A Sermon preached on Christmas I, 2021 at St. Augustine’s
Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7, John 1:1-18
Our December vestry meeting is always a mixture of business and social. Usually, we have dinner together at the Parsonage, but this year the meeting had to be online yet again. But after we had finished discussing business, we had some online social time including a short quiz that Susan had prepared for us. One of the questions was which Gospels contain a nativity or birth story. The correct answer is just two of the four, Matthew and Luke. A nativity play based on Mark’s Gospel would be very short, just 5 minutes of silence followed by a John the Baptist character jumping onto the stage shouting “repent”!
And John’s Gospel just has the prologue we heard this morning. Robert Vukovic made a good case that this could also be considered as a sort of birth story, or even a pre-birth story, as in poetic language it tells us not only about the eternal Word coming into the world, but also about the Word’s pre-existence: but it still does not lend itself to a nativity play. The prologue is, quoting from a commentary, “a hymn, a poetic summary of the whole theology and narrative of the Gospel.”[1] It begins at the very beginning, with creation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …. All things came into being through him” (John 1:1-3) and touches on the fall with the introduction of the darkness of evil into God’s creation – yet which cannot overcome the light of God. We are told that John the Baptist will come first, “as a witness to testify to the light.” (John 1:6-7) The first half of John’s Gospel shows us how Jesus and his teaching is often rejected by many of his own people, especially the religious leaders, and this is summed up with the words “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” (John 1:11) And that rejection culminates in Jesus’ death on the cross. But we are also told that some will believe and follow him, with the disciples at their core. They will be given the power to become children of God, and at the very end of the Gospel Jesus will breathe his Spirit of new life into them. The Word became flesh, was “incarnated” we are told, and in this Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, we can know God. It’s all there, all of Jesus’ life and its meaning in these 18 verses that we are given to read and hear before that story begins!
That is not the case with Chidi. We do not know what his life will be like, what experiences he will have, what highs and lows, what challenges and joys. What we do know is that he will grow up in a very loving family. In bringing him her today for baptism, you, his family are doing two things.
Firstly, you are extending and enlarging Chidi’s family. “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ's Body the Church,” and that body is all of us. Chidi already was a child of God but now he is getting us as his brothers and sisters in Christ [and we won’t all fight over his toys!] We, as his church family, will promise to do all in our power to support him in his life in Christ, however that will turn out.
Secondly you are giving him a set of guidelines for the rest of his life. The promises you make on his behalf, and the Covenant we will all join in saying, are principles for him to use as he makes his way through life, values he can draw on when making decisions. At heart the promises are simple: Renounce all that is evil and bad (not that Chidi has yet had a chance to do anything evil or bad … though his parents may have a different view after a sleepless night). Turn to Christ, trust in him and follow him – his teaching, his life and his love. The famous 2nd century Rabbi Hillel when asked to teach a gentile the whole Torah replied, “That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah [Law], and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”
The Baptismal Covenant is also a sort of commentary, because everything can be summed up in Jesus’s commandment to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. In a given situation however, we sometimes want more detail – and that is what a commentary is for.
What does our commentary tell us then? First it tells us what to believe in, the God who creates, redeems and sanctifies us. Then it tells us what sort of actions or behaviour follow in from that faith.
To “continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers,” is the reminder that relationships and community are at the heart of what we do. We turn to that fellowship, that community, to learn together and from one another, and of course for mutual support – we are family. And we turn to God, to Jesus our guide, in our prayers, commending difficult decisions to him.
Our commentary – realistically – also assumes that while we will do our very best not to make mistakes, that we still will make them, and tells us that there is always a way back in repenting and returning to the Lord “whenever [we] fall into sin.” This is important as we have a tendency to dig ourselves even deeper into trouble if we have no way out. Well, the promise here is that there is always a way out.
As this is all Good News, we also promise to pass it on to others - by word and example. Whenever we do that, we make the world a little better, a better place to live in, so it’s good for us too.
We have – and you will, Chidi – run into people that we don’t like and that we don’t agree with. But even then, we are called to “seek and serve Christ in all persons.” That does not mean that we have to do something we consider wrong, but that even when we disagree, perhaps even fundamentally, that we express that disagreement in the knowledge that we are all made in the image of God.
Last and certainly not least, Jesus came to establish a kingdom of peace, justice, and righteousness (Isaiah 9:7). If we follow him and obey him, that is also the purpose of our lives, to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” I don’t know how that will express itself in your life, for example what organisation or cause you may decide to support or even to call into being. There are as many ways of doing this, as there are people.
As I said, we do not have a prologue to Chidi’s life, no advance summary of his story. But I do know that if he strives to live as we will promise for and with him, and if we all strive to help him, that it will be a godly and a good one.
Amen.
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