We Are a Christmas People
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, for you are our strength and our redeemer. Amen. Please be seated.
Happy New Year, Cathedral Family, on the second Sunday of Christmas. And therein lies the irony if you will of this day. This second Sunday of Christmas when it comes, always falls on the cusp or at the beginning of the new year. And so it is that this day often brings with it mixed feelings of emotion. For even as we are still relishing in the joy of Christmas, we are perhaps also feeling a certain angst about what is to come in the new year. This time is at once a time filled with the confidence that is Christmas day and the uncertainty for the days to come. Remember Y2K? When we turned the calendar from the year 1999 to 2000 and the doubt that our computer systems would hold up to a century change? The fear that a technological failure would wreak havoc across the world and the uneasiness by which we treaded into the new year? Just waiting for the collapse of our day to day living as we knew it. Remember that?
And then there was the second Christmas of 2021 when we turned the page on a new year in the midst of a pandemic with the worry of what COVID had in store for us in the coming days. Each turning of the page to a new year brings with it its own degree of doubt, fears if not a sense of panic. This year is no different. It is indeed the unknowing, unpredictability of the new year. Even as we celebrate it’s coming, that inevitably causes us a certain pause and a measure of anxiousness. It is therefore rather fitting that the end of our Christmas season flows into the new year, for this Sunday of juxtaposition with Christmas on the one hand and the new year on the other. It serves to remind us that regardless, regardless of what comes next, we are a Christmas people.
The turning of the calendar does not change that. And so we are to bring who we are as a Christmas people into the new Year, even as we face the uncertainty, doubts and perhaps fear for whatever the new days will bring. And so this begs the question, what does that mean? What does it mean for us to be a Christmas people no matter what comes next? The book of Jeremiah from which we read this morning, I believe helps us to answer this question. Now, I must admit that I would often wonder why on every second Sunday of Christmas we read from the book of Jeremiah, a book that is in so many ways about the disintegration of a once stable Israel in the end of their world, their government, their society as they knew it. Indeed throughout the book, Jeremiah is warning Israel of the bad things that are to come, like they’re being driven from their land and exiled in the land of their enemies, the Babylonians.
So filled with warning that Jeremiah has been called by some ‘The Prophet of Doom’. To be sure there can be no more abrupt ending to our Christmas joy or more of an explanation point on our apprehension for the year to come than reading from Jeremiah. So why Jeremiah? Well, because Jeremiah is not simply about doom. For even as Jeremiah expresses foreboding about what is to come, it also rejoices in the wonders of God. It is fitting therefore that we would read from Jeremiah on this second Sunday after Christmas as we move into a new year. Especially fitting that we would read from that portion of Jeremiah known as the Book of Consolation, or Comfort. In this morning’s reading, we find the people of Israel still exiled in Babylon and so they are no doubt filled with anxiety, despair, and anguish for whatever is to come next at the hands of the Babylonians.
It is in the midst of their exile that we find the prophet Jeremiah, the one who once pronounced doom, proclaiming today words of comfort, words of consolation, words of joy. And so it is from the prophet Jeremiah that we can indeed gain insight into what it means to be a Christmas people, even in uncertain if not unsettling times. What is it that we glean from Jeremiah? If there is anything in any theme that is constant throughout the book of Jeremiah, it is the prophet calling the people of Israel to remember first and full foremost their heritage, their divine heritage. He consistently reminds them of their covenant with God. A covenant that makes clear who and whose they are. As it establishes their relationship to God, it establishes that they belong to God, and thus that it is the character of God that should determine how they see and define themselves in the world.
As Jeremiah calls them back to the covenant with God, he is essentially calling them to show up in the world as the people they are. To show up in the world as people of divine heritage, reflecting the character of their God. It is in this way that the warnings of Jeremiah serve as an admonition to the people to be true to their very heritage for to forget it or to portray it brings its own consequences, perhaps a sermon for another day. But for now, we discover a fundamental aspect of what it means for us to be a Christmas people. It means to be the people of heritage, of divine heritage, that we are. Cathedral Family, here and online, Christmas makes clear to us in no uncertain terms that our heritage is a divine heritage. On Christmas, God virtually moves heaven and earth, sending God’s only son to us as a sign of who and whose we are.
God becomes one with us to make clear to us that we are one of God’s. We are children of God’s. Our heritage is indeed the soul of who we are, and as much as it is our soul that inextricably connects us to the one who has breathed us into life. Cathedral, bottom line is this. Each and every single, solitary, one of us, each one of us, whether we like it or not, is a member of God’s family. We are to share in that divine heritage. And so we are to show up in the world reflecting just that, no matter what comes next. If the covenant represented the Israelites heritage obligation to be the people of God that they were, then Christmas Day reinforces our obligation to do the same. Our response to a world and a society that is always trying to shape us into what it wants us to be?
Our response is to proclaim ourselves as part of God’s family. As Jesus proclaimed himself as being in his father’s house, we are to show up as our authentic selves in the world reflecting the character of the one to whom we belong. The character of our God who is good, who is gracious, who is kind, and who is loving. And so what does it mean to be a Christmas people? It means to be a people of heritage. Which brings us to another reminder gleaned from Jeremiah, concerning what it means to be a Christmas people no matter what comes next. It means also to be a people of opportunity. When before our reading today, the people of Israel found themselves on the brink of uncertainty and in fact, on the verge of exile, Jeremiah said this to them, he said, “stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your souls”.
Here’s the thing. To be a religious people is to be a people who have asked and answered the question, ‘Is there more to life than this’? Is there more to life than our world of imprecise justice, of uncertain right and wrong, of unreliable compassion, of willful indifference? Is there more to life than this? As religious people, we have said, ‘Yes. Yes, there is more’. It is the more of Israel’s covenant with God. It is the more of Christmases is the more of those questions that Jesus was asking in the temple. For it is on Christmas that Christ comes to us as the incarnate reality of the more. The more that is the perfect justice, the perfect goodness, the perfect kindness that is God’s heaven. That is God’s future.
And so to be a Christmas people means nothing less, nothing less than approaching the crossroads of each day as an opportunity, an opportunity to reach for something more. Something more than the chaos of our world. To reach for something more than the inhumane of our world, to reach for something more than the imperfect choices that are in front of us. To reach for the more of Christmas that is Christ’s love. That is Christ’s compassion. That is Christ’s perfect humanity. The more of our divine heritage, the more that is the yearning of our very souls. The point of the matter, Cathedral Family, is we don’t have to be perfect, but we can each day be, as the kids would say, we could be ‘more better’. Each day brings with it an opportunity for us, you and me, to be ‘more better’. Each day brings with it an opportunity for us to realign ourselves and to reach for the more that is our divine heritage.
‘Stand at the crossroads and look’, Jeremiah says, ‘and you will find rest for your souls.’ What does it mean to be a Christmas people? It means to be a people of opportunity reaching for the more of who God created us to be as members of God’s family. Which leads to yet another aspect of what it means to be a people of Christmas. It means promise. Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation from which we read this morning is described by some scholars as a collection of promises. Promises about the newness of life that awaits the Israelites on the other side of their exile. Essentially this morning’s reading reflects nothing less than Jeremiah’s passionate testimony to the exiled Israelites about the very promises of God. ‘Thus says the Lord’, Jeremiah proclaims, ‘I am going to bring them from the land of the North and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord. I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and give them gladness for sorrow’.
What does it mean to be a Christmas people, no matter what comes next? It means to be a people of promise. And to be a people of promise is to be a people who, no matter what each day brings, clings, clings to the very promise of God. That our imperfect present with all of its hardships, with all of its inhumanity, it’s unkindness, it’s injustice, it’s inexplicable indecency, this imperfect present is not, as Walter Brueggemann would put it, ‘the last word on our human destiny’. Hear this: the way things are is not the way they are destined to be. God promises. And so it is that we are, no matter what the next day may bring, we are never to give into, to compromise with, or to surrender to the ways and values of our time.
No matter how dispiriting, how intimidating, how formidable those ways may seem, to be a Christmas people means to hold on to the promise of God. That the ways of our present is not the last word on our destiny, as a nation, as a society, as God’s people. And so it is that on Christmas, Christ was born in a manger as the incarnate promise of new life, especially for those who are relegated to the very major realities of this world. As Jeremiah testified to a people in exile, Christmas is God’s testimony to us about the promise that God can work newness in circumstances where there appears to be no possibility of newness. To be a Christmas people is to, in the words of the old gospel song, to stand on the promises of God.
Which leads us to that final aspect of what it means to be a Christmas. People that are reading from Jeremiah brings to mind. Even as they were in exile, Jeremiah admonished the Israelites ‘to sing loud’, he said, ‘with gladness and to proclaim and give praise to God’ as in expectation of the future that was God’s for them. What does it mean to be a Christmas people? It means to be expected. That is a people living in expectation of God’s promised future for God’s world and God’s people. On Christmas Christ comes into the world as the perfect incarnation of God’s expected peace, that perfect peace that exceeds all understanding. The peace that is God’s loving justice. And so it is that we as a Christmas people, even if imperfectly, are to move toward through our very actions toward the peace that we expect from God. And this brings us full circle back to the beginning. What does it mean to be a Christmas people? Even as we face the anxiety of the new year in days to come. It means to be a people of heritage, of opportunity, of promise, of expectation, which all comes down to the acronym H-O-P-E, hope. To be a people of Christmas is to be a people of hope. This is a hope that is about more than rhetoric or wishful thinking. It is a hope that is a Christmas hope. It is about a way of showing up, a way of choosing, behaving and being in the world.
I must say that I have been thinking a whole lot about hope lately, especially as we have turned the page to this new year. On this January 4th, New Year’s Day, I found myself thinking about a New Year’s some 160 years ago when a people celebrated the proclamation that they were no longer to be enslaved. And as I thought of that particular New Year’s Day, I couldn’t help but to think of those people who never got to celebrate that day. Those people who faced each new year still enslaved, a people who were born into slavery, never drew a free breath, and never even dreamed that they would breathe a free breath. Yet as I’ve said before, a people who fought for freedom anyhow. They fought for freedom because they knew their heritage as children of God’s created by God not to be slaves but to be free.
And so living into that divine heritage, they took advantage of the opportunity they had to reach for the more that was the promise of God, that slavery would not have the last word. And thus they followed the North Star in expectation of a future where their children and their children’s children would one day know the freedom that they did not know. A freedom that lands the great granddaughter of an enslaved person in this pulpit today preaching in a place like this. That’s the hope that inspires me. That’s the hope that moves through my bones. That’s the hope that runs through our souls. That’s the hope that should inspire each one of us because that’s the hope of Christmas. That’s what it means to be a Christmas people, even when the next days are uncertain. So back to the beginning, I don’t know what the new year will bring, but this I do know. That no matter what comes next, we are to be always, always a people of heritage, a people of opportunity, a people of promise, a people of expectation, a people carrying forth the hope that is a Christmas people. Cathedral Family, may it be so on this day and every new day to come. Amen.