Christmass Midnight Mass

This sermon originated at the Convent of St, Mary in Peekskill, and has been updated twice since.  It is still pertinent, I think.  Merry Christmass!

Christmas Day, Mass of Midnight

The ox knows its owner; the donkey knows where his next meal is.  Isaiah 1:2

When General Convention decided to produce the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, it instructed the Commission, it said (in  my interpretation)  that they were to reconstruct the theology on which th Prayer Book was based.  The first American Prayer Book was already the Scottish revision of the Puritan dominated English book of 1662; our American Book was revised in 1892 and took advantage of the beginning of modern Biblical and historical studies – it began a process that continued with the 1928 Prayer Book that emphasized “Incarnation.” The “humanness” of Jesus; the fact that a real  human being was born in Bethlehem, and that through that human being, humans were redeemed and brought into the very nature of God.  It was this teaching that allowed the midnight mass of Christmass to outshine all other Christian celebration of Christmass.  But the 1979 Commission was “instructed” to return to the “earliest” theology of the Church – the theology of “resurrection.”  (You know, “Easter” we call it.)  And so they did;  generally speaking though, little attention was paid to this massive change.  (Just one more step before I move into today.)  Important as Incarnation is to our religion, it has zero meaning without Resurrection/New-Life/Creation theology.

We are here NOT because of the oxen, the donkey, the angels and the new born babe in swaddling clothing, the Virgin Mary, and the rest of the beautiful picture.  You know, none of that has the slightest bit of importance without the Resurrection.  There were more than 100 people who had claimed to be ‘messiah’ during the time of Jesus, and, except for their execution, they made no mark in the history of the world.

My friends, we are here, because Jesus was raised from the dead.
We are here because Jesus is a new act of creation, a new burst of the primal energy that my generation was beginning to learn to call “The Big Bang.”  (A Roman Catholic priest invented the term at the end of the 1920s.)  “Big Bang” was accepted as a term to explain what modern math and science of the time could not explain.

In fact, science STILL cannot explain it – in spite of math, mirrors telescopes, radio and other electronic waves.  Stephen Hawking taught that even with all our scientific tools, we could explain and even diagram the actual beginning of the Great Universe in which we all live – but only so far.  This huge expanding universe in which we live commenced from a dot so tiny that it had no measurements that we can determine with our math and quantum physics.  We can get close, he said, but no closer than 10 to minus 1 with an excess of 40 places.  He said that the laws of nature, as described by Isaac Newton’s studies are limited, and that we probably will never get closer than that to the moment of origin of the Universe.

(By the way, Isaac Newton was a member of the Church of England, the mother of the Episcopal Church, as also was Charles Darwin.)

Even though we really don’t know about that exact moment of the beginning of the universe, yet we have a story that we all learn and believe.  It tells of how this tiny spot exploded, creating gasses that instantly began moving away from that spot outward into nothingness.  It has been doing that for some 16 billion years – still moving into nothingness!  This is the eternal human attempt to explain who we are, how we got here and what we are supposed to do.  The fact is, though, that we cannot, through the use of what we know to this point in history, really understand it.

We kill each other, both literally and verbally; we accumulate bits and pieces of the debris from the original big bang, and think we have something of value; we try to force others to think and act as we do, and shower them with contempt or worse; we allow children to have less than the best tools to learn about life; we allow many to starve to death, as we heap our own plate high; we sleep in our comfortable beds as we allow others of our brothers and sisters to sleep under the shadow of the steps at the back entrance into the International Monetary Bank.

My friends, we come here to this place, week after week, month after month, year after year, because we believe that there is more meaning to all these scientific calculations.  And so we retell our story here, each year, at the time of solstice, in the deepness of dark.  We add our faith to the faith of the scientists; we tell the same story – exactly.  But we see hope – a better ending.  Yes,
“In the beginning of God’s creation, God created all you see, all you don’t see. . .
God spoke: “Light”
And light appeared. . . .
God created human beings,
he made them godlike
reflecting God’s nature
he created them male and female.. . .
God looked over everything he had made;
it was so good, so very good!

And, trusting in the work of Creation, God directed humans to examine the universe, and use it to bring joy, peace, justice into creation – infusing them and it with the love that brought it all into reality.  And it doesn’t come about like magic – it comes about with the intertwining of all humans – each with his or her contribution to make toward the whole.  Thus does Creation move to a fulfillment none of us can really understand.  But we can tell about it in poetry.  Listen:--

The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
     God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
in readiness for God from day one.

Everything was created through him;
nothing – not one thing –
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was the light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out.

There once was a man, his name was John, sent by God to point out the way to Life-Light.  He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in.  John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light.

The Life-Light was the real thing:
Every person entering life,
he brings into Light.
He was in the world,
the world was there through him,
and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves
These are the God-begotten,
not the blood-begotten,
not flesh begotten,
not sex begotten.

The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into [our own] neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out
true from start to finish.  (The Message translation)

But, you see, redemption was shown by the life , death and resurrection of Jesus.  That event made it clear that the order of nature as God created it was in charge of things.  We humans are not the subjects of God, bound by some law to obey him.  No, we are partners with God in bringing the creation – in those places  where we are in touch with it – into its fullest function, its fullest being.  That’s why God the Word – or God the Communicator – moved into our neighborhood.  He lives among his partners and he assists us in carrying out our share in the completion of the NEW CREATION.

THAT”S why we care about the ox and the donkey and the manger and the baby-son-of-Mary.  For that baby-son-of-Mary is in totally real fact, you and me.  We are here, because, if you will, because of the Great Vigil of Easter.  When Jesus died in triumph on the Cross and went to bring the Light to those who had gone before, he did it to show that all who have faith in the great Creator God are EQUALLY the children of God.  (I didn’t make this up; there is nothing new in what I say – you can read all about it in Paul’s writings, especially Romans and First Corinthians.)

You see, the manger is here – this table. [point at it]
The food and drink are from the old creation.
The newly born surround it and feast on the heavenly food.
And we, the new born in Jesus, are  like the ox and the donkey,
for we know without any doubt that HERE is the meaning of Creation.
And it takes both our faith and the faith of the scientists and mathematicians to help us understand all this.

But when all is said and done,
the Word was made flesh and joins us here.
And as we struggle in our swaddling clothes,
the angels come right here, into this very place.
And they sing -- Oh! they sing --
Glory to God in the highest,
and
peace to all of good will.      

Merry Christmass