Christmas Day 1, Morning Prayer

9 a.m., Dec. 25, 2006

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church

Mr. Steve Polston

 

          The Church’s lessons for Christmas today tell me that God is all about a fresh start, a new beginning, a renewal, a re-creation, a do-over, a re-match, a Mulligan.

This collection of lessons is a great gift to the world. They are lessons given to you and to many, fresh hope for people, who like the little dolly in the toy-store window, are a little shop-worn.

          The Church’s Bible is a document that records God’s creation of God’s world, God’s creation of God’s people and God’s creation of the rules for governance.

Unfortunately, time and again we people of God’s pasture made strenuous effort to wrest control of creation and each other, and we strove to re-write the rules.

          Fortunately, the story of salvation history also is the story of God’s presumption that we are worthy of God’s love.

          Today we can start over, with sureness that God became one of us in a barn where animals lay and stood, offering their beings with trust in merciful creation. Today we can be thankful for the benefits of Christ’s resurrection after a brutal political murder a few miles from his birth. Today we can be thankful for the gift of the Church, which many saints have nurtured — not for us alone, but for those who do not know God’s love.

          Today we are sure of who we are and whose we are. Let us then see the others who need their fresh start and give it to them, by working to perfect our faith, by helping others to perfect their lives, by feeding those poor with whatever we have to the relief of their necessity.

          To us has been given a light that enlightens nations, so let us then reveal ourselves as shop-worn lanterns whom God redeems, and offer ourselves and our lights to the poor in spirit, with whatever courage and will that was endued in us in our baptisms.

          We are new creations. The Law has been re-written. God has made new God’s relationship to us. There is a new heaven and a new earth.

          Amen.

          Merry Christmas!