Christmas

The true spirit of Christmas

Earlier this week I noted this comic “Coffee With Jesus” which I had not read before. One commentator felt that it was a clever premise, but that it was a shame they didn’t do something “more productive with it.” I replied and maintain that if you liked CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters you might like these. They are modernizations, to be sure, but they are very much in the same vein. Yesterday’s strip was even more clearly part of this genre and timely too.

Oh, and please feel free to remind those who feel using “X” for “Christ” (in Christmas) is an attack on the holiday and Christianity that “X” has been a symbol for Christ for millennia: χριστός.

This is the Christmas season

Dec 26th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

We often forget that the past weeks have not been the Christmas season, rather the liturgical season begins with Christmas. I have some friends who follow the tradition of not putting up their Christmas tree until Christmas Eve. My kids would never go for that but we do follow Advent with Christmas and Epiphany. As someone who did not grow up in a church that followed the traditional seasons and lectionary doing so as an adult has been wonderful. Below I offer my sermon from 2008 given on the First Sunday after Christmas. The readings are the same each year.

I hope that you all have had a wonderful and blessed Christmas Day and that this season the Incarnation will fill and transform your life.

First Sunday after Christmas 2008 RCL

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18
Psalm 147 or 147:13-21

Did you get what you expected for Christmas? The season of Advent is all about waiting; we were waiting for the coming of the Christmas feast, but more importantly we were remembering how all Israel awaited the coming of the Messiah before Jesus was born and how we now await his second coming in glory. The problem with expectations is that they seldom live up to our hopes and visions. The same was true in Jesus’ day. Those who were awaiting the messiah, God’s anointed one who would save Israel had a wide variety of expectations and beliefs as to who the messiah would be and what he would be like.

Most were expecting a military figure who would lead a mighty army to drive out the Romans and establish a great Jewish kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital. Jesus the messiah was indeed the son of David whose kingdom has no end, but the kingdom that Jesus established is the reign of God in our lives. We might drive out an empire or a dictator for a time yet we know that the peace that follows is always fleeting. It is only once all people have allowed the kingdom of God to reign in their hearts and lives through accepting Jesus as their messiah that true peace can be established. This is the true identity of the messiah and his name is Jesus; Joshua in Hebrew, which means, “the Lord is salvation.”

In today’s Gospel we continue to learn more about Jesus’ true identity. As we heard in our readings of the past week, the Son of David is also the Son of God and the Gospel John tells us that Jesus is in fact nothing less than God himself.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

What an amazing claim! John opens his gospel with the most audacious assertion ever to be made. Jesus, it is abundantly clear that the Word of which John speaks is none other than Jesus, is God. Now I have heard many people, Christians and non-Christians, say that the belief that Jesus and God are one and the same only came about in the centuries following Jesus’ death and that it is the Creeds that make this statement not the Bible. That is simply untrue and this passage is but one example. That, however, is a sermon for another day.

Notice that John does not simply say that Word was God. He declares that Word was with God in the beginning and that all things were made through him. Listen again to the first three verses.

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

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Don’t know what to get your wife for Christmas?

Dec 20th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

1 comment

But I know better than to go that route… Darryl, when will you learn?!

Still, better than the vacuum cleaner.

The Digital Nativity

Dec 14th, 2010

by Christian Brady.

2 comments

Perhaps you have already seen this, but it is worth sharing.

A happy & blessed Christmas to you all!

Dec 25th, 2009

by Christian Brady.

No comments yet

Fortunately Santa managed to extricate himself from the plane (see the right) and made it to our house with ease. I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Below is my sermon from Christmas 2008.

Christmas Day (Service on Christmas Eve)
Selection I, RCL
All Years

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
Psalm 96

“To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

I wish you all a very happy and blessed Christmas! The weather today is ugly and cold, but within these walls there is light and warmth. At long last our period of waiting is over! Over this Advent season we have contemplated Christ’s coming again even as we have prepared to remember his first arrival as a small child. Even in these difficult economic times this season fills our lives with business and things. But tonight we take pause and worship God born as a child. This is, after all, Christ’s mass.

It is for many good reasons that Christmas is perhaps the best known of Christian festivals. That may be primarily due to the practice of giving and getting gifts, Christmas is now a major festival in China and its popularity is driven purely by commerce, but all the same Christmas is so familiar that we often forget that at its heart lies perhaps the most challenging and fundamental of Christian beliefs. The birth of Jesus is nothing less than the incarnation of God. This baby Jesus is the “indwelling” of God in the flesh. He is “Emmanuel,” God with us.

The Gospel of John opens with this simple and yet revolutionary assertion about the person and identity of Jesus.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Jesus is God. I spoke of this two Sundays ago and commented then that this is a mystery. It is a mystery in the sense not that it is a problem to be solved, like a murder mystery, but rather it is a truth that is only known through revelation. That we do not fully understand how this happens does not mean that we cannot appreciate and contemplate what the humanity of Jesus means for us tonight.

God becoming human is not just a theological concept for contemplation and debate, the incarnation is about God expressing his will directly to us through his son Jesus. The very notion of God’s humanity is about bringing to humanity those things that words cannot express. You could say that Jesus is God’s response to “don’t tell me, show me.” The fact that Jesus lived and walked among us, that he had friends and followers, that he was a child growing up with hunger and sleeplessness, weariness and pain, temptations and troubles conveys to us the relational aspect of God’s love. He is not only transcendent, completely other and beyond our comprehension, he is at the same time immanent, here with us, feeling and knowing what life is like for us human creatures.

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