LAKE JAMES

NORTH CAROLINA

Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus + 1/1/06 + St. Paul’s, Morganton, NC

If you were to go to a party where you knew almost everybody, but one person was a stranger, you might ask someone “who is that?” And the most likely answer would be to be told that person’s name. Today, happily, we are told someone’s Name.

Before the revision of the American Book of Common Prayer in 1979, the Episcopal Church’s calendar kept today, January First, as the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus, an occasion which frequently caused some difficulty for Sunday School teachers as well as Priests preaching on the subject. How to explain it usually became how to avoid it! The newer calendar now assigns January 1st to the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus and many of us heave signs of relief! Actually, the Feast of the Holy Name is hardly new. Dating from the 6th century, it was introduced into the English Church in 1489, although it had to wait almost 500 years to make it into the American Prayer Book! At any rate, as we celebrate that holy day this morning, we carry on a tradition of some standing as, during these twelve days of Christmas, the Church bids us consider what we celebrate and why. That’s not as simple as it may seem. To a great extent, our culture has more or less blended two Christmases, and those seeking to observe a celebration of the birth of Jesus may not find it all that easy.

Let me speak for myself and see if my experience is all that different from yours. As usual in November, I began to feel “out of step” with the world around me. Stores were bombarding customers with Christmas carols and some neighbors were already putting Christmas lights on their houses while, in Church, we hadn’t even begun the season of Advent! Days passed and pressures mounted to begin “to observe Christmas!” I resisted, ignoring the places selling Christmas trees and wreaths, but sometime during the 3rd week of Advent my resolve weakened to the point where Christmas music began to come from our CD player and I suppose I was more or less “in step” with other folks. But it didn’t last very long! Suddenly Christmas Eve came with its excitement and bustle of last-minute tasks. Here at St. Paul’s, the stirring words and music of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” began the First Mass of Christmas, the Blessed Sacrament was consecrated, we received the Son of God in Holy Communion, and finally, the liturgy ended with candlelight and the soft beauty of “Silent Night.” Then it was on to St. James Parish in Hendersonville where I concelebrated the Midnight Mass. Thanks to the generosity of Father John (and Jan), Christmas Day brought a few peaceful moments to catch my breath both spiritually and physically.

It was the following day, the Feast of St. Stephen, when it hit! If ever there is a time when one can see how different the focus of the Christian Christmas is from the secular Christmas, it is during the 12 Christmastide days as the Church celebrates the truth of the Incarnation and the rest of the world concentrates on “after-Christmas” sales and some exhausted people mutter “thank goodness that’s over for another year!

My point is not to condemn the secular holiday for it has many nice features which appeal to Christians as well as non-religious folks, but rather, to have us consider what the message is of our Christmas – the Christian Christmas. Let me suggest that that is much easier to do today than it was a week ago. The Department Store Santas are gone, and by and large, so are Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and the other minor gods of the secular festival.

The field, for a while, is left to the crèche and the Gospel message that “In the beginning was the Word, that Word was with God, and the Word was God!” The familiar words of the Creed connect that awesome truth to us when we affirm our belief that “it was for us, for our salvation that HE came down from heaven and was born of the Virgin Mary.”

Today there need be no distracting thoughts of last-minute Christmas shopping, no worries as to whether one got the right size shirt for Uncle Harry or whether Suzie will really like the perfume. Today, it’s just Jesus Christ and us!

Priests are often asked how to find God. The Good news of Christmas is that we don’t need to find God because God has already found us! We worship the God who came and who continues to come into our world, the God who continues to come into our very lives! That also means we don’t need to try to figure out ways to love God. God first loved us and the capacity to love God in return is one of the wonderful gifts from that God to humankind. But what about those people who, in all honesty, don’t experience God in their lives, people who seem to have no connection at all to God’s love – those who have no awareness of God’s presence? What about those good people who may have searched, even yearned for God, only to find nobody – nothing! In fact, haven’t most of us, at one time or another, had a similar experience, feeling not God’s love and presence, but what seemed to be emptiness and God’s absence? Have you ever known those terrible moments of wondering whether God really cares – or even whether there is a God at all? If so, relax! Most of the great Saints, the “experts” if you will in the devotional life, have experienced times of dryness, emptiness, and even grave doubt. But, by God’s grace (not by human effort) those times pass and are replaced by greater, stronger faith and a closer relationship with God. Still, it’s very human to wonder what to do in those dry times, where to look for help.

Let me ask you a question. If you or I had come to Bethlehem that Holy Night, do you think we would have found the Infant Savior? Would we have known where to look? Would we have gone first to the home of the Village Priest, or the office of the Mayor? Would we have gone to what passed for the best suite in the local Inn? Would any of us have ever thought to look in the stable? In the same way, where do we look for Jesus when, in times of pain or doubt we go searching for God?

The Christmas message is that God comes and is present to us in our moments of happiness and good health, but equally, if not even more so, in our times of pain, illness, and sorrow. To put it as clearly as I know how, the cute, cuddly baby Jesus of the stable is the same Jesus who hung, twisted in agony, on the Cross, and is the same Jesus who now reigns in glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit. It’s that Jesus who loves each one of us so much that He comes to us again and again and again. Perhaps during these twelve days of Christmas, we would do well to look again at our awareness of that awesome fact.

How important, how very important it is to see in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar not just a ceremony or merely a symbolic act, but a way (perhaps the chief way) we come face to face with the actual presence of the Son of God, receiving Him into our very selves every time we are fed with that small wafer of bread and sip of wine. We need to think again about what our response really is to the fact that Jesus comes to us through that collection of books we call “The Holy Bible.” It’s one thing to acknowledge that as truth, but something else to include room in our daily lives for regular, prayerful reading of that Bible.

And, while we are at it, if we are really concerned about our relationship with God, how important it is to consider what it means to us when we say that God is truly present whenever two or three gather in Christ’s Name.

Having said all that, let me suggest that the place we are most apt to overlook when we seek God’s presence is within each one of us! Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is within us and so is the living presence of that God. Given at Holy Baptism, that Presence can not and does not die. It never wears out or expires! Our awareness of it, our appreciation of it, even our desire for it may be strongly felt at times, or seem to be virtually gone at others. How and even why that happens is puzzling, but that it does take place is certainly so – something many of us have experienced at times in our lives.

The Christian Christmas proclaims EMMANUEL – God is with us. Today’s Feast puts Jesus our midst as that new-born baby is given a Name. Our faith is not just a collection of abstract doctrines but a response to the revelation of who and what God is like, a revelation given to us through the Son of God and taught through the centuries by His Church. Jesus came in Bethlehem, and continues to come to humankind. When we are aware of God’s presence in us, we can also begin to perceive God’s presence in others. Sometimes, it may be our assurance of that to others, especially those in doubt, pain, or sorrow, making a difference in their lives. At other times, it may be others doing that for you. Has that ever happened to you? It certainly has happened to me.

If anyone asks you “did you have a good Christmas?” may you be able to answer (and not too smugly) “Yes I am” because these twelve days now are the Christian Christmas. They are the Church’s gift to all who will receive them, reminding us once again of the awe-filled truths that the Son of God came and continues to come.

May these twelve days of your Christmas be filled with divine grace and a joyful awareness of God’s presence – in you!

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

This page last modified on Friday, April 11, 2008 09:39 PM