ALLELUIA! CHRIST IS HERE
John 1:19-28

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
December 25, 2005 / Christmas Day

Merry Christmas!

May this be a blessed day for you and yours - and, ah yes, for the whole of creation.

Last night I wore a purple stole, and we talked about expectancy. We had a wreath of waiting here.

But in what has to be the quickest gear change for clergy in the liturgical year - in less than twelve hours - we have gone from preparation to proclamation, from expectancy to fulfillment, from hope to joy. (Not to mention the color change!) Our message last night was what we were waiting for.

Our message today is Alleluia! Christ is here.

Now I must admit that there is a certain kind of schizophrenia that is forced upon preachers by the liturgical Church year. We live in contradiction. When it is Advent we talk about Christ is not here. We talk about waiting. We talk about what it will be like when Christ comes. But we always do it with a kind of hidden truth, sort of behind a mask. Because we also know that Christ has come. When we talk about waiting for Christ, we know he is actually here.

So now we flip the tapestry over and look at it from the other side. The colors are exactly reversed. Now we announce Alleluia! Christ is here. But somehow we know not yet, not fully, there is still something to come.
And so in each season we make everything there is to make about one half of the story. But we always know the other half exists. It's like our own spiritual lives. We are the group who really want to be Christian. We're committed enough to even come to Church on Christmas day. God is important in our lives. We celebrate the God that is present in us. But we also wait for more. We know our failings. We know our recurrent doubt. We measure and space out our pieces of despair. We are waiting for God, looking for God, seeking God. But we affirm God, we know God, God is present. Both are true.

The four apostles get at this in different ways. Luke and Matthew give us Mary and Joseph stories. We see Jesus as a baby, God as child. We learn the mystery. We hold the contradiction.

But John and Mark get at this a different way. They drop the childhood narratives and begin the Jesus story with John the Baptist. Jesus is already an adult. They begin with the Christmas assumption, Jesus is already here. But then John explains this with what has to be one of my favorite verses in all of scripture, "Among you stands one whom you do not know."

This introduces us to this crazy Christmas contradiction. "Alleluia! Christ is here." "Among you stand one whom you do not know."

The affirmation is that God has done God's thing. Christmas has really happened. But you really haven't figured it out yet. Christ has come. It's just that I haven't figured out what Christ looks like.

Now, if you stop to think about this, it is a significant Biblical theme.

Mary Magdalene sees Jesus on Easter Sunday morning. You would think that she knows what he looks like. But lo and behold, the Easter text says that she thought he was the gardener! So much for knowing God in your life! There is one among you whom you do not know.

Same thing happens later that Easter day with two disciples walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus. The story tells how Jesus opened their hearts to understand the scriptures about the resurrection from the dead. Then they go in to eat, and he breaks bread, and - as we say so often at communion - their eyes were opened and they knew who he was. The presence of Jesus was made plain in the breaking of the bread. But before he broke the bread - these are two of the disciples - they should know what is going on - they didn't recognize him. There is one among you whom you do not know.

And this whole thing lends Biblical clarity to Matthew 25, Jesus own story about when the Son of Man will come in glory. In that story there are people being rewarded who are told "I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me." And even those being rewarded say "when, who, we don't remember you, we don't recognize you." And the answer is "in as much as you did it to the least of these, my sisters and brothers, you did it to me." There is one among you whom you do not know.

Now folks, I came here this morning to tell you that Christ is born. I believe it with my whole heart. Alleluia! Absolutely! Christ is here. But if there is one little smidgen of doubt in you, one little suspicion of I am not sure; if there is some part of you that says I want to see Jesus but I haven't; if there is one part of you that says I have met a gardener, and a teacher along the way, and some people hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and prisoners, but not Jesus. I haven't seen this new born Jesus. Before you give up, let me say to you, "there is one among you whom you do not know."

It's probably been over twenty years since I first went to the Kirkridge retreat center in the Poconos. They have a copy of a well known print in their dining room. A silhouetted line of men stand in what appears to be a soup line. Some are bedraggled, bent over. One might be drunk. You see the stubble of uncut beards on their faces. One silhouette has long hair and a beard, a blanket draped around his shoulders, or is he wearing a robe? Then the light shines just a little differently behind his head. Is it a halo? Behind the head of the man in the soup kitchen line?

There is one among you whom you do not know.

Dorothy Day has been a heroine to many of us. I hope you know of her life serving the poor in New York City. Perchance you have seen a copy of the paper she started, the Catholic Worker. She says,

"…now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that [Jesus] speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ." ¹

So, I really think Christ is here. Christ has come. Look around. Or are you unsure? There is one among you whom you do not know.

Merry Christmas.

Amen.

1 - Day, Dorothy, "Room for Christ," Watch for the Light, (Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2001), unnumbered pages.