“Something New”
This sermon was originally preached at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church on December 24, 2024.
“Christ is born! Let us glorify him. Christ has come down from heaven– let us go to meet him. Christ is at last on the earth– let us be exalted.”1
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The birth of a child is a time of great excitement and joy, but of course also of anxiety and pain. Childbirth is one of those experiences where the line between life and death is indeed very thin. But when the baby has been born, after it’s been cleaned and placed in the mother’s arms, and eyes meet eyes for the first time… when the family sends out texts letting everyone know “mom and baby are doing well”— when things finally start to quiet down… all can begin to appreciate the miracle that a child has been born.
Something new has come into the world— someone new. This person wasn’t here before and now they are, and the world is different because of this. The birth of any child adds something to the world, something that wasn’t there before, and so the world is a different place. And what a child adds to the world is not just one more number to the global population, not just “one more mouth to feed,” but a whole world of possibilities.
The child that is born will, hopefully, grow up and bring all sorts of things to bear on the world. That child will create, will shape the world around them. Conversations will take place that never would have if this child hadn’t been born. Relationships will come into being. There will be events that will occur that would not have happened if this child hadn’t been born.
And that is the miracle of life, that every day we are creating the world around us through what we say and do. Of course, the older we get, the possibilities of what we can do with our lives become ever smaller. We come to see our limitations– that we can’t do all things and be all things in the short time we have on this earth. But a newborn baby has his whole life ahead of him. He is all possibility. So the birth of a child is a time of great hope, a time when we look forward to what he might become and bring into the world.
And if this is true for every child who is born, how much more is it true of the birth of Christ! To say that Christ is born is to say that the world has changed, forever, and it cannot go back. Before the birth of Christ, God was not incarnate in the world as a human being, and after the birth of Christ, He is. The Word of God has taken our human nature from the most exemplary member of our race, the Virgin Mother, and He has been born into the world like each of us is born into the world. God now has a human face, a human body. He can be present in the world the way we are. He can interact with others face to face. God has become one of us and dwells among us.
This is truly miraculous! It is indeed one of the greatest events in the history of humankind! And it may be easy to pass over the birth of Christ without truly appreciating its wonder. Familiarity with the Christmas story might dull our spiritual senses so that we do not feel the awe we should.
Because this event was awesome, in the true sense of that word, for everyone involved in the Nativity of Our Lord. Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the angels… all are in amazement that the divine Word of God has been conceived in the womb of a Virgin and has now been born on earth. The Angels sing their hymn of praise, the shepherds adore on bended knee, the ox and donkey bow their heads in reverence, and the Blessed Mother, face to face with her son and her God, treasures all these things in their heart.
What hope they must have felt. Here is a child, a newborn baby, a world of possibilities. And not only the normal possibilities that could be true of any newborn babe. Because this Holy Child is God incarnate. What possibilities! What sort of a life could this child lead? What miracles could he bring into the world? If God became a human and lived one life in our world, what sort of things would he do? Of course, the answer to that question is the Life of Christ, in all its fathomless beauty.
What the birth of Christ adds to the world is the proof that God has not abandoned us. That despite our sin, despite all our selfishness and folly, God still wants to be with us and share His life with us.
And the birth of Christ is proof of this, it’s not just words. We can say, “Well, God is good, God loves us, God wants to be with us,” but the Nativity is not just words, it’s the proof. There is the Christ Child, there is the proof of God’s desire to be with us, in flesh and blood and truth. Not just words spoken into the air, but the Word made flesh.
Christmas is the Good News that God is good, that He loves us, that He desires to be with us— and in Jesus, He is with us. He begins to be with us by being born for us. The whole life of this Holy Child unfolds in front of him— a life full of possibilities. And we, beloved, have the privilege of walking with Christ through the Events of his life, week by week in the Church.
And let me be so bold to say: If this is one of the two times a year you come to church—if you come to church on Christmas and on Easter— please join us every Sunday and holy day you can. The Life of Christ is the greatest thing that ever happened, and we get to walk through it, week by week. We start with his birth, then the events of his holy childhood, his baptism, his temptation and ministry, all the way through to his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
Christmas is not the end of the Christ story; it’s just the beginning! We say, Christ is born, and it’s not like he was born and then nothing happened. A lot of things happened, and they’re all wonderful. So join us, and we will experience the beauty and truth of Christ together, week by week, in Scripture and sacrament and song.
This is the Joy of Christmas— it is a night filled with possibilities, with hope for the future, with the delight of knowing that God has more in store for us than we could ever imagine. Something new has come into the world— “newer than everything new, the only new thing under the sun,”2 God-made-man. This Holy Child– the son of the Virgin Mary, adored by shepherds and hymned by angels– this Child has been born, and the world will never be the same. He has his whole life ahead of him, and with that life he will bring redemption to humankind and lead us all back to the God who made us.
And we who receive Christ become the children of God and know the endless possibilities of life with God. Christ is born, and we will never be the same, for we have known the mystery of the Light that shines in the darkness, that no darkness can overcome— the mystery of the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth. Amen.
Endnotes
1 Sermon on the Nativity of Christ, St. Gregory of Nazianzus.
2 St. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.
The Pulpit and the Altar 