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Second Sunday after Christmas

‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us’

‘A daeth y Gair yn gnawd a phreswylio yn ein plith’ (Jn 1:14)

After all the excitement and bustle of Christmas and New Year, there is a certain slowness about January. The days are short, the weather usually takes a turn for the worst. Also, despite our resolutions, we often don’t feel all that lively or full of energy. It is understandable. Thankfully the Lectionary helps by giving us the opportunity to revisit some Christmas texts, allowing us to ponder the mystery of the Incarnation. While the world around us has taken their decorations down, in Church we are still celebrating Christmas, and will continue so to do for some time yet. The awesome mystery of God taking human flesh and being born among us needs more than a day’s celebration. Indeed we could spend a whole lifetime contemplating the wonderful fact that God has come down to earth to share our human life, and to bring about our restoration and our redemption.

Today’s Old Testament Reading is from The Wisdom of Sirach, also known as Ecclesiasticus. This is a later writing in the Jewish Wisdom Tradition, dated to roughly 125 years before the birth of Jesus. It was composed in Hebrew and soon after was translated into Greek. Our reading this morning comes from the beginning of a hymn to Wisdom. Wisdom is likened to the Word of God, and so becomes important as a way of reflecting upon Jesus. This is especially true of the following verse: 

‘Then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent.’ (Sir 24:8)

In John’s Gospel we are familiar with the verse:

‘And the Word became flesh and lived among us’ (Jn 1:14)

The Greek word ‘ἐσκήνωσεν’, we translate as ‘lived’, actually means ‘pitched his tent’. John’s Gospel is looking back to the Jewish Wisdom tradition to understand the Incarnation, and to place Christ’s birth in a wider scriptural context. The author of Ecclesiasticus was looking forward to a Messiah, and now He has been born. The longed-for salvation has become a reality. 

This assurance lies behind St Paul’s joyful greeting to the Christians in Ephesus. Like the Ephesian faithful, we too we have entered into a new relationship with God the Father: 

‘He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved’ (Eph 1:5-6)

Our primary identity is as children of God; as brothers and sisters in Christ. This is brought about through an outpouring of God’s grace — unmerited kindness and generosity  given freely because Our Heavenly Father loves us. This is the heart of the Christian Faith, and the message of Christmas: God loves us! How we respond to His divine love is our choice. Paul prays that Christ:

‘may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.’ (Eph 1:17-18)

Our hope is in Heaven. We desire to spend eternity in God’s close presence, and to join the Church Triumphant. This is the reason why Christ is born in Bethlehem: to give us this hope, and to bestow this grace upon us. Through our celebration of Christmas we know that ours is a God who comes among us, and alongside us; who is not remote, but involved in every part of our lives.

Saint John take us back to the beginning of all things, to the Creation, so that we can see the bigger picture. What we are celebrating at Christmas is an event which extends through time, both in its nature and its effects. This is why we, as Christians, make such a big deal of Christmas. It isn’t just something nice to do in the middle of winter. Along with Our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection, the Birth of Jesus is the most wonderful and important moment of history, and it affects us here and now. What was made known to the shepherds, we now proclaim to the world. This is shown symbolically in the Feast of the Epiphany, where the Wise Men point to the manifestation of Christ’s Divinity made visible to the whole world — the recognition of God’s saving love:

‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.’ (Jn 1:14)

The reality of the Incarnation, of God with us (Emmanuel), is that Our Lord lives with us, sharing our human life, and showing us His glory. That which Moses hid his face from in the Book of Exodus is now made plain, and displayed for all to see. It is a proclamation of the divine glory; the love, and the goodness of God. This is demonstrated by our adoption as children of God, and the inheritance we are given. This inheritance consists of eternal life, as well as a close relationship with God who restores and heals us. 

The last few years have shown us that humanity desperately needs both healing and restoration. This is possible through Christ who can heal our wounds, and restore in us the image of the God who created us. As Christians, we long for this, and we pray for it. If we are willing to let God be at work in us, the Kingdom of God can become a reality here and now. 

As we begin 2026, we are grateful that we are able to meet together in worship. We look forward in hope to a future much brighter than the dark days we have endured. Let us walk in the light of Christ, and know the fullness of His joy. Let us be glad that as a pledge of His Love Christ gives Himself, to feed us with His Body and His Blood. Through the bread and wine of Communion we have a foretaste of Heaven. This is food for our journey of faith here on earth. By participation in the Eucharist, physically or spiritually, we are strengthened to live out our faith and to proclaim it by word and deed. Therefore my brothers and sisters in Christ, at the start of this new year, we pray that all the world may come to know the love of Our Lord Jesus, and experience His healing touch. We lift up our hearts with joy, and join with the angels, to sing the praise of to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Duw Dad, Duw y Mab, a Duw yr Ysbryd Glân. To whom be ascribed all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. Amen.

Posted on by atfurse

Christmas 2024

Christmas is a time for many seasonal activities, including spending time with family and friends, eating special foods and enjoying Christmas Carols. Also, most of us will spend some time over the festive period watching films on the television, or in the cinema. Movies can, surprisingly, be particularly useful when we try and get our heads around the wonderful events of Christmas. I would like to begin by focussing on a film from my childhood — the 1981 adventure Raiders of the Lost Ark. In this film, the intrepid archaeologist Indiana Jones is competing with Nazi forces to discover the Ark of the Covenant, which, it is believed, has the power to make an army invincible. At the climax of the film, the villains open the Ark on an island in the Aegean Sea. Immediately, spirits and bolts of lightning are released, which kill the Nazis and free Indiana and his companion Marion. Other than being the sort of film one might watch at Christmas, what is the relevance of the scene?

The film’s denouement relies upon the heroes averting their gaze, while the villains do not, and are therefore destroyed. The plot draws upon the biblical idea that the glory of God, which the Ark is said to contain, is not something which humanity should gaze upon. In the Book of Exodus, when Moses asks to see God, he is told that if he does so he will die. The glory of God is not something humans are able to behold. 

Yet, the first reading this morning reaches its climax with the statement that:

‘fe wêl holl gyrrau’r ddaear iachawduriaeth ein Duw ni’

‘all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.’ (Isa 52:10)

There appears to be something strange going on here. Likewise, the one who begins His life wrapped in cloth and placed in a stone feeding trough, will end it taken down from a Cross, wrapped in cloth and placed in a stone tomb. ‘In my beginning is my end …. In my end is my beginning’ wrote T.S. Elliot in his poem ‘East Coker’, the second of his Four Quartets. And yet this end is but a prelude to Christ’s Resurrection, Ascension, and the Second Coming. 

In the great turnaround of salvation history, humanity goes from being unable to look upon the divine, to being able to behold Him in a manger, surrounded by farm animals. To put the mystery of our salvation into context, this morning’s Gospel goes back to the beginning, which is a very good place to start. Not to the Annunciation, where in the power of the Holy Spirit Christ takes flesh in the womb of His Mother, but to the beginning of time and the Creation of the Universe:

‘Yn y dechreuad yr oedd y Gair, a’r Gair oedd gyda Duw, a Duw oedd y Gair. Hwn oedd yn y dechreuad gyda Duw.’

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.’ (Jn 1:1)

The Word which spoke the Universe into being exists in eternity with God, and is God. This is whom we worship: the one who will save humanity, and who offers us eternal life with God. 

Today we celebrate Divine generosity and humility. God is among us. Mae Duw yn eich plith ni. Born as a weak and vulnerable baby, he is utterly dependent upon Mary and Joseph. In time this divine generosity will be refused:

‘At ei eiddo ei hun y daeth, a’r eiddo ei hun nis derbyniasant ef.’

‘He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.’ (Jn 1:11)

Ours is a God who does not force Himself upon us. Instead, He comes to us in love, to draw us out in love, that we might share in that love, and share it with others: 

‘A’r Gair a wnaethpwyd yn gnawd, ac a drigodd yn ein plith ni, (ac ni a welsom ei ogoniant ef, gogoniant megis yr Unig‐anedig oddi wrth y Tad,) yn llawn gras a gwirionedd.’

‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.’ (Jn 1:14)

God pitches His tent, and tabernacles among us. The invisible becomes visible. The God who is beyond human understanding becomes human, and shares our human life from its beginning to its end. This is no unapproachable divinity, remote and uncaring, but one who experiences our existence, who understands us from the inside out. Humanity beholds the glory of God, in a baby who will die on a Cross to redeem us. 

Not only that, but Christ continues to give Himself to us, every time the Eucharist is celebrated, so that the Word can continue to become flesh, so that we can be transformed by Him, and share in God’s life. 

As we celebrate the birth of Our Saviour we need to ask ourselves: have we made room for Jesus in our lives? Have we really? If we haven’t, we need to let our hearts and our lives become the stable in which the Christ-child can be born. We need to see Him in the outcast, in the stranger, in the people which the world shuns. As Christians, we have to welcome such people, for in welcoming them we welcome Our Lord and Saviour. This is how we live out His love in our lives.

This is the true meaning of Christmas — this is the love which can transform the world. It is radical and costly. This love terrified the might of the Roman Empire, and showed human power that it was as nothing compared to Divine Love. Soul by individual soul, for the past two thousand years, the world has been changed by ordinary people living out the love shown to the world by, and through, this little vulnerable child.

So, today as we celebrate Jesus’ birth, let us raise our voices to join with the angels and give praise and honour to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. To whom be ascribed all glory, dominion and power, now and forever. Amen.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Nadolig Llawen i chi gyd!