After Christmas

Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas, December 30, 2007

Episcopal Church of the Holy Family

The Rev. Mary P. Johnson

Texts:  Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Galatians 3:23-35, 4:4-7; John 1:1-18.

I think it is around Christmas that I am most aware of the way the liturgical year has shaped my life and my spirituality.  Episcopalians take Advent seriously. We reflect on the Second Coming of Christ and the ministry of John the Baptist before we allow ourselves to savor the beginning of the Christmas story with the the Angel Gabriel’s annunciation to the Virgin Mary on the last Sunday of Advent.  Episcopalians are always waiting with the Christmas carols until Christmas, and then we have twelve days of Christmas that culminate at Epiphany, January 6^th, which begins with a celebration of the Magi following the star to the Christ Child.    Our New Year began in Advent, and now we’re about five weeks into this liturgical year, just as we get ready to celebrate the secular New Year.    Sometimes I think that living by the rhythms of the liturgical year is just too difficult in this season.   But it does have some advantages.

We have time to ponder in those twelve days after Christmas.  All the flurry of shopping and decorating is over. School is not in session.  We can be with our families and spread some of the energy over twelve days.   We can sing carols with our friends before Christmas and with members of our congregation after Christmas, besides.   And we receive the gift of contemplating not only the stories of the Nativity from Luke and Matthew, but also that profound and powerful and very different account of St. John that we heard today: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

We take this truth as an anchor into eternity in a time when we reach the end of one year and begin another.  We know that the events of 2007 and the events that will take place in 2008 are part of a flow of history that reached what St. Paul called “the fullness of time,” when God took on human flesh, grew from baby to boy to man, taught, healed, laughed and cried; suffered, died, and was raised to life again-- in Palestine about two thousand years ago. 

Think about the highs and the lows of 2007: politically, for your family, for you personally.  Think about the hopes and dreams and fears you carry with you into 2008.

This year I miss my mother, who died last March and who is now part of the communion of Saints.  This year I am so very happy to add to the people I love a little girl, born in October, named Lillian Elizabeth Johnson, the daughter of our oldest son, Sam, and his wife, Lisa.   You, too, can look at your extended family, and see the generations come and go. 

Those events are so ordinary; they happen all around us.  Sometimes there is a high-profile and violent death, as there was in Pakistan this week.  You and I see the public reaction to the death of Benazir Bhutto, and we know that there is also a more intimate, personal side to it.  We all are born; we all will die.  

The question is: how do we live the good life in between?  This phrase, “the good life”, has been co-opted by commercial interests.  But what I am talking about when I ask the question, is a life that a good person lives, a person who is generous and truthful and trustworthy, who is courageous and kind.  That is the kind of good life that we want to live, or perhaps that we wish we wanted to live.

I think everybody who is here today believes that there is supposed to be a connection between what we do here at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Family and the possibility of living a life of goodness.

I would like to make one simple suggestion that occurs to me as I ponder these not-so-obviously-Christmassy readings.  It is to remember who you are and how much you are loved.  One parishioner told me that when he and his young son, now a grown man, used to go up the aisle to receive communion, he would stand behind his son, hug him, and tell him, echoing the words of Jesus: “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”   

What a blessing to grow up secure in the knowledge that you are loved!   In each of the three readings we have before us today, we have promises of God’s love. 

From the final part of the scroll of the prophet Isaiah comes a beautiful and joyous passage that we see reflected in Mary’s song that she sang before Jesus was born when she was visiting her kinswoman, Elizabeth.  The voice in this passage is the voice of  Daughter Jerusalem, representing all of the people of God. 

            “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD,

                        my whole being shall exult in my God;

            for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,

                        he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.”

And then the voice changes, and it is God, speaking to his people:

            “The nations shall see your vindication,

                        and all the kings your glory;

            And you shall be called by a new name

                        that the mouth of the LORD will give.

            You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD,

                        and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

In the Hebrew Bible, a new name comes at the time of a new or transformed relationship with God.  The patriarchs experienced name changes at key moments in their relationship with God. Marriage brings a woman a new name, and confers upon the new couple a new and different legal status.  And, of course, whenever there is an adoption, the one being adopted, joining a new family, receives a new name.

St. Paul, in his letter to the Galatian Christians, also speaks of adoption.  He writes:

            When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.  And because you are children, God ha 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.

Adoption gives a child a new name, a new legal status, and a new set of relationships.  Adoption is an important metaphor for how God relates to us.  I am in a good position to understand this, because I was adopted.  My mother said to me when she held her first grandchild, our son, Samuel, that she loved him with all her heart from that very moment.  It was not a gradual thing at all.  She said it was the same when I was put into her hands as a six day old infant.  She had told me this many times when I was small, but motherhood gave me a deeper understanding of her words.  In October, I felt again that deep, fierce kind of love when I held Lillian before she was two hours hold.   I cherish a snapshot of my mother sitting on her mother’s porch the day I came home with her, and the look on her face is pure love.  From that moment I was her child.  I didn’t have to do a thing to deserve the love she and my father gave me.  They gave me their love, their name.  I brought nothing in exchange but myself.  They called me Mary Janet after their mothers, and I called them Mummy and Daddy. 

And then I was brought up as a Peterson.  Petersons love ice cream, and Petersons are careful with their money, and Petersons love to sing, whether or not they can carry a tune.  So I grew up loving ice cream, careful with my money, and loving to sing.  And when my parents died, my sister and I inherited from them.  

Take those words of St. Paul seriously.  You are adopted as God’s child, loved with a fierce delight by the one who created you to be who you are becoming.  You are privileged to call the Lord of the Universe Abba, Daddy.  That’s how much you are loved!

The Gospel of John also tells us that we become children of God.  John says it happens  by the will of God; and that “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”  

If you want to live a good life in 2008, remember who you are.  Remember who loves you.  Remember that you are in God’s Holy Family, a family of which this parish Holy Family is only a small part.   Remember how God’s people live.  We follow one who, in loving, gave his very life, and in that giving, destroyed death and gave us eternal life.  Hard things may happen to you in 2008, you may face extreme challenges in 2008. Walk with courage into the future, knowing that nothing separates us from the love of our Abba.