Sermon for Christmas Day, December 25, 2023

Isaiah 52:7-10+Psalm 98+Hebrews 1:1-4+John 1:1-14

For while gentle silence enveloped all things,
and night in its swift course was now half gone,
your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne,
into the midst of the land that was doomed...

(Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-15)

 The period of time during which Jesus was born is referred to by scholars as the "intertestamental period," the time between the prophet Malachi around 420 BCE and the early 1st century. During this span of 400 years or so, no canonical books of the bible were written, although several books that we know as the Apocrypha date from this era.

For Jews, it was an unsettled time. A good portion of the intertestamental period was spent under the rule of Greece, and Greek influence is evident even in that the first translation of the Hebrew bible into Greek happened at this time. As Greek rule ended, there was a period of Jewish independence before the Romans took over. Jews continued to be scattered throughout the empire. A lot of those noncanonical books of the bible speak to this reality.

For while gentle silence enveloped all things,
and night in its swift course was now half gone,
your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne,
into the midst of the land that was doomed...

(Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-15)

One of the books from this period is the Wisdom of Solomon, from which this quote is taken. Probably written toward the turn of the millennium, way after the actual time King Solomon lived, it is prophetic and talks a lot about wisdom, as its name might suggest, wisdom that existed since the beginning of time. It also speaks of end times and the distinction between the righteous and unrighteous, and for the last several chapters looks toward God's rescue of the righteous ones. It is from this section that we find these words:

For while gentle silence enveloped all things,
and night in its swift course was now half gone,
your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne,
into the midst of the land that was doomed...

(Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-15)

On the day that abolitionist John Brown was executed for orchestrating the attack on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, much of the Wisdom of Solomon was read in a memorial service in Concord, Massachusetts, by such luminaries as Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

‘Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for sins against the law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.

(Wisdom of Solomon 2:12-13)

The brokenness of the world in the 19th century is the same as in Palestine in the 1st century BCE as it is the same even now.

 For while gentle silence enveloped all things,
and night in its swift course was now half gone,
your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne,
into the midst of the land that was doomed...

(Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-15)

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory,
 the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

(John 1:14)

Throughout scripture, a promise is made to those walking in darkness or who like sheep have gone astray or who have, in the words of the old confession, "followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts" (BCP 320). And into all of this, that "all-powerful word" came down "in the midst of a land that was doomed" to draw us into God's very self, so that we "may become participants in the divine nature" as it says in 2nd Peter (1:4).

The incarnation of Christ means a lot of things to each of us. Celebrating Christmas is a multilayered experience of sometimes-manufactured joy wrapped up in memories both good and bad, remembering things and people lost, or experiencing it anew through the eyes of our youngest members. Christmas can be hard and joyful and sad and exhausting all at the same time. Whatever the state of your life or of this world, it is into that that God chose to be born. "Into the midst of the land that was doomed."

This Word became flesh and blessed a doomed land and all our feeble attempts to save ourselves, and that Word told us to stop trying so hard. As Tim wrote to dear friends in this year's Christmas card, "the baby Jesus paid da bill."

And the Word became flesh,
Your all-powerful Word leapt from heaven,
and pitched a tent here,
with us.

Merry Christmas.