St. Thomas’s Episcopal Parish in Newark

Newark, DE

Christmas Eve & Christmas Day – December 24 & 25, 2011/Year B

Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

The Reverend Paul W. Gennett, Jr.

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May my words reveal the greater glory of God

AMEN

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Merry Christmas! Once again we gather this holy night, at the end of Advent’s journey of our soul and the depth of the winter solstice deep darkness, into the Light of God come into the world. We gather to remember, to celebrate, and to worship the Light of Love in the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. We come home to this place, on this night. I welcome you home.

Some of us gather for a respite from the relentless consumer Christmas machine. Tired and tattered, we have run with faith the gauntlet of shopping malls, our fingers calloused from online shopping excursions, paper cuts slowly healing from the wrapping of the presents, and our taste buds returning after licking all the Christmas card envelopes. We come this holy night to hear our story, to rest into the promise of God’s love, and to be enveloped by the traditions we remember and love every Christmas Eve – the singing of carols and warmth of flickering candles … the softened lights and our sweet songs and prayers … and those new traditions, like the burn mark on the floor in front of the altar from the 2008 incense coal incident. All of this is part of the holiness we seek, and the holiness that calls to our hearts.

Do you know what the MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION on Christmas Day and those days following – WHAT DID YOU GET? The consumer Christmas machine leads us to believe the BUYING is what truly makes Christmas special. So our young children watch and wait with wonder for those special toys that are technologically savvy and the price reflects these savvy features. I mean, what child could live without the newest Lady Gaga doll that sings, dances, and does everything else … and I mean EVERYTHING!

Our young adults want anything that starts with an "I" – IPhone, IPad, MP3 or 4 or 4000, Wii or WiiWii More [I swear I heard this advertised someplace]. Technology that can provide thousands of songs at the touch of our finger, with millions of books and information by our touch to the screen, and cell phones that offer five million “apps”, which is 4,999,999 more than I would ever need. One friend from a past parish wrote in his Christmas letter that he MUST HAVE a Lincoln MKX with all the trimmings. We sent our Christmas card to him, enclosed with a magazine picture of his Lincoln MKX and a $25 gas card to get him started. We live for the answer to the Christmas question WHAT DID YOU GET?

Now, I invite you to guess was is the LEAST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION around the Christmas season, the one that is LIVED by shepherds and kings, by Mary and Joseph –What will you GIVE?

We gather for my fourth Christmas season with our economy showing a glimmer of recovery, yet more frequently still bumping along like an airplane that cannot quite get off the runway and into the air. The consumer Christmas reports seems to reflect better news, yet manufacturing output, and the number of people still unemployed or underemployed, seem to speak a different story. The housing market is still awash of foreclosed homes, without clear sense of how traction may be renewed in this sector of our economy. The debt crisis in countries of the world markets threaten to stall or even reverse any movement in our economic efforts. Most disturbing for me was a statistic I heard on a morning television show last week that over one million children in our country are homeless. WHAT DID YOU GET? … What will you give?

Give and take is one of those sayings we use glibly to mean if I give you something I expect something to be coming my way from you. This has become a too well worn phrase around the halls of government in Washington these days, although the outcome looks anything but give and take. There seems to be emptiness when we hear a member of Congress saying, “I give you MY WORD.” So on this holy night, we gather to enter into God’s story, into God’s Word given to us, to be one of us, to live with us, to die for us, and rise again for us eternally. The Word of this baby Jesus becomes the living truth for us, and ultimately the ONLY TRUTH that can make us truly free. Part of the truth of God’s Word comes to us this holy night, yet the culmination of our freedom through the birth of Jesus comes on the Cross of Good Friday, and through the empty tomb of Easter Day. WHAT DID YOU GET? … What will you give?

We embrace Christmas as THE most wonderful time of the year for most, and for the large part it is tied to the anticipation of the answer to the question what did you get. Yet at the end of most Christmas mornings, the room around the Christmas tree looking like an explosion of wrapping paper and ribbons, there is a feeling that the air has just been let out of the room. There is truly something magical about unwrapping those gifts in anticipation and excitement of what awaits us under the bow. The mystery of our holy Christmas is the gift that never stops giving and takes us a lifetime of faithful living to fully unwrap.

It seems to me the eternal gift of our holy Christmas is revealed as follows:

• The mystery and majesty of the birth of Jesus is an instant gift. By and through the birth of Jesus, we ALL have received the gift of life now and life eternal. It is the gift of a living faith that, as St. John writes, “… all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God … And the Word became flesh and lives among us … full of grace and truth.”

• The mystery and majesty of the birth of Jesus is a gift that takes a lifetime to unwrap. The birth of Jesus is just the beginning of receiving God’s gift of life as children of God. Everyday I wake up, I have the opportunity to unwrap, to embrace, and to live the gift of freedom and life I have in God and Christ Jesus. And just when I think there is no more God can or will give, or no more that I deserve, MORE is presented to me. It is through participating in God’s desire for our faithful living and your participation in thedaily unwrapping and embracing God and Christ Jesus that is always progress not perfection … invitation into participation.

• The mystery and majesty of the birth of Jesus is a gift of enormous value. Who of us can even imaging placing a price on God’s Love in this holy child Jesus? I would not be surprised to hear that some stores now proclaiming deep discounts on crèche sets! There is no price on the life we receive in the presence of these representations of Jesus’ birth. The shepherds knew and embraced Love in the gift they receive by being the first called and led to the manger. The Magi embraced Love in the gifts they bring, knowing how insignificant the gold, frankincense, and myrrh are in the face of the One they come to honor. Yet even in the enormous value and inability to put a price on this gift, God gives it to us for FREE into FREEDOM.

• The mystery and majesty of the birth of Jesus is that this gift to us MUST be given away again and again and again. This is not just our gift, but a gift for ALL to receive, and WE are the bearers of God’s gift in our days. It is THE gift to share with others through the story of God’s Love in your life and how it shapes, forms, and leads you in freedom day after day. I have never found anyone who, on receiving the gift of God in Christ Jesus, was able to say “since God has come into my life, it is a lot worse than it was before!” For when the gift of God’s Love is fully embraced and lived through your life, you will know peace, joy, love, faith, freedom from want, kindness, gentleness, humility, wisdom, and grace.

When was the last time someone asked you, “Do I have your word?” Or when they said to you, “I give you my word,” you knew you could trust this word given to you absolutely? Too often we see public figures, their word sworn with hand upon the Bible, perjure themselves. Words of honor and trust are broken as casually as the discarded Christmas wrappings are thrown in the trash, and Christmas decorations packed away on December 26. It is little wonder that most of the world sneers when God says “… the Word became flesh and lives among us … full of grace and truth.” Yet of all THE WORDS spoken, God’s Word lives and gives again and again and again and …

The mystery and majesty of the birth of Jesus is OUR INSTANT GIFT … that takes OUR LIFETIME TO UNWRAP … to be overwhelmed by its ENORMOUS VALUE … that ultimately MUST BE GIVEN AWAY.

What did you get … What will you give?

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On my first Christmas with you in 2008, I was given a gift of a poem by our poet parishioner Devon Miller Duggan, a welcoming into your midst as priest that we may share together in the mystery and majesty of the birth of Jesus as our intentional way of living our faith always. One stanza of this poem continues to speak to my soul to this day, the gift within the gift that continues to give life to my call and ministry in your midst …

O, come dwell here, where we inhabit skin and disbelief …

Some thing not skin, some longing we have called belief.

O, come with us, we make a house, and every moment we recall, remake the house.

O, come dwell in the house we make, o come,

O, be the house for my belief to dwell in, shelter in,

O, ransom my dwelling in this house I hold for ransom.

Promiscuous enough with faith to make its noise,

The congregation sings, “O, come …”

And every year, the God in us, crawls into flesh.

God gives us the Word in the flesh of this babe child Jesus, the gift of life today, the gift of life eternally.

What will you give? As the hymn so eloquently speaks in its final verse …

“What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can give him … GIVE MY HEART.”

Hymn #112, The Hymnal 1982

MERRY CHISTMAS!

AMEN