Year by Year—The Double-Revelation of Saving Grace
A great feast is upon us. In truth, we enjoy two complimentary great feasts each year. The church comes to life within these two festivals: one in the spring, one in the winter: The Sunday of the Resurrection launches our praises through the Great Fifty Days of the Easter season. The Feast of the Nativity and the twelve-day season of Christmastide wraps us in the Incarnation of God, revealing indescribable love.
In the first, we announce in strength that Christ is victorious over sin and death, because he offered himself, and death could not hold him, for he was raised to life and shares that Resurrection Life with us all. You know well the meaning of the second great Christian feast. God came, self-offered, through the birth of Jesus and thereby took humanity and all of creation into the divine life of God in heaven. The eternal Word which spoke the material order into being in the beginning was made flesh and dwelt among us. Looking through either lens of salvation we see that we are saved indeed. These two feasts come like annual anointings of the Resurrection and the Incarnation; receiving them, we find ourselves healed. This Sunday we are treated with a combination of both ointments.
Every Sunday is a little Easter; that is the life-giving mystery in our worship on the first day of every week So of course, the Sunday coming is a resurrection day. It is also an incarnation feast, being the First Sunday after Christmas Day, and the second day of Christmastide.
The Scripture lessons of the day hold up two evocative themes which we can explore more deeply in separate reflections. Briefly, they involve the divine light poured upon us, and our adoption as God’s children.
The theme of God’s gift of light is well pronounced in the scriptures. From this Sunday’s Collect: “Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives. “From the Isaiah passage: “…for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch.” From the Gospel of John: 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.”
Also announced strongly is the theme of our adoption. From the Epistle to the Galatians: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. … So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.” Again, from the Gospel: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.“
These are beautifully rich themes of Christmas. They come alongside the array of amazing scenes of the season. On Christmas Eve we absorb the wonderful Lukan nativity-narrative: the story of the baby born in Bethlehem. In it we recall the Shepherds on the hills receiving the message of the angels, then running to find “Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.” On Epiphany, we take in the birth narrative of Matthew’s Gospel. We travel with the magi from the east, following a star, manifest to show the way to the child who was born king of the Jews. The seekers find him and offer treasures: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This Sunday we marvel at the mystery portrayed through the opening of John’s Gospel: a lyrical proclamation of incarnation-prose. All three portraits of Christ coming into the world evoke wonder and joy. We are just days away from the awesome news that will fill our hearts again. We prepare, for now, comes the Incarnate Son of God and we receive afresh the mystery of our salvation.