Bartolomeo, fra, 1472-1517. Adoration of the Child, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=47872 [retrieved January 1, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fra_Bartolomeo_001.jpg.

RCL Christmas Proper 2
Isaiah 62:6-12, Psalm 97, Titus 3:4-7, Saint Luke 2:1-20

There’s a jewelry store on Fifth Avenue famous for its little blue boxes. See one with your name on it under the tree and your heart may well leap for joy. Those blue boxes are deceptively simple. They are recognizable because of their simplicity, and their recognizable exterior reveals almost nothing about the beauty or complexity of their contents. But you know that their contents are good and have estimable value. The little box has earned your trust.

The gift that God has for you compares very favorably with one of those little blue boxes. You recognize the gift’s exterior in the person of a baby born two thousand years ago. And you know from all the good works, the healings, and the teachings that baby gave us in his maturity that whatever he has for you will be good and will have estimable value. But what, exactly, will that gift be and what will it mean for you? For his birth means that he has a gift to give you, a little blue box, if you will, and what exactly will be inside that wrapping?

I am here on a winter’s night to tell you that the answer to those questions cannot be fully discovered in your lifetime. But the good works, the healings, and the teachings are more than enough to earn your trust, to inspire some eagerness in you as you untie the white bow on that little blue box that is God’s special and individual gift to you.

That gift was declared by the angel, when he spoke to the shepherds, and you heard it in the Gospel tonight: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” That Savior is for all the people. No one is left out; no one is excluded. And your gift is unique to you; it is individualized to you and to you alone. Your little blue box has been wrapped just for you. You will spend your earthly life fathoming it, plumbing it, and understanding it to the best of your ability.

And as you make progress grasping the gift of a Savior, a Savior born to save not just you, but born to save all the people, you will begin to know partially your value in God’s sight. You will glimpse the magnificence of his gift; how wonderful it is that our Savior was born to save all the people and his redeeming love would allow him to do it all for just one of the people. You will begin to understand that he would do it all just for you. For each one of us, each one of you, is that important to God.

The question will dawn on us: how can we respond to God for such a magnificent gift? The answer you must work out for yourself. But I can tell you this. If we attempt to follow God’s example, if we try to do what God has done for us, the answer will look like this.

The people who love us and need us, need us to be what they need. It’s convoluted, I know. I will try to say it again. As God became our Savior, God became the Savior we need. God in saving us gives us the power to be his, to be the person that people who love us need.

We say at Christmas what I shall say later in this service, in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer, that God gives us power to be his children.[1] To be a child of God is to represent God to our neighbor. Having received the Lord Jesus, we give the Lord Jesus to our neighbor. And, in so far as we give the Lord Jesus to our neighbor, we assure our neighbor that Christ has been born in the people they love and may be born in them themselves. We shall have brought salvation to them.

I will put it to you that receiving Christ and giving Christ may exactly be what Saint Paul meant in the Epistle to Saint Titus, “This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that,…we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”[2] Having been saved, we bring salvation to others in the power of the Holy Spirit.

[1] The Preface of the Incarnation, The BCP, page 378.

[2] Titus 3:6-7.