"Of Light & Flesh: A Christmas Sermon" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | December 25, 2020

Isaiah 52:7-10 | John 1:1-14

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

As I sat down to write this sermon yesterday, I received a call from a familiar but unknown number on my cell phone. It was the City of New Haven, informing me to keep watch. There’s a rain storm coming in on Christmas eve, the recorded voice of the mayor said. Heavy rain from 10pm onward. Winds upwards of 60 miles per hour.

It’s 2020 so I should be used to it by now. I should save the city’s autobot number as a contact on my phone, for all the times they have called to give warning about snowstorms and hurricanes and, of course, COVID-19. Yesterday’s message mentioned that the storm may cause some power outage. And so perhaps you are joining in this service now by the skin of your teeth, with the last leg of the battery that powers your phone or computer. Perhaps you spent last night, Christmas Eve, without light in your home. Perhaps there are people still without power now.

It’s against this backdrop that we hear the words from the Gospel of John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. 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.”

On this day, on Christmas morning, we celebrate a light that came into the world, that will never go out. Storms cannot damage it. A global pandemic cannot dim it. Not even death can put it out. Jesus is that light. A light to enlighten the nations. A light to spread the gift of salvation beyond Israel. A light to shine courage, hope, peace, and understanding into the darkest corners of our lives.

I could wax poetic about light for the rest of this sermon. We love light! We love sunrises and sunsets. We love strings of lights on trees. We love candles, and twinkling lights on a city skyline, and stars shining far away in the sky. It’s easy to love light. We turn towards it like sunflowers. We mourn it in the dark days of winter. We herald the lengthening of days in the spring. But rather than talking about light for the rest of this sermon, I’d like to talk about something that we find a lot harder to love. I’d like to talk about flesh.

Flesh. Even the word itself in English has a kind of forbidden creepy sound. We’re not certain whether it makes us think of slabs of meat in the kitchen, or revealing magazine covers, or Halloween slasher films. In any case, I think my first reaction to the word is a kind of revulsion - a kind of shrinking back into myself. Perhaps that reaction stems from the fact that we are, all of us, flesh. We are bone covered in muscle covered in this stuff - and it’s all very strange, when you think about it. Our flesh comes in many colors. It wrinkles with age. It changes with the seasons. And it’s this - this flesh - that God chose to become in sending Jesus into the world.

God’s very nature is light. It is otherworldly, infinite, immortal, invisible. And yet still God chose to become flesh. To be born into our human strangeness, into our human frailty. God chose to enter into an existence with an expiration date. And God did all of this for one reason: because of God’s love for us. The gospel of John says this: “He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 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. And the word became flesh and lived among us.”

Part of our task this Christmas is to simply step back and appreciate what God has done for us. It is amazing. Simply take a moment today and look at your hands. Look at your flesh and the lifelines that stretch across it, and imagine what it would be like to choose this. Imagine what it would be like to choose flesh when your very nature is light. This is what God has done for us.

I would also like to invite you into another way of living out your faith this Christmas - by imagining that this day is not only the birth day of the Son of God. It is also a kind of birthday for each one of us. John says that we have the “power to become children of God” if we receive Christ, and believe in his name. We have the power to become a new creation. It isn’t guaranteed. Rather it’s a process that we choose, go through throughout our lives. It is a process of becoming. A process of being born, “not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

On this day when God was born into the flesh, we remember God’s invitation to us to be born into light. This second birth doesn’t take away our first - we are still, very much, human beings. And yet God invites us to be something more as well. God invites us to bring forth that part of ourselves that is immortal, unchangeable, and infinitely loved.

There is a poem I love by e.e. cummings. I usually think of it as a spring poem, because of one line about the greenness of trees. And yet, I think it’s a poem that speaks to birth at any time in our lives - birth, even in the midst of winter. I would like to leave you with these words which speak to me today of Christmas:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything 

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:and of the day

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any-lifted from the no

of all nothing-human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

May the ears of your ears be awakened today. May the eyes of your eyes be opened - to see every Christmas blessing that waits for you; every blessing of new life that stems forth from the day when God became flesh to live among us. Amen.