The Good News!

Welcome! I am the Rev. Ken Saunders. I serve as the rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Greeneville, Tennessee (since May 2018). These sermons here were delivered in the context of worship at the various places I have served.

[NOTE: Sermons (or Homilies) are commentaries that follow the scripture lessons, and are specifically designed to be heard. They are "written for the ear" and may contain sentence fragments and be difficult to read. They are NOT intended to be academic papers.]

Friday, December 24, 2010

RCL Year A (Christmas) - December 24, 2010

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Christ Church
Cleveland, NC

RCL Year A (Christmas) - December 24, 2010

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20
Psalm 96

One of the things that I like most about this time of year is the wonderful movies that come on Television. I like ALL of them… It’s a Wonderful Life, the Santa Clause 1,2, & 3, A Christmas Carol – all derivations thereof (especially the 1938 version with Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge), Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, Jack Frost, Elf, Home Alone 1, 2, & 3, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas (starring non other than the great Bing Crosby), and so many others…

I even like the animated shorts – the cute 30 minute specials like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and everyone’s favorite – the Dr. Seuss Classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

You may now be saying to yourself, “I came to church on Christmas eve at 10:30 to hear Ken talk about Christmas movies? I thought this was a church!” Well, this is church! And if you will bear with me a minute, I will explain WHY I like all these Christmas movies, and why they are worth mentioning, here, tonight!

What I hope you noticed immediately about these movies, is that in all the movies that I listed, the birth of Jesus Christ is not mentioned (with the exception of Charlie Brown). There is not a word that is prophetic or spiritual in any way. No baby in a manger, no travel to Bethlehem, no visiting shepherds, nothing to do with the real reason for Christmas – the Christ Mass.

Christmas… The celebration of the humility of God emptying God’s self completely and becoming incarnate, becoming flesh, becoming one of us, to live among us, and show us how to be with each other… Pure love embodied in the flesh of Jesus Christ…

Not a word… However, what these movies DO have in common is that they are all stories of interactive relationship. Regardless of how fictional they may be, they all tell us much about relationships… relationships with each other… relationships with family, with friends, and even relationships with those whom we may not like very much.

I think Jesus, who spoke profound truths and taught with metaphors and parables, would find these stories delightful in the way that they personify and teach us about relationships. The way they tell the story of relationships… That’s why they are so good… That’s why we watch them…

They let us reflect for a second about how we interact with each other, of how good it really could be for us if we practiced right relationship… if we would only let out heart be warmed a bit and our lives lived out for someone else besides ourselves – even someone that we may not even know.

So, all of these movies are really about relationships and togetherness… Togetherness with strangers, family, friends, and colleagues.

I have often said that God is revealed to us as a God of relationship… Not just the relationship of the trinity, complete within God’s self, as Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, but God as relationship with us and us with God.

God desired to have a relationship with us, in order to teach us about relationship. God became human, born of a woman, born under the law of Moses, born poor – on the fringes of society, to a family of artisans – crafters, who were not anything close to noble. God chose this entry in time and place to teach humanity about relationships, and how to participate fully in the important things of this world that have heavenly eternal rewards.

But, what we need to realize is that the incarnation (God becoming flesh – God becoming human) isn’t complete without us. William Porcher DuBose, the great theologian, said it best when he said that “God in Christ is only half the incarnation. Christ in us is the full other half.” The story of what happened in Bethlehem a little over 2 millennia isn’t finished, isn’t finished until that “Christ” lives in each one of us. “Christ in us” completes the relationship, it completes the incarnation. Then we all become part of the story.

The way we act in relationship with each other shows others who we know God to be. It shows others that we have the light of Christ that burns and lives within us, and the same Christ is born and lives out in our actions.

The shame is… is that we still don’t get it… it doesn’t matter if we completely understand the miraculous story of the birth of Jesus, and know all the details of the scene of the shepherds and the angles. If we don’t live his teachings out in our lives then it’s all for not. The incarnation must be completed as the Christ is born in us and through us to others. In order to experience the incarnation, we must all participate in it.

Those wonderful movies – the secular, fictional, Christmas stories give us a way to reflect on relationships as we are entertained by the story. But, we may never watch them the same way again. The relationships in those movies don’t make any sense to us out of the context of the incarnation of God the Son.

As my wonderful Church History professor, Don Armentrout, always use to say that there are only 2 books in the library… It’s true! When you go to the library, you only find 2 books – you find our Holy Scripture (the Bible) and the rest of it is Church History! No, seriously… what Dr. Armentrout means that everything we experience in our lives, secular or otherwise, is influenced by religion in one way or another. So we can bet, the next time we watch How the Grinch stole Christmas, we can learn something profound about the theology of Dr. Seuss.

In order to have a relationship with us, God become one of us, born of a pure young woman, so that we might have a restored relationship with God… All we have to do is accept it and participate in it… and we do that through our involvement… involvement in our community and in our family… That’s the true meaning of the Christ Mass, which we have all come to participate in tonight.

We gather around the Lord’s table as a community, as a family and share a relationship as we break bread and share the cup. We receive God in Christ and Christ in us, and we are nourished to go out and share it with the world.

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among all people with whom God is well pleased! Merry Christmas!

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