I Christmas

December 29, 2024

 

John 1.1-18

 

+ Today, this first Sunday of Christmas, is one of those somewhat forgotten Sundays.

 

Nobody pays a whole lot attention to the first Sunday of Christmas.

 

It’s somewhat of a “low” Sunday.

 

It feels a bit anti-climactic, after Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

 

But I like this Sunday, maybe because it’s kind of a forgotten, neglected Sunday.

 

I like underdogs.

 

 

I like is especially because it always reminds me of that beautiful hymn we will sing a bit later today, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

 

After all, we are in the bleak midwinter.

 

This is it.

 

And nobody knows the bleak midwinter better than us, here, in Fargo, North Dakota.

 

I talked about this in my Christmas day sermon, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the words to that hymn were written by an incredible poet.

 

Christina Rossetti.

 

Rossetti was the sister of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was much better known in his time as a leader of pre-Raphaelite literary movement in England.

 

Christina was the forgotten one.

 

The unmarried sister who quietly wrote poems at home, she was also the superior poet.

 

She was a devout Anglo-Catholic Anglican and a bit of recluse.

 

Think of her as kind of Hugh Church Emily Dickinson.

 

And although, during their lifetime, Dante Gabriel was more famous, 125 years after her death, it is Christina Rossetti’s words we are singing today.

 

And today is the actual 125^th anniversary of Christinia Rosetti’s death.

 

She was also my mother’s favorite poet (well, hopefully after me)

 

In fact my mother requested that Rossetti’s “When I am dead, my dearest” be printed in her funeral program.

 

When my mother died, the poem and hymn “In the bleak midwinter” spoke strongly to me.

 

I played a wonderful version of it by the Indie band Animal Collective over and over again in those weeks after she died.  

 

Yes, I know that it is a Christmas hymn, and my mother did not die in the season of Christmas:

 

But let’s face it.

 

That opening stanza speaks loudly to us who live in the bleak midwinter for months on end:

 

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago

 

 

And let me tell you, it also speaks very loudly to anyone who is going through a mourning “hard as iron.”

 

Grief is truly like a terrible bleak winter, no matter what season may be outside.

We are also in this strange time of watching the year 2024 leave and to bring in the year 2025.

 

I have a personal tradition of watching three movies on or around New Years Eve.

The first is a movie called 200 Cigarettes—which is about a group of edgy, cool, New Wave New Yorkers on New Year’s Eve 1982 partying and thinking about their lives and all that the New Year entails.

 It’s not a great movie and I don’t recommend it to too many people.

It’s just one of those kind of so-so movies that I occasionally like to watch just for the fun of it.

The second movie which I always watch on New Years Day morning, is Tokyo Drifter, a great Japanese film form 1966,

 I started watching that film on New Years Day 9 years ago.

 It was my first New Years after I gave up drinking.

 And one of the joys I had in giving up alcohol was how wonderful and fresh New Years morning is, especially with no hang-over.

 (I also like to go for a long drive on New Years morning, depending on the weather)

 But another movie that I always like to watch around this time of the year is a movie I do recommend.

 It’s a Coen Brothers film called The Hudsucker Proxy.

 Any of you who know me, know I LOVE the Coen Brothers.

 I refence them about as much in sermon as I do the author Cormac McCarthy.

 The Hudsucker Proxy, if you’ve never seen it, opens with a really powerful beginning.

 It begins with a panning shot through the snow of New York City from above.

 As the shot pans, we hear the narrator.

 He says, as we travel along with him:

  That's right.

                 

New York.

             

It's 1958 .

 

Anyway, for a few more minutes it is.

                 

Come midnight, it's going to be 1959.

 

 A whole other feeling.

 

 The New Year.

 

 The future.

 

 Old Daddy Earth [is] fixing to start one more trip around the sun.

 

Everybody [is] hoping this ride round [will] be a little more giddy...

 

 ...a little more gay.

 

All over town, champagne corks [are] popping.

 

Over in the Waldorf, the big shots [are] dancing to the strains of Guy Lombardo.

 

In Times Square, the little folks [are] watching and waiting for that big ball to drop.

 

They're all trying to catch hold of one moment of time...

 

...to be able to say:

 

"Right now! This is it!

 

"I got it!"

 

 Of course, by then it'll be past.

 

But they're all happy...

 

                  

...everybody having a good time.

 

  That’s what beginnings are all about, I guess.

 

That one moment when we too can say:

 

“Right now! This is it! I got it!”

 

And we all know that just as soon as we do, just like the narrator said, “it’ll be past.”

 

 The other reason I love this Sunday is that, for us Episcopalians, in our lectionary for today, we get this incredible reading from the first chapter of John.

 

I know.

 

It’s hard at first to grasp our minds around this reading.

 

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

 

Maybe we just don’t “get” it.

 

And that’s all right.

 

Like “In the bleak midwinter,” it too is a poem.

 

And like a poem, we have to make it our own for it to really mean something to us where we are, right here and now.

 

For me, as you have heard me say many times, I don’t like beginnings.

 

Whenever I get a new biography of someone, you will see me skip to the end, or the middle.

 

I never enjoy the beginnings very often.

 

I know.

 

That probably reveals way too much about me psychologically than I care to admit.

 

As this year runs down and the new year begins, our thoughts naturally turn to beginnings.

 

We think about that New Year and how important a new year is our lives. It heralds for us a sense of joy—and fear—of the future.

 

All of a sudden we are faced with the future. It lies there before us—a mystery.

 

Will this coming year bring us joy or will it bring us sadness?

 

Will it be a good year or a bad year?

 

And we step forward into the New Year without knowing what that year will hold for us.

 

But, the fact is, at the very beginning moment, we can’t do much more than just be here, right now.

 

 We need to just experience this beginning.

 

And we can’t let anxiety about the future take hold.

 

We just need to be here, right now, and take part fully in this new beginning.

 

That’s what beginnings are all about, I guess. That one moment when we can say:

 

“Right now! This is it! We are alive and we are here! Now!”

 

And we all know that just as soon as we do, it’ll be past.

 

In our reading from John this morning, it’s also one of those moments.

 

In that moment, we get a glimpse of one of those “right now” moments.

 

It seems as though, for that moment, it’s all clear.

 

At least for John anyway.

 

We encounter, the “Word.”

 

God’s Word.

 

Now to be clear, the Word here is not the Bible.

 

The Word of God is this force of God—this action of God.

 

And this Word of God, as we hear today, came and was made flesh in Jesus.  

 

And this is an appropriate way to begin the Gospel of John and to begin our new year as well.

 

It is a great beginning.

 

It sets the tone for us as followers of Jesus.

 

God’s Word was there in the beginning.

 

God spoke and creation happened.

 

And God’s Word is here, now, in our beginning.

 

And in God, we experience a beginning that doesn’t seem to end.

 

God’s Word comes forward and becomes present among us in a way we could never possibly imagine.

 

God appears to us in the Gospels not as the God in the Hebrew scriptures, cloaked behind pillars of fire or thunderstorms or wind.

 

Instead, God’s word, God’s wisdom, God’s essence became flesh in Jesus.

 

God’s voice was no longer a booming voice from the sky, demanding sacrifices.

 

God voice is now the Word spoken to us gently.

 

God’s Word spoken to us in this beginning moment, and it is a word of Love.

 

The commandment this Word of God tells us of is a commandment to love.

 

Love God and love one another as you love yourselves.

 

This might actually be one of the few times when I actually enjoy the beginning of a story.

 

Maybe the true message of Jesus is that, in God’s Kingdom, that beginning keeps on and on, without end.

 

In God’s Kingdom there is constant renewal.

 

In God’s Kingdom it is always like New Year’s Day—always fresh, always full of hope for a future that does not end or disappoint.

 

As we prepare to celebrate 2025, this is a great way to live this beginning moment.

 

In this beginning moment, let us think about beginnings and how important they are for us personally and for our spiritual lives.

 

And let us do what we can to be the bringers of new beginnings not only in our own lives, but in the lives of others.

 

With this encounter with the Word, we, like John, are also saying in this moment, this one moment is holy.

 

This moment is special.

 

This moment is unique and beautiful, because God is reaching out to us.

 

In our grasping of it, let’s make sure it doesn’t wiggle away from us.

 

Let’s not let it fall through our fingers like sand.

 

Or snow.

 

This holy beginning moment should stay with us.

 

Always new.

 

Always fresh.

 

Always being renewed.

 

We’re here.

 

Right now.

 

We’re alive!

 

It’s the future.

 

The Word, God’s Word, has come to us.

 

It’s incredible, really.

 

This moment is a glorious and holy one.

 

So, let us, in this holy moment, be joyful.

 

Let us in this holy moment rejoice.

 

And let us, in this holy moment, look forward without fear to what awaits us with courage and confidence. Amen.

Christmas Day

 

December 25, 2024

  

+Christmas, for most of us, brings up memories of Christmases past.

 

It’s just the thing we do.

 

And, for me, this year for some reason, I’ve really been missing my mother.

 

My mother was not real big into poetry, despite having a poet for a son.

 

I don’t know if she ever really “got” my poetry.

 

But one poet she really did love was Christina Rossetti.

 

And if you’re gonna love a poet, Rossetti is about as good of a poet to love as any.

 

Rossetti was not one of those great love poets.

 

She never married.

 

She never seemed to have any reason deep romantic love for anyone—well, maybe except for Jesus.

 

But she had deep faith.

 

She was a solid Anglo-Catholic who took her faith very seriously.

 

I’m not certain why my mother loved her so dearly.

 

But she did.

 

And when my mother died, I found myself listening to a version of “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Animal Collective over and over again.

 

It was a very appropriate song (and poem) for my mother’s death, which also occurred in the “bleak midwinter.”

 

 

In that great poems, Rossetti wrote,

 

 Love came down at Christmas,

love, all lovely, love divine;

love was born at Christmas:

star and angels gave the sign.

 

You can’ put it better than that.

 

That is what we are experiencing this day.

 

God, for us anyway, is a God of love.

 

Because we are loved by God.

 

Because we are accepted by God.

 

Because we are—each of us—important to God.

 

We are, each of us, broken and imperfect as we may be some times, very important to God.

 

Each of us.

 

And because we are, we must love others.

 

We must, each of us, become like Jesus God’s love personified.

 

We must let that love that came down in the bleak midwinter dwell within us.

 

And we must live this love out in the world.

 

We must give birth to God’s love so others can know this amazing love as well.

 

Knowing this amazing love of God changes everything.

 

When we realize that God knows us as individuals.

 

That God loves us and accepts each of us for who we are, we are joyful.

 

We are hopeful of our future with that God.

 

And we want to share this love and this God with others.

 

That is what we are celebrating this morning.

 

Our hope and joy is in a God who comes and accepts us and loves us for who we are and what we are—a God who understands what it means to live this sometimes frightening uncertain life we live.

 

This is the real reason why we are joyful and hopeful on this beautiful morning.

 

This is why we are feeling within us a strange sense of longing.

 

This is why we are rushing toward our Savior who has come to visit us in what we once thought was our barrenness.

 

Let the hope we feel tonight as God our Savior draws close to us stay with us now and always.

 

Let the joy we feel tonight as God our Friend comes to us in love be the motivating force in how we live our lives throughout this coming year.

 

God is here.

 

God is in our midst today.

 

God is so near, our very bodies and souls are rejoicing.

 

And God loves us.

 

Love truly came down.

 

Love became flesh and blood.

 

Love became human.

 

And in the face of that realization, we are rejoice today.

 

We are rejoicing in that love personified.

We are rejoicing in each other.  

 

We are rejoicing in the glorious beauty of this one holy moment in time.

 

 

So, let us rejoice.

 

And let us be glad.

 

God is with us.

 

G0d’s love has come to us.

 

And it is very good!

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, you are with us. You are present in our midst. And we rejoice in the Presence for which we have longed for for so long. Fill us this morning with true joy, with true hope, so that we can share this joy and hope with others. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.