Have you ever wanted to talk back during a sermon? Now’s your chance. I found some of your favorite Christmas carols and hymns with different titles. If you figure out the carol or hymn, shout it out.
- Far Off in a Feeder : Away in a Manger
- Arrival Time 2400 hrs – Weather Cloudless: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear
- Loyal Followers Advance: O Come, All Ye Faithful
- Righteous Darkness: O Holy Night
- Bantam Male Percussionist: Little Drummer Boy
- Monarchial Triad: We Three Kings
- Nocturnal Noiselessness: Silent Night
- Jehovah Deactivate Blithe Chevaliers: God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen
- Frozen Precipitation Commence: Let it Snow
- Delight for this Planet: Joy to the World
- Give Attention to the Melodious Celestial Beings: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
- The Dozen Festive 24 Hour Intervals: The Twelve Days of Christmas
I love the music of Christmas. It’s some of the best-known music in the English-speaking world.
Most all of the hymns and songs of Christmas are rooted in the Incarnation. As Christians, most of us have spoken of this element of our faith all of our lives. We take it for granted. We say it every time we come to church on Sunday. “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God… for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” It’s almost the most amazing thing we proclaim about Jesus. It sets the Christian faith apart from all of the other major religions. None of the other religions claim that their founders were divine.
C.S. Lewis says this about Jesus’ divinity: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
Almighty God, who is omnipotent, omniscient, and totally other from his creation, decided to come to one small place in his universe and actually become one of his creatures; one of those creatures that he made to be able to understand at least something of his creation and with whom he could have a unique relationship. Yet, we human creatures have enough ability and enough imagination to want to be in control of creation ourselves, which of course is impossible, and which ends up bringing about untold problems and misery for ourselves and all of creation.
John Betjeman, in a poem titled “Advent 1955,” speaks humorously of the incarnation in this way: “Some ways indeed are very odd / By which we hail the birth of God. / We raise the price of things in shops, / We give plain boxes fancy tops / And lines which traders cannot sell / Thus parcell’d go extremely well / We dole out bribes we call a present / to those to whom we must be pleasant / For business reasons. Our defense is / These bribes are charged against expenses / And bring relief in Income Tax. / Enough of these unworthy cracks. / ‘The time draws near the birth of Christ.’ / A present that cannot be priced / Given two thousand years ago / Yet if God had not given so / He still would be a distant stranger / And not the Baby in the manger.”
So, in the light of such a gift, the gift of God himself to us and to all creation, how should we respond? Some of us won’t be convinced, and for convenience sake say we are too scientific to believe in the incarnation. These folks have what I call concrete minds—all mixed up and permanently set. Others respond by doing what we are doing today, what the familiar Christmas hymn tells us to do: “O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.” Just stop all other activity, and worship and adore the Christ child.
The second thing we should do in response is to remember that through our baptism we’ve been made one with Christ. We’re part of his Body, we’re children of God by adoption and grace. And so, we should give thanks to God for making us part of his family. Thank him that you’ve been baptized. Thank him that you’ve been confirmed. Thank him that you may come to the Holy Eucharist. Thank him that you are an heir of eternal life.
The third thing we should do, since we’re now children of God, members of Christ’s Body, is renew our commitment to living godly lives by the grace of God. Renew our commitment to saying daily prayers, to reading Holy Scripture, to being at mass at least once every week, to getting involved in the Church, taking our place as children of God. We should offer our time, talent, and treasure for the work of his Church, Christ’s Body. “What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a wise man, I would do my part, yet what I can I give him, give my heart.”
Sermon preached by the Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
Christmas 2019