A Sermon for Christmas Eve
December 24, 2024 at the Vigil Service of Holy Communion
Proverbs 8:22–31, Hebrews 1:1–12, John 1:1–14
“The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his work,” (Proverbs 8:22). In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ☩ Amen.
When cold November arrives, and especially in snowy December, our family spends as many evenings as we can gathered around the fireplace in our living room. This season one of the special delights of our little winter camp has been introducing Theodora to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She particularly loves to see one illustration of Lucy having tea with Mr Tumnus in front of the fireplace—”just like us, Dad!”
But this evening my thoughts wander toward its prequel, The Magician’s Nephew. Two children, Digory and Polly, put on magic rings and find themselves in the Wood between the Worlds, a quiet forest with pools which, if you jump into them, you will be transported into one of the infinite number of parallel universes which coexist in the wood’s common eternity. Earth is one; Narnia is another.
Let me read to you about Digory’s arrival:
The strangest thing was that, almost before he had looked about him, Digory had half forgotten how he had come there. … He was not in the least frightened, or excited, or curious. If anyone had asked him “Where did you come from?” he would probably have said, “I've always been here.” That was what it felt like — as if one had always been in that place and never been bored although nothing had ever happened. As he said long afterwards, “It's not the sort of place where things happen. The trees go on growing, that's all.”
Christmas celebrates the meeting-point of time and eternity. Here we are, in Narnia, and time steadily keeps walking on. But beyond the boundaries of this world—really just a little puddle in the infinity of the Absolute—it’s clear that our time and space are just regional peculiarities. The beyond is not the sort of place where things happen. The trees go on growing, that’s all.
We have heard a reading from the Old Testament which tries to give language to what it is like to be from that place beyond the worlds. “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth” (Proverbs 8:22–25). Because we’re human we have to rely on time-words like “before” or “ages ago,” but the meaning is clear. The speaker was brought into being and lived with God in the Wood between the Worlds, always growing but never dying, doing nothing but nevertheless fully satisfied to breathe the eternal Wind.
In our Old Testament reading this person is the Wisdom of God, but our Epistle and Gospel readings give us other language. In the Letter to the Hebrews this eternal person is the “Son” of God, the “radiance of the glory of God” and “the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:2–3). In our Gospel this person is the “Word” of God, who was “in the beginning with God” (John 1:1–2). He is “Life” and “Light” (v 4).
On Christmas, we celebrate that this “Son, Word, and Radiance” of God our Father jumped out of his wood and into our little pool. And because Earth is the sort of place where things happen, things happened to him: he was born, he was given the name Jesus, he grew, he loved his mother and his relatives, he formed friendships, he worked and taught, he died, he was buried.
The question is, “Why?” An early Christian writer named Athanasius explained it this way: “God became man so that man might become god.” He came to live as we live, so that we could live as he lives.
The Son of God lives in full possession of delight. Nothing happens that ever mars, or even touches, the fellowship of spirit he has with his Father. He rests in the satisfaction of a relationship of love and security, never falling away but only deepening through endless ages. His joy has neither beginning nor ending. Blessedness is simply what he is. He has always been there in his Father’s house. That is what it means to live like God.
This is what God desires for us. He is our Maker. But more than that, he is our Father, and he knows better than we do that our home is in his house. He wants us to sit quietly with him by the hearth-fire of eternity.
God became a human being to show us fellowship with the Father in human form. He came saying, “I am the Way (John 14:6); live as I live and you will have Life indeed. Die as I die and you will not die, but the Father will raise you up. Pray as I pray and know that the Father hears you. Suffer as I suffer and find in the Father’s compassion a consolation greater than your suffering. Work as I work and find my yoke light, because I am burdened by nothing except the immensity of the Father’s love for me.”
To live this way is to be divine even despite all the happening of human life. Christmas is a revelation of this possibility. If God can live as a man, than surely we men can live as gods.
If human beings had always been shut in a dark and windowless room, entering only by the door called “birth” and exiting only by the opposite door called “death,” then Christmas opens a window. We open it, and the light from an outside we never knew streams in, transfiguring our darkness. We now live in this room not like people in the dark, but people who live by the light which comes from the great Outside. So we realize that our life in the light has neither beginning nor ending. The light is on the side of both doors: birth comes from there and death leads there. Only ignorance of the light—or worse than ignorance, resentful hatred of the light—clouds our judgement for a while.
Faith in the Incarnate God—faith in Jesus—means living in the room as a person close to the Father. We live in the light of confident prayer, not the darkness of self-reliance. We live in the daytime of joy and trust, not the night of anxiety and resentment. We live for mornings of forgiveness, not evenings of fault-finding.
But more than anything, we live to know the God who made us. Search everywhere: in every page of scripture and theology, in every crumb of the sacrament we now celebrate, in every tenderness of service to your neighbour Christ, until you come face-to-face with the one who possessed you in the beginning of his work.
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