December 24, 2001 -- Christmas Eve 11:00 p.m. Midnight Mass

A sermon by Dean Keith Joyce

¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

⁶ There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. ¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.

Why can I presume to dare to talk about Him, this Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem so long ago, and dare to speak of Him as my friend? It is simply because of the Incarnation, because he, as the Son of God from before time, dared to speak to me on my terms and invited me to befriend Him on His terms.

What's challenging, and maybe even an intellectual irritant about the Incarnation, is that it's not merely a religious or spiritual idea. That challenge will stay with us until we encounter Jesus Christ as he presented Himself, namely as the Incarnate One, the One who shows to the world who God is. He reveals to the world the character, the love, the mercy, the compassion, and the mystery of God. That''s what Christmas is all about.

The birth of Jesus, as important as that is, is only a small fraction of the power, the joy, and again, the mystery of God''s miracle of the Incarnation. If we focus only on the baby we are then left with a sentimentalized Christianity that ultimately does nobody any good. His birth, nonetheless, is a good place to start, but I do stress, start. As we begin in Bethlehem, and to preserve us from mere sentimentality, we need to keep in mind the words of a Chorale in Bach's Christmas Oratorio "Lo, behold, in a dark stable lies He whose reign covers the universe! Where once the cattle sought their food, Now lies the Virgin's holy son."

While we may not like this 'challenge,' it remains a fact that not everything about God is going to be understood or grasped through the mental gymnastics of our limited and finite minds. What kind of a God would God be if He did everything so that we could easily understand what and why He was doing those things? Would He not be, then, a god of our making, for us to manipulate according to our needs or intellectual fancy, occasionally making him no more than a fuzzy teddy bear when we need comfort, but otherwise someone we could keep in his place, even while granting him the dubious honour of a place only in the spiritual side of our lives?

God didn't do it that way. He became flesh and bone and sinew and muscle and water and blood with all the other physical attributes of a human being. He chose to encounter us on our terms so that we may be able to rise up into his life and glory.

God was willing to humble Himself, to make a phenomenal accommodation to draw us up into fellowship with Him. Like becoming human. Here's to try and illustrate: A hospital patient was in an accident and was left with the sense of smell only. Her mother wanted to communicate her presence, so she used a perfume the girl would remember as her mom's. Now the perfume was not the mother's essential nature, but was an extension of her real self, to communicate on the girl's level. God also is not essentially a body, but he became human. He extended Himself to communicate on our level so we could respond.

He came down to lift us up. That's not the same as having us escape our human existence or have us avoid the pain and suffering of this world. No, in His descent, in His humble condescension to come to our level, he came so that we could be drawn up into fellowship with God, into communion and companionship with God. He did not come just to be our buddy here on earth, as a kind of anaesthetic when life gets hard. No, in relationship with Christ we are brought into the holy and eternal environment of the life of God. And that's more than enough for anything we face here on earth! In Jesus, God points the way deep into His heart.

And in Christ we know we have more success than Billy Graham had with one young fellow! The Reverend Billy Graham tells of a time early in his career when he arrived in a small town to preach a sermon. Wanting to mail a letter, he asked a young boy where the post office was.

When the boy told him, Billy Graham thanked him and said, "If you'll come to the Baptist church this evening, you can hear me tell everyone how to get to Heaven."

"I don't think I'll be there," the boy said. "You don't even know your way to the post office."

As we look into God's heart, we read about the One who points the way: "¹²To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13) That's the impact on us as we encounter God in Jesus Christ! We are brought up into God''s family, as His children, knowing that we belong in a world where so many, maybe even (many sitting here now,) someone reading this now feels alone, abandoned, isolated, terribly lonely. In the midst of all the comforts of this world, in the context of a vast array of friendships, we can feel as if we don't belong to anybody, that we really are not important to anyone.

In Christ, we know that we belong in the most secure of relationships, namely we belong in the most significant way possible. We belong to God who is revealed and who has encountered us, or better yet, as we say these days, who's "in our face," in His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. That's why St. Paul can say that he is ³⁸.....convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39)

As Jesus Christ entered into our sphere of living, into the fullness of the human experience, we then are to encounter him in the complete picture of our lives. Jesus is too big to simply fit into the so-called "spiritual" dimension of our existence. He came, as we read later in John, so that we "may have life, and may have it abundantly." (John 10:10) It's really all or nothing. He is not simply a part of a religious buffet, or an option in a smorgasbord of spiritualities. He is the full expression of the Creator of the universe, the maker of all that is seen and unseen! We cannot run the risk of presenting Jesus in any way other than he presents himself in the pages of Scripture. Much of the real appeal of who Jesus is can be lost in trying to make him appealing.

And yet in his compassion for us, he does walk with us, even in the most horrendous of circumstances. He does not shy away from fellowship with us in the darkest of times in our lives. We can take heart. He is "the light" which "shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." (John 1:5) He even takes our sin, and upon confession, He forgives us and heals us and renews us.

"Even though" we "walk through the valley of the shadow of death," we need "fear no evil," for God is with us to comfort us and guide us. It's He Himself who is with us. When in the valley, when nothing makes sense, when doubt and uncertainty rage, we do not have to remember ideas or theories or teachings about God. Instead we turn to a Person, to the One with whom we have the closest of companionships. That's why receiving the One whom God sent is a very personal thing and therefore as real as anything we will ever experience.

It's no wonder that this Jesus Christ, this King of glory, is referred to in the Scriptures as "the indescribable gift!" (2 Corinthians 9:15) There is nothing nor anyone else quite like Him! May it be said this Christmas and every day of our lives, that "we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth," and know it, know Him, deep within all the recesses of our lives, with all the joy and liberty and power of the One who has come and continues to come into our hearts, namely the Incarnate One, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So, again I say that in the Incarnation we do not get merely religious ideas or spiritual notions. We get, in Jesus Christ, no less than God Himself.

It is said that long ago, there ruled in Persia a wise and good king. He loved his people. He wanted to know how they lived. He wanted to know about their hardships. Often he dressed in the clothes of a working man or a beggar and went to the homes of the poor. No one whom he visited thought that he was their ruler. One time he visited a very poor man who lived in a cellar. He ate the coarse food the poor man ate. He spoke cheerful, kind words to him. Then he left.

Later he visited the poor man again and disclosed his identity by saying, "I am your king!" The king thought the man would surely ask for some gift or favour, but he didn't. Instead he said, "You left your palace and your glory to visit me in this dark, dreary place. You ate the coarse food I ate. You brought gladness to my heart! To others you have given your rich gifts. To me you have given yourself!"

Amen.