Feast of Holy Innocents – there is blood in Bethlehem. Their innocent blood shed is seen in relation to Christ’s purity and sacrifice. And The Circumcision of Christ, celebrated on The Octave Day of Christmas, marks the first literal shedding of his blood and points to his blood being outpoured at Calvary. That is Paul’s meaning about the Son being “made under the law”.
Paul in Galatians unpacks the theology which Matthew’s Gospel reveals. Matthew speaks in intimate, compelling, and human terms, on the one hand, and by way of things divine, on the other hand. The one does not cancel out the other. We have the touching picture of Joseph, puzzled and confused, wondering what to do with the discovery that Mary is “with child” Such a loaded phrase. Yet “while he thought on these things”, a phrase that contains all the ‘fullness’ of endless psycho-therapeutic drama and shame (of which we are mercifully spared) that “the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream”, bidding him not to fear to take Mary as his wife. The angel reveals the wonder of her conception. It is by the Holy Ghost, not from the sexual congress of a man and a woman (and by extension not from any kind of technological manipulation either).
A reason is given for his being called “Jesus”. It means Saviour and looks back to the Hebrew Yeshua, or Joshua, who led Israel into the promised land. His name is given, first, by “the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Lk. 2.21), that is, to say, from eternity, and, secondly, by Mary at the Annunciation, the moment of his conception in time (Lk. 1.31), and, thirdly, here by Joseph (Mt. 1.25). This naming unites heaven and earth, God and man, angels and humans, man and woman – rather inclusive, we might be tempted to say, yet one which transcends such binaries without negating them.
“Christ is man born of woman to redeem both sexes”, Bishop John Hackett (17th c.) observes. Redemption means more than being free of sin and evil. It also is about acquiring the full goodness of our being. Lancelot Andrewes (17th c.) comments on the meaning of God sending forth his Son in Galatians. It is, he says, “the full measure of His sending” and comprehends all “the transcendent division of good and evil.”
Human desire, properly speaking, can only seek two things, to be rid of evil (a negative good) and to attain all that is truly good (a positive good). Andrewes draws on Paul’s insight about the purpose of God’s sending his Son, “made of a woman, made under the law.” “Redemption and adoption is all that we can wish for ourselves”, he says. This is the purpose of God’s sending his Son at “the fullness of the time”. First, “to redeem them that were under the law”, hence the submission to the law in terms of the sign of circumcision; Second, “that we might receive the adoption of sons”.
All this bestows a great and holy dignity upon our humanity and restores us to fullness or completeness. It is found in union with God in Christ. Such is the fullness of the Christmas mystery. God sends, God sends forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law. These are all God’s doings for us: first, to redeem us and, second, to adopt us as his sons and children. Such is the grace of the Christmas mystery in its fullness. All God and God all for us, the fullness of his grace and truth in us through the Word made flesh.
What is required of us? To live that fullness of grace and truth by our making the word flesh: in short, alive in our lives as redeemed sinners and adopted sons of God. God makes something good out of human evil, out of the empty nihilisms of our contemporary derangements and confusions. Isn’t it wonderful that “the poorest and emptiest season in nature [should] become the fullest and richest in grace” (Andrewes, Xmas 1623), and all through the gathering of all things into unity in God? All in “the fullness of the time” that gathers all things and all time into eternity.
“When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son,
made of a woman, made under the law”
Fr. David Curry
Xmas 2, 2026