The Rev. Charleston Wilson
In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
In light of what has been the biggest box office debut in history, easily eclipsing all the previous records – and recognizing also that the Star Wars merchandise has even overtaken all the usual Christmas kitsch we see this time of year – I feel that I should preface this little Christmas homily by saying: “Once upon a time, in a Galilee far, far away…”
And, actually, it’s not a bad way to preface what St. Paul is saying in the epistle appointed for today from Galatians:
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, …in order to redeem…so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”
No longer slaves, but children!
Merry Christmas, my sisters and brothers, merry Christmas!
And we’ve journeyed far to reach this point.
We began the new year – the new Church year, that is – on the First Sunday of Advent. In anticipation of Christmas, we prayed together that we might be given the grace to “cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.” We then heard St. John the Baptist, two weeks in a row, telling us to “prepare the way of the Lord,” and, to sort of anticipate our present joy, we were given the green light last Sunday by the Rector to begin calling those green “Advent shrubs” (which have been decorated and adorning our living rooms since Thanksgiving) Christmas trees.
And, finally, on Thursday evening, we reached the crèche to adore the Christ-Child who comes to save and bless, to forgive and to love. We have indeed reached the fullness of time!
Of course, the journey we’ve taken to get to this point has only been four or so weeks long on the calendar, but it feels a lot, lot longer. And it feels longer than four weeks because the advent journey is a big part of that longest journey on earth – the journey of grace from head to heart, the journey from abstract notions about God to the actual experience of God’s love and redemption in our own lives: from, say, “and was made man,” as we say so easily – even flippantly at times in the Creed – to the realization that He “was made man” for me.
In the appointed passage from Galatians, St. Paul likens this great journey of grace to what it’s like to go from being a slave – and all that entails – to becoming an adopted and beloved child – and not just any child, but a royal child with a big, eternal inheritance.
In the 1930s, the Federal Writers Project, which was a government initiative that supported writers during the Great Depression, collected and published stories of then still-living freed slaves. Katie Row, a woman born into slavery in 1848 (who was 88 when they interviewed her in 1936) remembered the day that freedom came:
“I never forget the day we was set free! That morning we all go to the cotton field early…after while the old horn blow up at the overseer’s house, and we all stop and listen, ’cause it the wrong time of day for the horn. We start chopping again, and there go the horn again. When we get to the quarters we see all the old ones and the children up in the overseer’s yard, so we go on up there. The overseer setting on the end of the gallery with a paper in his hand, and when we all come up he say come and stand close to the gallery. Den he call off everybody’s name and see we all there. The man say, “You know what day dis is?” “Well this the fourth day of June, and this is 1865, and I want you all to ’member the date, ’cause you always going ’member the day. Today you is free, Just like I is. “I come to tell you,” he say, “and I wants to be sure you all understand, ’cause you don’t have to get up and go by the horn no more.”
John Newton, whom we usually remember as a famous 18th century Anglican priest and hymn writer (think “Amazing Grace” and about 200 others), actually had an entirely different life before he was a priest. He was a rough and tough slave ship captain and slave-trader. Thanks be to God, he underwent a powerful conversion during a storm at sea. Later, while he was rector of a parish in London, he wrote a famous abolitionist tract called Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, which was sort of an insider expose and tell-all book. In it he laid bare the brutal realities of the slave trade for all of Britain and the world to confront:
“When the women and girls are taken on board ship, naked, trembling, terrified, perhaps almost exhausted with cold, fatigue, and hunger, they often exposed to the wanton rudeness of white man…I have seen them sentenced to unmerciful whippings, continue till the poor creatures have not had the power to groan under their misery and hardly a sign of life has remained.
The Christmas question for you and for me is thus: do you (do I) want to live more like a slave – even a slave to things like fear, anger and disappointments – or will we (will I) live more like a child, continuing that great journey of grace as children of the Most High?
Because St. Paul says, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”
Don’t you hear it? Don’t you see it?
Christmas means that you and I “don’t have to get up and go by the horn” any more. And we don’t have to stand “naked, trembling, terrified, perhaps almost exhausted with cold, fatigue, and hunger.” Because the Lamb has come. Because the lamb has come.
Christ was born to save…Christ was born to save.
Merry Christmas!
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
The First Sunday after Christmas
27 December 2015