Christmas, the Apocalypse
Christmas Day 2023
Isaiah 52:7-10 / Hebrews 1:1-4 / John 1:1-14
Today is Christmas: the day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus some 2,000 years ago.
The day that Christ was born as a squalling, squirming baby boy to a poor, young Galilean woman named Mary; the day that God came among us, entering into the world in a new and unexpected way — the day of revelation.
During Advent and at Christmas, it has long been the Church’s practice to anticipate and celebrate not only Christ’s first coming as a baby to that manger in Bethlehem, but also Christ’s second coming at the end of all things to make all things new. In otherwords, Advent and Christmas are times when we not only look back to Christ’s birth 2000 years ago but also look forward to anticipate and celebrate the Apocalypse.
Now, I know that this word, ‘apocalypse’, conjures up all sorts of images of the end of the world: of end-times disasters, and raptures, and nuclear destruction, and all sorts of post-apocalyptic stories that have been cranked out in books and tv shows and movies these past several decades — but the word itself, ‘apocalypse’, is a greek word that simply means, ‘to reveal.’ That’s how our book of ‘Revelation’ at the end of the Bible gets its name. An ‘apocalypse’, in biblical terms, is not a time when the world blows up in some catastrophic event, but a time when the true nature of things is revealed. When Christ returns, John’s book of Revelation tells us, the world will be laid bare and all things will come to light.
The Church has traditionally tied Christ’s first and second comings together in this way because it knows that whenever God shows up, things change: lies and pretense and distractions all fall away, and, for those willing to receive it, the truth is laid bare, reality comes to light, often in ways that we do not expect — and the Christmas story is no exception to this rule. In other words, the Church’s tradition tells us that Christmas is the Apocalypse — or at least an apocalypse. So that’s our question this morning: if Christmas is an apocalypse, how does it ‘reveal’ something to us, what does it tell us about the way of things?
A poor baby boy is born in an animal’s stall in a cave in the Judean desert, his mother is a social outcast due to her seemingly illegitimate pregnancy, and the father who would raise him is a humble builder — hardly the most respectable of origin stories for a Messiah — but John looks at this scene and writes that the Word of God has come into the world, that light and life and God’s own glory have burst onto the scene. What does John see?
The Jews of Jesus’ time expected the Messiah to be a powerful figure, a politician, a warrior, one who would be born and raised in the houses of kings — that’s why the Magi go looking for him at Herod’s palace when they arrive from the east — but here he is: the Messiah wrapped in rags in an animal’s feeding trough. When God comes to his people,
God shows up far from the halls of the rich and powerful, nor is he tucked, safe and secure, in a suburban nursery. Christ is born into a place that no one expects him to be, looking nothing like he ‘should’ have, and yet in him all the fullness of God has come into the world.
You see, Christmas reveals the truth about God. It tells us that God is not some white-bearded judge floating up in the sky waiting with a frown to punish us for everything we do wrong, nor is God some distant creator who put the world together and has since left the building, leaving us to our own devices. Christmas reveals that God is Immanuel, God with us, the God who knows us from the inside, who enters into our world in all its mess and pain and beauty and meets us in the midst of it all, coming to us in order to offer us hope, healing, new life. Christ is no stranger to our griefs and our joys, and so Christ can be our companion in the darkest and brightest moments of our lives.
Christmas also reveals that God does not value the things that we often value. Wealth, power, security — all the things that the Jews expected their Messiah to bring them, and that our whole culture teaches us to prioritize — are not a part of the Christmas story. God scorns these things and those who prioritize them, appearing instead in an unexpected place, born to unexpected people, identifying himself with and making himself known to the least of these — revealing that if we are to become the people of God, we must have our value system turned upside-down. If we look for God, for the life/meaning/joy/purpose that God brings, then we must learn to look in places we do not expect. We must be willing to lay aside our own status, our own quests for power and security and comfort, and be willing to look for God instead in places of great discomfort, insecurity, and need — our own and those of our neighbors — we must be willing to follow God in the path of self-giving love, so that we become the sort of people who recognize God when he comes to us.
When Jesus is born, he is born to a people who have suffered exiles and wars, who have lived long under occupation and oppression — he is born, in short, into a world like ours, one that feels often full of pain and injustice. When Jesus comes, he is born not just in the middle of the night physically, but into the midst of centuries-long darkness of God’s people waiting and longing for freedom and restoration. He comes in a way that his people did not expect, but he comes, bringing light and hope to a people living in darkness and the shadow of death — whether or not his people understand or receive him.
This too is the revelation of Christmas, that however dark things may seem, whatever pain or despair threatens to overtake us, God comes — often in ways we could not have anticipated or would not have chosen — but he comes and enters into our darkness to bring new and unexpected life. Like Easter, Christmas reminds us that the darkness of the world is never at the heart of things, never the deepest reality. This is the ‘apocalypse’ that we celebrate today: no matter how bleak our world may seem at times, death and darkness do not have the last word, for Christ comes to us again and again — the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.
So, my friends, as we celebrate and enjoy the Christmas season, may Christ be born anew in us this day. May we have eyes to see the unexpected movements of God all around and the courage to follow where he leads, and may we, with Christ, become those who proclaim joy and hope in the face of despair, and light in the face of darkness.
Amen.