{"id":605473,"date":"2021-10-24T20:02:13","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T00:02:13","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2026-07-16T10:01:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T14:01:17","slug":"the-beginning-christmas-day-i-december-26-2021","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/sermons\/the-beginning-christmas-day-i-december-26-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beginning, Christmas Day (I) \u2013 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/lectionary\/christmas-day-i\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>[RCL] Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96<\/strong>; <strong>Titus 2:11-14<\/strong>; <strong>Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-yellow-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-yellow-background-color has-background is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm\/?e=DFMS7761990965&#038;light=true\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-yellow-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-yellow-background-color has-background is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Cover-FB-3-1024x536.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-255490\" style=\"width:512px;height:268px\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Students of history often find themselves confronted by difficult realities: there are wars, famines, stories of human tragedy and strife, but undoubtedly one of the <em>greatest<\/em> challenges to anyone beginning to explore our past is the whole B.C. versus A.D. thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you think about it, it\u2019s really crazy! Who in the world would come up with this kind of system? I say, \u201cIn the year 50\u2026\u201d and immediately, you have to stop and say, \u201cWait, which year 50? A.D. 50, like the 50 that comes <em>before<\/em> A.D. 70? Or 50 B.C., which comes <em>after<\/em> 70 B.C. but <em>before<\/em> A.D. 70?\u201d It is like an unlimited stream of \u201cWho\u2019s on first?\u201d jokes just waiting to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">B.C. starts with whenever time began, maybe the year 16 billion B.C., and then you have to count backward so that the year 400 is the <em>past<\/em> for people living in the year 300, and their unimaginably distant future is the year 10. And then, at an apparently arbitrary place, time just starts over again, and we keep on going with A.D. for two thousand twenty-one years. Common sense, and untold <em>thousands <\/em>of school children, would tell us that this is the worst system of dating ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But as confusing as it may be, the B.C.\/A.D. system is not only reasonable, it\u2019s also unavoidable: because on Christmas Eve, in a stable, in the little town of Bethlehem, at the very turn of A.D. 1, literally everything changed \u2014 so much so that our conceptions of time and history and even what it is to be a human being all had to go back to the drawing board as <em>time started anew<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the account of Creation in Genesis, we see the Garden of Eden: a world in which humanity lives in perfect harmony and friendship with God. All that they could want is freely given to them \u2014 they reach up like children to their Father, and pluck their food from the trees; they are at peace with all the world. There is no violence, no bloodshed, no darkness, no sickness, nor death, but only peace, light, and joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Until one day, Adam and Eve get a bright idea: They have been told that there is <em>one<\/em> tree in the Garden of which they cannot eat, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, for if they eat of it, death will enter the world. But then\u2026 along comes the serpent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">God knows the reality of evil, God knows that there is something that attempts to turn from him and worship itself, and God had sought to shield Adam and Eve from the horror of this reality, but on the day that they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened. At that moment, Adam and Eve <em>became<\/em> the reality of that rebellion against God, they enact the evil from which God had sought to protect them. At that moment, Adam and Eve rejected God and turned away from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But turning away from God is no easy task because literally everything that <em>is<\/em> comes from God: everything that <em>is<\/em> is created by God, sustained by God. The whole creation is held together from millisecond to millisecond by God\u2019s goodness and love. So, when you try to turn away from God, there is literally no place to go where he is not. There is nothing that is not a sign of his love, of his presence \u2014 and so you literally have to turn to that which <em>does not exist<\/em> \u2014 to nothingness, to darkness, to death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Death, sickness, and strife were ushered into the world in the fall of Adam and Eve, not as a punishment, not as a curse from God, but simply as the necessary result of turning away from the source of all that is. In turning away from life, all that is left to us is death. And so, from the prehistoric story of the Fall, through ancient times, right on down until the first Christmas Eve, things continued in the same vein: people were born and lived, were plagued by ignorance and selfishness, and eventually died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In St. Athanasius\u2019 book <em>On the Incarnation,<\/em> he asks why it is that God let this happen. Couldn\u2019t he just rewind time to right before Adam and Eve made the decision to reject him? Couldn\u2019t he just hit the reset button and make it all okay again? He could, says Athanasius, but then it would all have happened again, and again, and again. Humanity, created in the image and likeness of God, would be a never-ending loop of rejecting God. So, what\u2019s a loving creator to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A staple conceit of American sitcoms and road trip movies are the brother and sister in the back of the minivan who spend hours arguing over electronics, radio stations, and elbow space, until an exasperated parent finally says, \u201cDon\u2019t make me come back there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For all of B.C., for the whole of human history, the Word of God came to the prophets, commanding each to proclaim to God\u2019s people, \u201cRepent! Return to the Lord \u2013 Don\u2019t make me come down there!\u201d But after millions of years of us not listening, the all-knowing, Almighty, eternal God the Son, through whom all things were created, <em>stopped the minivan of time<\/em>, descended from the infinity of the captain\u2019s chair into the spatio-temporality of the <em>furthest <\/em>reaches of the backseat, and was born as a tiny, helpless baby to a poor family in middle-of-nowhere Palestine, and the angels all held their breath as time, reality, and human history screeched to a grinding halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jesus was born. Fully human and fully God. And when we say fully human, we don\u2019t just mean a regular Joe \u2014 we mean <em>fully <\/em>human! You and I are partially human, a tiny reflection of the image and likeness of God that each of us was created to be: we are the shadow of human, we are human light \u2014 but in Jesus, we see what it is to be a full human, a one-hundred percent human: Jesus is a person so full of prayer, so full of love, so connected with God that sickness cannot stand to be around him, and everywhere he goes, healing flows from him. He is so human that he has dominion over Creation and evil flees in terror from him. He is so human that the winds and the waters obey him, and death suddenly becomes powerless when he is around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And he is <em>fully<\/em> God \u2014 he is not someone with good ideas who teaches us about God, or someone who spiritually has God within him. He is actually God the Son, incarnate. The immortal, invisible, inconceivable God, walking with us, talking to us, hearing our sad stories, and laughing at our jokes. He is God with a human face, God with human hands and human feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We would not return to God, so God came down to us, not to chastise us or punish us; not to take away our phones or switch the dial to talk radio: instead, God came down to eternally unite his nature with ours, the Human and the Divine, perfectly united in the one person of Jesus Christ, so that we would begin to be cured of sin, cured of sickness, cured of evil, cured of death. Jesus is our Savior, and through him, human nature is liberated for the love, the peace, and the joy of union with God. One sometimes hears Christmas referred to as Jesus\u2019 birthday, but this night is <i>so much<\/i> more than that: it is the birthday of true humanity, of life itself. It is the beginning of the total defeat of evil, the total defeat of death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are sometimes tempted to spend Christmas either attempting to enact a Norman Rockwell painting of the perfect Christmas or overwhelmed with sorrow because of our total failure to make it work, but I am here tonight to tell you: Christmas is <em>not<\/em> a holiday about food, family, and friends (that was Thanksgiving). Christmas is <em>not<\/em> a celebration of consumerism and shopping (that\u2019s basically every day). Christmas is <em>not<\/em> a day to salute the flag or plant a tree or bake a ham or watch the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Christmas is the most monumental, catastrophic, astonishing, bizarre event in the whole history of time. For on this night, God became human, that humankind might be forever united with God. Let all earth keep silence before this sacred mystery, and let all of us stand in awe, with the angels and shepherds, before the astonishing love revealed in this Baby Jesus, our Lord and our God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This sermon was written by <strong>the Rev. Bertie Pearson<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-file\"><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-ef04d316-0262-4eed-a00a-c2f8f90d6dce\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Sermon-Christmas-Day-I-English.docx\">Word \u2013 Christmas Day (I) Sermon<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Sermon-Christmas-Day-I-English.docx\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-ef04d316-0262-4eed-a00a-c2f8f90d6dce\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-file\"><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-6a0745f7-f72d-42c3-b2c7-1a97ec9111e7\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Sermon-Christmas-Day-I-English.pdf\">PDF \u2013 Christmas Day (I) Sermon<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Sermon-Christmas-Day-I-English.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-6a0745f7-f72d-42c3-b2c7-1a97ec9111e7\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[RCL] Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14 (15-20) Students of history often find themselves confronted by difficult realities: there are wars, famines, stories of human tragedy and strife, but undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges to anyone beginning to explore our past is the whole B.C. versus A.D. thing. If you think about&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":201212,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,43,52,3],"tags":[157],"class_list":["post-605473","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas","category-sermons","category-sermons-that-work","category-worship-and-prayer-menu","tag-christmas-day-i"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":16,"label":"Christmas"},{"value":43,"label":"Sermons"},{"value":52,"label":"Sermons That Work"},{"value":3,"label":"worship_and_prayer_menu"}],"post_tag":[{"value":157,"label":"Christmas Day I"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":[],"comment_info":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/605473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/sermon"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/605473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3474686,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sermon\/605473\/revisions\/3474686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.episcopalchurch.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}