First Sunday after Christmas (Fr. Fred)

​     Unless, as the song goes, your true love gives you gifts on each of the twelve days of Christmas, most likely your gift-giving took place seven days ago, Christmas Day, the day of the Nativity of our Lord.  Through gifts we often are given precious memories by our friends, memories that will last well beyond the twelve days of Christmas.
 
     Gift giving at Christmas hasn’t always been universally accepted.  The Puritans forbade the observance of Christmas and everything associated with it.  And while Charles Dickens helped to popularize the giving of gifts at Christmas, others have tried to dampen the practice because of its obvious materialistic dangers.  Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, thought it best not to give gifts, but to sit still and think about truth and purity until her friends were all the better for it.  Can you imagine the reaction of your family and friends if you had told them that instead of giving gifts this year you meditated on their behalf?   It’s a nice gesture, but it wouldn’t have the impact of a nice, tangible gift.
 
     As we find ourselves on the First Sunday after Christmas Day, it’s good to reflect on the meaning of that event that brought all of our celebrations about.  The Gospel that’s read on this day is the first 18 verses of the Gospel according to St. John, and its placement on this day is precisely for the purpose of reflection on the meaning of Christ’s birth.
 
     These verses have come to be known as the Prologue of John.  John is seeking to answer the question, “Who is Jesus?”  Before we examine what John says, I’d like for you to imagine what you would say if someone who knows absolutely nothing about Jesus were to ask you who he is.  How would you respond?
 
     Some might say Jesus is the Son of God.  I watched a television program in which Jesus was referred to by one of the characters as the Great Communicator.  Some folks would say that Jesus was a great teacher or a great moral leader.  Some would say he’s the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy concerning the awaited Messiah. 
 
     The apostle and evangelist St. John, in beginning his account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, says he is the Word.  Being familiar with the Hebrew scriptures, John starts his account of the Gospel in the same way that the book of Genesis starts: “In the beginning.”  But John’s story of Jesus actually begins before creation, when nothing existed but God himself.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  So, when John says, “In the beginning was the Word,” he’s speaking of much more than a mere utterance of speech; he’s speaking of God himself.
 
     John’s using a concept of the Word that was familiar to both the Jews and the Greeks of his time.  For the Jew, a word was something in itself; it was an event, an action, and it had power.  Genesis proclaims, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”  Each part of creation came to be through God’s uttering a word. 
 
     Words had a life of their own.  When Isaac gave to Jacob his words of blessing, even when they were to the wrong person, the person not intended by Isaac to receive his blessing, they couldn’t be taken back.  The event had happened through the utterance of words.  The prophet Jeremiah records God’s words: “Is not my word like fire, and, says the Lord, like a hammer which breaks the rocks in pieces?”  By around 100 B.C., because the name of God—Yahweh—was considered too holy to be said, whenever the scriptures were read in public, when the reader came to the name of God, he would substitute “Word” for Yahweh, and that practice was in use at the time John wrote his account of the Gospel.  In calling the Word God, John is not doing anything surprising to the Jew of his day.
 
    Likewise, for the Greek, logos, which is the Greek word for word, means reason.  It suggests the order that characterizes creation, and ultimately, it is the mind of God.  And so, to the Greeks, for John to call logos God is no surprise.
 
     What is a surprise to both Jew and Greek is what John goes on to say, for he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”  This Jesus, who was born as a baby in Bethlehem, at a particular time in history, existed from before all time, and is God himself.
 
     We hear a lot about keeping the true meaning of Christmas, and this is what Christmas really means: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  God taking flesh in a particular human being at a particular time in history has at least two profound theological implications.  First, it means that God is intimately acquainted with human nature, from the inside.  He knows what it is to be hungry, to be anxious, to be rejected, to be tempted.  The incarnation shows us the extent of God’s love for us and the fact that there’s nothing that we experience that is beyond his compassion, his concern, his forgiveness.  Jesus wasn’t born in a church and reared in a protected, insulated environment.  He chose and continues to choose to be involved in every aspect of human life—our relationships, our businesses, the tough decisions we have to make.  God isn’t aloof from life, but is intimately involved.
 
     And second, the incarnation gives to the Church the model for faith.  We’re called not simply to think good thoughts, not just to say our prayers, as good as these things are, but to live out our faith in our deeds.  And so we build hospitals to care for the sick, schools to educate the young.  We hand out lunches to the hungry, build homes to help the poor break out of the cycle of poverty, provide counseling to troubled youth.  Wherever there’s a human need, there’s the Church, incarnating our belief that God is intimately involved with our every need.
 
     That is the meaning of Christmas.  So keep giving gifts at Christmas as tangible signs of your love for your family and friends, but don’t let it stop there.  Let us make giving a way of life, modeling ourselves after the self-giving love of God, who became flesh and dwelt among us.