Christmas Day
Homily
Text ……… John 1:1-14
Today I want to focus on a
portion of this Gospel as proclaimed in this context of the Feast Day of the
Nativity of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ that quite frankly I have
never pondered on much until recent days.
In the midst of my reading and preparation to preach, I encountered the
question, "Why does John the Baptist appear here in today's Gospel?"
We encounter John as Forerunner
who prepares the Way for Messiah in Advent. After these Twelve Days of
Christmas are complete, we shall encounter John as Baptist, or rather as
Baptizer, who brought Jesus into the waters of Jordan and played a key role in
the revealing of Jesus as the unique and eternal Son of God. But today we encounter
John in the celebration of the First Advent of Messiah. Only today we are not
faced with the Forerunner or the Baptizer. John has a different role on this
day.
What then is this role? We
encounter John as the Witness who points to the Christ and reveals him for who
he is, has ever been, and will be forever. John the Evangelist does not mention
the Christ child. And the reason he doesn't, I believe, is because the
Evangelist and the Witness both known as John know that the infancy of Christ
is but a piece of the story. They each remind us today that in Jesus, the child
and the man, we are encountered by God who desires to be known and loved by us
even as God has known and loved us long before anyone else.
I thought of John as Witness to
the Christ, I could not help but think of the words of the prophet Isaiah that
we have heard this day. Isaiah proclaims:
"How
beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news, who announces salvation..."
Isaiah is speaking of witnesses.
The Evangelist John presents us with one such witness. And when these two
passages are placed side by side, I cannot help but think that each of these
men known as John are those beautiful feet. As witnesses, each of them stand
among the people, on the place where the Scriptures of the Old Covenant speak
again as the meeting place of God and humans; the mountain. Only this is no
longer an actual mountain. The mountain is the whole world into which God the
Word has been revealed as God clothed in our humanity, inviting us to enter
into the Kingdom of God and rejoice in the nearness of God.
Only, dear friends, John the
Evangelist and John the Baptist are not the only witnesses of this Gospel. They
are not the only ones who have beautiful feet that take good news, the Word of
God, throughout the world. Today these two legends of the Gospel are reminders
for us that we who have received both the Gospel of the Birth of Jesus and the
Gospel of the Eternal Word of God made flesh, are called to run with them and
proclaim them for the sake of the world in our own day and generation. They
challenge us to go forth into the world, guided by the Holy Spirit, to make
Christ known in all the world, not just today but every day. They call us to
share not just the child whose birth we celebrate but also the risen Lord of
Lords and King of Kings who is still among us, and ever shall be. We are not
merely to keep Christ in Christmas. We are to keep Christ in the world, not only
on Holy Days and Sundays, but even on the most ordinary of days when the world
might just think our daily celebration of Christ is proof that we have gone
mad.
And how we need to speak that
daily presence in the most ordinary of days. The celebration of the world, the
occasional celebration, all too often leaves many wanting and empty. Perhaps I
think of this more than most because again this year the final days of Advent
leading up to Christmas have been days in which I have stood beside those overwhelmed
with grief and loss, who find it difficult to embrace what the world calls the
joy of the season. For too many, that
joy is unattainable. It is unattainable for these ones as long as what is meant
by joy is blind happiness that ignores all other emotions and those who cannot
express such a facade that is emotionally empty.
But today we do well to remember
that Jesus has broken into our midst to be with us always, to laugh with us
when we laugh, to cry with us when we cry, to lift us up and to hold us close
to the heart of God. We are to witness to this presence of Christ. Our sharing
is not merely about a child born to us. Our sharing is chiefly about a God who
has come to us, to be with us always, in a way that mirrors the vows taken by a
husband and a wife:
"in
sickness and in health."
And true joy comes to us, no
matter what other emotions may be found alongside it, when we remember that:
"nothing
shall separate us from the love of God, not even death."
The Incarnate Word, God of God,
Light of Light, True and Very God of True and Very God, holds us in his arms,
and will never let us go. Today and every day, may our words and deeds, indeed
our very presence in the world, point to this Jesus, witnessing to the love of
God that transforms all into what God has imagined that we and they should be
before him today and forever. And when
we make that witness, how beautiful are our feet that take the Gospel into the
world!
Father Timothy
Alleman
No comments:
Post a Comment