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Saint Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church

An Episcopal Church in the Anglo-Catholic Tradition Where All Are Welcome

The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Eve
December 24, 2024


O God, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ: Grant that as we joyfully receive him for our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to be our Judge; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7
Titus 2:4-11
Luke 2:1-20

This past Sunday afternoon Bishop Glasspool was with us for a special Advent Evensong. The church was quite full and there was a good mix of folks, including many who came for the promise of some splendid Tudor and Stuart music – which promise was indeed fulfilled. All of us, churched an unchurched, were treated to a rousing sermon from our bishop that traced the tradition of the miraculous, divinely promised, birth of a special child from Samuel in Hebrew Scriptures right through to John the Baptist and Jesus. She made the point that with the birth of Jesus Christ, which we celebrate this evening, the expected paradigm was upended. Rather than God giving a child to an older woman, beyond childbearing years, God chose a young woman, a teen-aged girl to be the one help God do something new. Rather than give the gift of a special child, set apart for helping bring the people to their Lord and God, God chose to give us all the gift of his only son, who would himself do something wholly new and defeat the very powers of death.

In those moments, I just want to tell people that its ok, that I don’t believe in the alternately vengeful or unmoved God they don’t believe in. I want to tell them that our God is dynamic, loving, creative, seeking always the reconciliation of all creation – especially us people – with himself. Our God is the one who, as we read in Revelation 21, with a “loud voice from the throne” says,

“Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” And he who sat upon the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”

God’s promise to us is that he will wipe away what was and make something new. God will come to us and change everything, he will wipe away our tears, and strip death of its power. And God inaugurated this work, this creative work of being with us, of making all things new, of defeating death, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This is the classic, perhaps the definitive example of divine novelty. Indeed, the strangeness of this event can never be underestimated. It was inconceivable that the miraculous child born in a manger to a young woman would be the one who will lead us, who will exercise his authority over the forces of the cosmos through teaching and healing and acts of love and inclusion, and who will himself defy the powers of death and of the worst instincts of man, and return to us and lead us to the realisation of the Kingdom of God. But this is exactly who Jesus is and what de does.

This is the story we are called to embrace at Christmas, and share with those who can not imagine God ever doing anything new, can not imagine God inverting our ideas of power and exalting the humble and lowly. We are called this night and in these days to tell people that we don’t believe in the same “old” god they don’t believe in: tell them that God is so much more than they can imagine, that God makes new things, works through the power of peace and of love, through the power not of a king or emperor or general, but through that of a child. It is the child who will have “the government ... upon his shoulder,” it is the child whose ‘name will be called “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”’ It is the child who will sit “upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and for evermore.”

It is not God, but God’s purpose that is never unchanging. God’s purpose is love and the aim of that purpose is reconciliation. In this way, perhaps, the gentleman we spoke with has a point. However, God’s ways of realising his purpose are myriad, always surprising, always new, and infinitely creative. This Christmas night, let us marvel at that which God incarnated into our world in that stable in Bethlehem and that which God is incarnating in the form of love and relationship even here, even now.


Andrew Charles Blume ✠
New York City
Christmas Eve, 24 December 2024



© 2024 Andrew Charles Blume