The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Christmas is so materialistic! I have lamented this fact of modern day observance many times, and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear the preacher rail against it at this time of year. What really matters, we often hear, is the “spirit” of Christmas.
I received a lovely Christmas card which read, “Christmas is hope, Christmas is peace, Christmas is love. Christmas is all of these things: peace, hope, love. All are spiritual qualities that are a part of the “spirit” of Christmas. Yet I must say that there is something about the phrase “spirit of Christmas” that gives me the heebie jeebies, for Christmas, at its very best, stripped completely of the crass commercialization that has come to be so closely associated with it, is materialistic. It has not so much to do with spirit as it has to do with matter. The Almighty, invisible, immaterial, incorporeal God—God who is spirit—took the matter of the flesh of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
St. Luke, in telling the story of Jesus’ birth, gives us a wonderful picture of the materiality of the event. When Jesus was born, he was wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. G. K. Chesterton takes it a step further in dealing with the materiality of the incarnation: “The world grows terrible and white, and blinding white the breaking day; we walk bewildered in the light, for something is too large for sight, and something much too plain to say. The child that was ere worlds begun (We need but walk a little way, We need but see a latch undone…) The child that played with moon and sun is playing with a little hay.”
The amazing claim that Almighty God became a human being is at the heart of our faith; it is what distinguishes Christianity from Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. If this materialism is lost, if Christmas becomes completely spiritualized, then, ironically, the real meaning of Christmas is lost. For Christmas is so very materialistic.
Throughout the history of the Church there have been those who have wanted to “spiritualize” the faith. Not only the cross, but also the incarnation itself have been seen as stumbling blocks. For centuries, people have said that Jesus was a great prophet, but not God; or that he was the greatest teacher or person that ever lived, but not Christ, not the Son of the living God. “He didn’t claim that for himself, the Church claimed that,” and so on and so on.
Bishop Heber Gooden tells the story that there was an alleged Japanese freighter that sank in the Mississippi River with a full cargo of yo-yos. It sank 40 times! These ideas about Jesus have been bobbing up-and-down throughout the centuries. In fact, the statements which I’ve just quoted from some people about the person of our Lord is an ancient heresy known as Arianism, which was condemned at the first Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. The Nicene Creed states: “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light true God from true God, of one being with the Father, by whom all things were made.” For Arius, Jesus was like God, but not God, not true God from true God; and he was like a human being, but not really human.
Skeptics of every generation throughout history have chosen to reject the incarnation because, as they see it, nothing can happen for the first time. They only consider as real something that they’ve already heard about and believed in or think to be believable; something they can fit into existing categories. They really follow the law of the “concrete mind; all mixed up and permanently set.”
Such pronouncements are certainly not a judgment against Jesus. I am reminded of the traveler who passed through the Louvre without so much as the faintest stirring of the spirit within him. As he stalked out of the door, he said, quite loudly, “There is nothing all that great to see in here.” A museum guard standing by the door overheard his remark, and took up the challenge. In his quiet manner he replied, “Sir, the paintings in here are not on trial. It is the spectators who are.” It is not Jesus who is on trial in our time or anytime. We are—and how we choose to respond to his revelation.
How we choose to respond to his revelation is literally a matter of life and death—eternal life and eternal death, that is. Again, Heber Gooden stated that “where you go hereafter depends on what you go after here.”
The fact of the matter is that Christianity, if it is to be authentic, is a faith not primarily of ideas and principles, although it certainly contains these things, but it is a faith based on the relationship with God, through his Son Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate.
And so the Church celebrates this materialistic feast in a very materialistic way. We need to be lavish, extravagant, using many outward signs of our faith, for we celebrate the lavish, extravagant gift of God’s Son.
And so, let us worship, using all of the things that are part of God’s material world, and then let us leave this place, carrying with us a spirit of extravagance. By that I do not mean that we should go out and buy more things, which is what Christmas has been reduced to in our society. Remembering that where we go hereafter depends on what we go after here, let us be extravagant in forgiving those who have harmed us, extravagant in sharing our substance with those in need, extravagant in expressing our love for one another. I guess that’s what some folks mean when they talk about the spirit of Christmas after all. God in Christ has been extravagant with us, let us be extravagant in sharing the love of Christ with others.
Sermon preached by The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
Christmas Day
25 December 2015