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Christmas Day
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Scripture citation(s): Hebrews 1:1-12; John 1:1-14
A Sermon by
The Rev. Dr. Luigi Gioia
on
Hebrews 1:1-12; John 1:1-14
✛
Letting God Speak to Us
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Just few days ago my younger brother Sandro and his wife Giulia, who live in Florence in Italy, gave birth to their second child, an adorable girl, whom they called Emilia.
Once again, as with all my other nephews (six, so far), I have noticed how there are two stages in the experience of childbirth.
There is the actual birth which is disruptive, full of adrenaline, marked by pain, worry, rush, confusion, excitement, visits, gifts, bureaucratic procedures.
Then, few days later, there is the moment in which the parents bring the new-born baby home from the hospital and can finally be alone with it, relax, take in what has happened, behold the sleeping child, savor the miracle of the new life, consider the ways in which its presence and impact gradually expand in their lives.
The proximity of my niece’s birth with Christmas this year has made me realize that something similar happens in the yearly celebration of Jesus’ birth.
The liturgy of the night focusses on the events surrounding the birth, it is full of emotions, crowded with characters, prone to folklore, even charmingly frivolous.
The liturgy of the day of Christmas, on the contrary, is slower, contemplative, and can even strike us as somehow esoteric and abstract: we are no more focussed on baby, crib, pastors, stars, and angels, but hear of “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Hebrews 1.3), and of Word, life, light, flesh, grace, truth.
No surprise if most people prefer to join the midnight celebration but desert the mass of the day (tiredness aside, of course).
In reality, today we are celebrating the same child we welcomed last night, but now we are like the parents who are left alone with it and, using John’s words, take time to “behold” – that is to let what has happened speak to us in a deeper way.
“Letting things speak to us”.
Let’s pause for a moment on this expression.
We all agree that the naïveté of our cribs and of the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth told by Matthew’s and especially by Luke’s Gospels speak to people in a special way – and indeed we know what extraordinary hold they have on the imagination of believers and unbelievers alike. They play with powerful archetypes: a mother, a child, the night, the stars, angels. Something not dissimilar to the scene of the presentation of Simba in The Lion King and the words of the memorable song that accompanies it:
It’s the circle of life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
‘Til we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle
The circle of life.
Most people are happy to see Christmas just in this way, as a celebration of the circle of life – which is not a bad thing, just as The Lion King is not a bad thing, on the contrary, it is moving, powerful, and inspiring.
And yet there are layers in the way we have to let things speak to us.
If we are invited to celebrate Christmas twice, within an interval of just few hours, it is because the birth of this child speaks to us not only of the natural circle of life (and death), not just – to use John’s words – of a “birth of blood and of the will of the flesh and of the will of man” but also of receiving “the power to become children of God”, of being born, or reborn, “of God” (John 1.12). This child still is unable to utter a single word but already speaks volumes: he speaks of God or, rather – and here we pivot from midnight mass to the present celebration- through this child it is God himself who is speaking to us.
This is the key message of both the prologue of John’s Gospel and of the opening lines of Letter to the Hebrews. Their language seems abstract, but what they say is very simple: the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that in the course of history God has been intent on speaking to us “in many and various ways” (Heb 1.1) – he has tried all the imaginable ways to make his voice heard by us; the Prologue of John’s Gospel reveals to us why this is so: it is because God is ‘word’, which means that God is “eager to speak to us”.
God is eager to speak to us!
Indeed, we see him doing precisely this since the beginning of human history when we are told of the delight he found in his daily conversations with Adam and Eve, “in the cool of the day” (Gen 3.8). This familiarity seemed to have been fatally jeopardised with their transgression but instead the whole Scripture testifies to the stubborn inventiveness deployed by our Lord to preserve this dialogue despite the great distance we had put between him and us. Like a rejected lover, he continues to believe in the possibility of awakening our first love for him, he tries every possible way of speaking to our heart, as the prophet Hosea touchingly puts it (Hos 2.16).
True, to attract our attention he began by frightening us when he spoke from a burning bush (Ex 3.4) or through thunder and lightning, to the point that we were afraid of him – as when the people said to Moses: «You speak to us and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die! ” (Ex 20.18-19).
But then, patiently, progressively, God taught us to perceive the true sound of his voice, as when he speaks to Elijah not in the hurricane, the earthquake or the fire, but in “the murmur of a gentle whisper” or, as other translations say, “the sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19.12 ). This means that to recognize the true voice of God we need to pause, listen to this silence, and contemplate or, as John says: “behold his glory” (Jn 1:14).
Jesus is called ‘word’ because not only his teaching, but his whole person and his life are the Father’s last and most ambitious attempt to reach us, manifest who he truly is to us: “No one has ever seen God. But God the Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, has made him known to us” (Jn 1.18).
The letter to the Hebrews calls Jesus the “reflection of God’s glory” (Heb 1.3) for exactly the same reason: the Father is compared to the sun and Jesus to the rays that radiate from it and reach us with their warmth and light. If we looked directly at the sun we would be blinded. But we can welcome its rays, our eyes can slowly adjust to their brightness, we can learn to “behold his glory”.
In this child we have God eager to talk to us, God speaking to us. (crib after midnight)
All we have to do is letting him do this.
Like the parents who are finally alone with their new-born baby at home, then, let us learn to practice this contemplative way of looking (and listening): we need to take our time, be patient, loving, persevering, dedicated – we need to keep beholding the child born for us. We will discover – just as Elijah did- that through the sheer silence of this wordless infant God is telling us something that has the power to make us children of God, to truly transform our lives.
In this child we behold a God who is not afraid of plunging into our mess, exposing himself to the hazards of human existence, joining our uncertain journey, making himself vulnerable to our need of loving and being loved, allowing himself to be touched and embraced by us – even becoming dependent on us.
We behold a God who has become a child.
This means that, like any other child, he will not be able to grow, to acquire the ability to feel, speak, walk, develop emotionally, humanly and intellectually unless he receives the loving and caring touch of a mother and the reassuring and enveloping embrace of a father. Without our care for him he will not be able to fulfil his mission to save us. This is the extent to which really he is embracing our human condition.
We are often told that the essence of Christian life is to trust God – and this is absolutely true.
And yet here we see that God too trusts us – entrusts to our care his only Son: we teach him how to speak – he teaches us how to listen, how to let God speak to us.
