Our Part in the Christmas Pageant

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Gainesville FL
December 26, 2010

The First Sunday after Christmas
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18

Our Part in the Christmas Pageant

In my Christmas sermons I’ve been talking about how last Friday the children of our day school put on a really wonderful Christmas pageant. The teachers obviously did a great job in choosing kids for their roles and rehearsing them to move and sing on cue. The church was full of delighted parents and grandparents.

I was especially moved by the little girl who played Mary. She entered the church with great solemnity, carrying her baby doll Jesus. She gently placed the newborn messiah into the crib. And then at the end of the pageant, she picked him up again and bore the Son of God out into the world.

After the pageant, the excited children and parents took pictures, visited with St. Nicholas, ate snacks and then went off to continue preparing for Christmas.

As I’ve thought about it, there was only one thing missing from our Christmas pageant. At my former parish in New Jersey, at the end of the pageant an older child would stand, holding a candle, and recite from memory the grand, cosmic verses we just heard from the prologue to John’s gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

I felt the absence of those profound words. Written sometime around the end of the First Century, John’s gospel is the product of divine inspiration and also the product of decades of Jesus-followers reflecting on the meaning of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection.

I wonder how many of the parents made time to really reflect on the meaning of the drama that their children had acted out so well. What was the point of all that hard work to prepare for the Christmas pageant? I worry that instead it was on to the next thing – Christmas shopping and decorating or the other tasks that can fill the days before Christmas.

And I wonder how many of us here make time to reflect on what we have remembered – what we have experienced – these last few days. What was the point of it all?

Both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at St. Michael’s were wonderful gifts. The music was spectacular. The church looked – and still looks – beautiful. You could feel the joy in this place.

And now, today, for those of us who dragged ourselves out of bed this morning, the church offers the opportunity to reflect on what it all means. What’s the point of Christmas?

Of course, Christians have been reflecting on the meaning of Christ’s birth for a long time. And over that time, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we’ve come to understand that Christ’s birth to a couple of nobodies in the humblest of circumstances marked the beginning of God’s bold move to restore and transform the good creation that had gone terribly wrong – the good creation that had been disfigured and broken by human sin.

During his many years of traveling around the Mediterranean, St. Paul must have spent a lot of time reflecting on the meaning of Jesus entering the world.

Paul was someone who never met Jesus during his earthly lifetime yet was transformed by a dramatic encounter with the resurrected Christ. Paul was transformed from a persecutor of Christians into an apostle who gave away his life for Christ.

This morning we heard a snippet of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, probably written around the year 55. Because Paul had started Christian communities in Galatia, part of modern-day Turkey, his readers would have been very familiar with Paul’s understanding of the meaning of Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection.

After Paul left them it seems that some other Jewish Christians arrived among the Galatians and were insisting that non-Jewish, gentile, Christians must follow Jewish Law. When he got wind of this development, an unhappy Paul fired off his letter to the Galatians.

Because the Galatians were already familiar with Paul’s thought he could cut right to the chase. Paul reminds the Galatians that because creation was disfigured and broken by human sin, the Law was given basically to keep us in line. Paul sees the Law as a disciplinarian – literally a house slave whose job it was to discipline the master’s children.

Paul understands that the birth of Christ marks the beginning of God’s bold move to restore and transform creation – to restore and transform us. Paul himself was transformed by his encounter with Christ, so he understand that, if we are open, all of us can be transformed by our encounter with Christ from slaves of sin to children of God.

The Gospel of John was written about forty years after Paul’s letter. John offers an even more cosmic view of Christ’s birth in the humblest of circumstances. John explicitly reaches back to the moment of creation in the opening of his gospel, “In the beginning.”

John identifies the Word as God’s creative power. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

John doesn’t need to tell us how everything got messed up because we all know the story – we’ve all experienced the story. The good creation created by the Word of God was disfigured and broken by human sin.

And so in the birth of Christ God made the bold move to restore and transform creation. In his version of the nativity story, John doesn’t tell us about Mary and Joseph, the manger, the shepherds or the wise men. In his nativity story, John offers the meaning behind the birth of Christ.

“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.”

In the Christmas pageant, the little girl who played Mary solemnly carried her baby doll Jesus up the aisle and carefully placed him in the crib. She captured the holy moment when two thousand years ago in the humblest of circumstances Mary brought into the world the person in whom we see and hear what God is really like. On that first Christmas “the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.”

In a feeding trough in Bethlehem, God’s restoration and transformation of the world had begun.

Christian reflection on the meaning of Christmas didn’t end with the Gospel of John, of course. Christians have continued to reflect on the meaning of Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection right up to the present day

A second century bishop named Irenaeus offers us a special insight into the meaning of Christmas as the beginning of God’s bold move to restore and transform the world.

Because of human sin, things had gone terribly wrong. God’s good creation had been broken and disfigured. But now, through Jesus, God offers us what Irenaeus “recapitulation” – a fancy word for a do-over, a second chance, the opportunity to work with God to restore creation to what it was always meant to be.

Today on this first Sunday after Christmas the church offers us a chance to reflect on the meaning behind the amazing events of two thousand years ago.

The Christmas pageant offered the children of our school the chance to act out the drama.

But, the truth is, the point of it all, is that all of us Christians have the opportunity to play our parts in the great drama.

In the birth of Christ, God has made the bold move of beginning the restoration and transformation of creation.

God’s restoration and transformation continues in and through us. Each time we open our hearts to love God and to love one another, we play a part in God’s restoration and transformation of the world.

Each time, like Joseph, we choose mercy over the rules, then we play a part in God’s restoration and transformation of the world.

Each time, like the shepherds and the wise men, we find Christ in the humblest of circumstances, then we play a part in God’s restoration and transformation of the world.

Each time, like the angels, we sing the praises of God, then we play a part in God’s restoration and transformation of the world.

And, each time, like Mary, we bear Christ out through those doors, we play a part in God’s restoration and transformation of the world.

On this First Sunday after Christmas the good news, the exciting news, the challenging news is that all of us have a role to play in the great Christmas pageant – God’s great Christmas pageant of restoring and transforming the world.

Merry Christmas!

Amen.