Today's text for Episcopalians should be John 1:1-18. These are deep, mystical statements of how the Word spoken in the beginning was made flesh and came to dwell with us. We have shied away from the Revised Common Lectionary's text of Matthew 2:13-23 and the slaughter of the innocents. Somehow I think they dwell one with another though.
There's a beautiful poem by Christina Rossetti that goes like this, "Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine' Love came down at Christmas, star and angels gave the sign." I think when hard, difficult things happen at Christmas we might be more left with the feeling of "why God, why hasn't this love come down made a difference?" Christmas is lovely, it is when some of the hardest things have happened too. Only a year ago right before Christmas was the Sandy Hook shootings, last week our church had a parishioner who took his life, years ago my cousin took his life before Christmas, and just at the beginning of December we buried a baby who didn't even take a breath in this world, and now our friends in South Sudan are facing uncertainty as the tenuous strains of peace are broken again.
Yes, the scriptures give a lovely answer to how Jesus came and dwelt among us. They also give answer to how we live in a very uncertain world that is not at peace, where death happens, where power when it is in threat of being lost takes human lives, and where things just sometimes don't make sense. Yet through it all Jesus comes in the midst of it. To live and dwell with us in our sorrows and pain, and in our laughter and joy. They all mingle together even at Christmas.
There's a beautiful poem by Christina Rossetti that goes like this, "Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine' Love came down at Christmas, star and angels gave the sign." I think when hard, difficult things happen at Christmas we might be more left with the feeling of "why God, why hasn't this love come down made a difference?" Christmas is lovely, it is when some of the hardest things have happened too. Only a year ago right before Christmas was the Sandy Hook shootings, last week our church had a parishioner who took his life, years ago my cousin took his life before Christmas, and just at the beginning of December we buried a baby who didn't even take a breath in this world, and now our friends in South Sudan are facing uncertainty as the tenuous strains of peace are broken again.
Yes, the scriptures give a lovely answer to how Jesus came and dwelt among us. They also give answer to how we live in a very uncertain world that is not at peace, where death happens, where power when it is in threat of being lost takes human lives, and where things just sometimes don't make sense. Yet through it all Jesus comes in the midst of it. To live and dwell with us in our sorrows and pain, and in our laughter and joy. They all mingle together even at Christmas.
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