Homily for First Sunday after Christmas
31 December 2023
Isaiah 61:10-63:3
Galatians 3:23-25,4:4-7
John 1:1-18

“But when the fulness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, “Abba! Father!”

SO…you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

That’s it? That’s ALL?

That’s really ALL there is?

Yes, that’s just about ALL there is!

I could just sit down now without saying another word and we would have heard all we need to hear on this last day of 2023, (or any other day for that matter.) It’s really all we ever need to hear!

Everything else is elaboration of that simple statement!

All the statements of faith, the creeds, the promises we make, the vows we take, the sermons we listen to…all are summarized in these couple of sentences!

It’s why we’re here this morning!

It’s why we’ve decided that we will be part of this Jesus Movement as expressed in this entity we call “church”.

There’s something very interesting about the way this statement of our position is prefaced:

“But when the fullness of time had come…”

“But when the fulness of time had come…”

What’s that all about? It has nothing to do with calendars or clocks…or even “time” itself! It’s all about gestation! It’s all about “pregnancy”! It’s all about a “pregnancy” that started “in the beginning”!

It’s all about Creator God, the garden, the first man and woman….and that snake! It’s all about all those characters in Hebrew scripture, the prophets, the seers, the kings, the upright and the scallywags. It’s about Abraham and Sarah. It’s about Moses and Aaron, Egyptians and Canaanites, plagues, migrations, wilderness wonderings, wars, bondage in foreign lands and destruction of cities and all the rest!

And… It’s about what we did during Advent!

We were recognizing the signs that labor had begun and the birth was imminent!

It’s all in preparation for “the main event”!

All those eons of time, all those apparent calamities as well as triumphs, all of it, ALL OF IT not only the passage of physical time of days, months, and years…but of gestational time!

It’s that time when something new is growing in the womb of a mother. It’s the time from conception in mammals to the point of giving birth. It may be short or long.

That’s roughly: 266 days for a human baby. 19 days for a mouse. 645 days for a baby elephant!

It’s all those days of preparation…from the union of two cells to the completion of a body…

…a tiny flat plate of cells expands in size, its edges rolling into a tube which elongates and twists forming the beginning of internal organs and skin…heart, brain, liver, kidneys, nerves, veins and arteries, tendons and bones and muscles… The complete body!

…ready and able to live outside the mother’s body!

And then… “in the fulness of time”… that baby, a tiny replica of its parents going back for generations, is born.

That ages-long story of the Hebrew people and God’s interactions with them was, in many ways, always a “pregnancy”, always an “already, not yet” leading up to the pregnancy of a peasant girl named Mary and the birth of a human baby named Jesus in a cowshed in Bethlehem!

That Jesus, God’s Son, God’s ultimate “Word”.

As John proclaimed, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth…”

All of it … “when the fullness of time had come!”

Sometimes, for any number of reasons, a baby is taken in and welcomed into a family not its own. But the love, the nurture, the care are the same. They are adopted. And those children who are adopted have all the rights and privileges as all the natural children of their parents. They all get the same, “I love you” and all refer to the same “Mom” and “Dad!”

The good news of the gospel is that we are ALL God’s adopted children!

But that isn’t quite the end of the story.

While “gestation” may be over, the new baby isn’t ready to go out into the world able to function on its own!

There’s another “in the fulness of time”!

Those children, natural or adopted need constant care, nurture, and encouragement until they are ready to go out into the world on their own. Sometimes that takes a long time. Sometimes less. But always, ALWAYS, there’s the need to know that the parents are there, their love constant, no matter what, and their support and encouragement unending.

The church, when rightly viewed, is like a parent. Some even refer to the Church as “Mother”, inferring that loving support and care she fosters within a family of faith.

When there are conflicts in the church, as with a dysfunctional family, the children are likely to suffer the most. Unresolved conflicts, grumbling, perceived slights, real or imagined, wound us all.

We are all heirs of God and God’s children by adoption. The birth of Jesus gives the assurance that that is so.

As we enter the next year and perhaps years to come, we may need to reassert our membership in the family of God and to think seriously what that might mean for us as individuals and for us here in this part of God’s family at St. Martins. We may not agree on some issues. Can we deal with that as loving family?

There may also be powerful forces outside the church that will seek to use definitions of Christian faith and practice for actions that are profoundly at odds with what we believe and aspire to. They are simply unchristian!

     Are we ready to respond as mature children of God?

     Am I?

     I wonder!

     Amen!