SERMON PREACHED BY THE REV'D ALLAN B. WARREN III AT THE CHURCH OF THE ADVENT,
CHRISTMAS DAY 2007

The feast we celebrate today is mysterious and magical. It comes at a mysterious time of the year. Late December: the days are short; the nights are long and dark. But right now that’s beginning to be over, the world is changing and the light is coming back and we can just see it. A mysterious time. And the story itself is magical in the best sense of that word: angels, shepherds, heavenly choirs, a young mother and her newborn child in a stable, God suckling at his mother’s breast. Christmas is a magical and mysterious feast and around such feast days legends and folklore tend to develop.

One of my favorites is this: at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve the animals - for a short time - are given the power of speech – to pray, to praise, or just to chatter. You may have heard of this before. As I said, it’s one of my favorite bits of Christmas folklore. And it’s found all over – from Scandinavia to France and Italy, and into the East, this legend appears in one form or another.

And who knows? At midnight on Christmas Eve I’m always where I am right now – in Church. Or occasionally sound asleep in bed. And you . . . well, I suspect it’s the same with you. But I wonder: who knows what was said last night at midnight. Jake and Jeoffry or Skippergee and The Owl* getting into to a little truth session about their master. Actually, I’m not sure I want to hear that!

But let me add a caution. If you are tempted next year to stay up late, to midnight, and to eavesdrop, consider this. They speak – yes! – but according to the legend, the language, of course, is Latin.

There is another Christmas legend – this one very, very ancient and on the surface, rather arcane. And it is this: that at the moment of the Savior’s birth the movement of time stopped and the whole created order paused. Time itself somehow came to a halt, and the universe was suddenly suspended in a moment outside of time.

It is a strange idea, difficult to imagine, and compared to the many other lighthearted legends of the season, it seems bizarre and out of place. If you think a minute or two, however, the meaning becomes clear. Time stopped, for the moment of that birth in Bethlehem was the beginning of a new time. The created order paused, for the moment of that birth in Bethlehem was the remaking of creation and the recreation of time itself. They paused, they halted, in order to be refashioned into something new. The child born in Bethlehem that night would change the world entirely - now a new time and a new creation.

St. Paul tells us the same thing when he tells us that the child whose birth we celebrate is a new Adam, for by his birth – Paul is convinced – the destiny or humanity has been fundamentally changed and altered. In the old Adam humankind is destined and doomed to sin and death and alienation from God and from itself. In the new Adam, our dear Lord Jesus, the bondage of sin is broken, the finality of death is finished, and man is joined truly and fully to God. This from Paul: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (II Cor. 5:17)

And from St. John: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) This, my sisters and my brothers, is what Christianity has the audacity and the courage to proclaim: that the Word was made flesh, that God, his Word, the Son of God, entered completely into human life and made it his own. In that manger slept the creator of the stars. Suckling at his mother’s breast was the one who fashioned time and the universe . . . and you and me.

Our faith makes the astounding claim - and today we celebrate it - that God lived and experienced all that it is to be human. All that you and I know; all that we shall ever know as human beings - even sin, hatred, and death – all these things God knew. And by his living and finally by his dying, He fundamentally changed human reality – so changed it that we may well say that time and the world were remade by his birth and in his life. He – dear Jesus – is our new Adam generating and regenerating a new human race.

And - praise God for this! - into that new world and into that new time you and I may enter - through him. Into that new humanity you and I may be born - through him. And by his life which lives beyond the grave our lives may be quickened and made secure - through him.

And so, rejoice, my brothers and sisters. Rejoice! For Christ is born in Bethlehem. Rejoice! For heaven has come to earth. And earth, being made new, has been raised on high!

Amen.

 

* see “The Church Cats” at www.theadvent.org.