FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

December 28, 2025

Saints Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

John 1:1-18

 

 

On Christmas Eve and again on Christmas Day, we heard the familiar account of our Lord’s Nativity, with the angels and shepherds, as told in the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Today, however, on the first Sunday after Christmas, the readings take us deeper into the mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation.

 

Down through the centuries, the Christian tradition has spoken of three births of Christ. The first birth takes place not in the stable of Bethlehem but in eternity, before the beginning of time. Today’s Gospel reading is taken from the first chapter of Saint John. The Fourth Gospel gives us no Nativity story. Echoing the first line of the Book of Genesis, John begins “in the beginning.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

 

Here, “the Word” is another name for the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Before God created the universe, the Son of God already existed. The Nicene Creed proclaims that the Son was “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” And so the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that before the beginning of time, indeed outside time, God the Father begets his coequal and coeternal Son, who shares fully and completely in his Father’s life and being.

 

It is this Son of God who is called the Word or Logos. This Greek term means something like thought, reason, purpose, plan, or self-expression. When the Father expresses himself, he does so by means of his Word. It is through His Word that God creates the world. So, when we speak of the first of the three births of Christ, we mean this begetting of the eternal Son of God before all ages.

 

The second birth of Christ is the familiar one of the Christmas story: the birth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. John’s Gospel sums it up in one sentence: “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.”

 

In other words, the eternal Son of the Father came down from heaven and took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He assumed our human nature and shared in our human existence. The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that Jesus Christ is one Person, fully divine and fully human, true God and true man. He is divine on account of his birth from the Father in eternity, and he is human on account of his birth from the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem.

 

The Incarnation is not so much a concept to be understood as a mystery to be worshipped and adored. The fourth-century church father Gregory of Nazianzus describes the mystery in a series of wonderful paradoxes: “He who has no mother in heaven is now born without father on earth. . . He who is without flesh becomes incarnate; the Word puts on a body; the Invisible is seen; he whom no hand can touch is handled; the Timeless has a beginning; the Son of God becomes Son of Man—Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

 

This second birth of Christ took place at a specific time and place two thousand years ago so that a third birth may take place today: namely, the birth of Christ in our hearts. In this respect, the Blessed Virgin Mary stands as a model for us all, because just as she literally conceived and brought the Christ child into the world, so also, we’re called to let Christ be conceived in our hearts that we may bring him into the world in our own day.

 

The birth of Christ in our hearts is but the beginning of the process by which we shall be made like him. He is the Son of God by nature; in him we are adopted as sons and daughters of God by grace. As Saint John says in today’s Gospel: “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God …” Saint Paul says something similar in today’s epistle reading: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son … so that we might receive adoption as children. And … God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’"

 

The early Church fathers expressed this idea using the wonderful image of a divine exchange. Christ came down from heaven that we might be raised up from the earth. He became what we are that we might become what he is. He shared in our human life that we might share in his divine life. As St. Gregory Nazianzus says in the sermon from which I quoted earlier: “He shares in the poverty of my flesh, that I may share in the riches of his Godhead.”

 

So, in our celebration of Christmas, we contemplate three births of Christ: the eternal generation of the Son of God before the beginning of time; his coming down from heaven to be born of the Virgin Mary in the stable of Bethlehem; and his birth in our hearts, which is in turn the beginning of our rebirth in his image and likeness.

 

There’s a sense in which the birth of Christ in Bethlehem remains incomplete until he is born in us. The Christmas Season affords us a wonderful opportunity to invite him in. The nineteenth-century bishop and preacher Phillips Brooks put it well in his great Christmas hymn, “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray; cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.”

CHRISTMAS DAY

December 25, 2025, 9 am

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Luke 2:8-20

 

“So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.”  (Luke 2:12)

 

By reliable tradition, the birth of Jesus took place in a grotto or cave. The New Testament itself says nothing about this cave. But from the first and second centuries, Christians in the vicinity of Bethlehem handed down the memory of the exact spot—a cave among trees at the end of a ridge, or so it was said.

 

Saint Justin Martyr wrote of this cave in the mid-second century, as did Origen of Alexandria in the third. Then, in the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine constructed a Christian church over the site. Rebuilt by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, the Basilica of the Nativity still stands today, restored and renovated many times over the centuries. It was my privilege to visit this holy place almost four years ago, in April 2022.

 

Inside, pilgrims line up, sometimes for hours, to descend the stone staircase leading to the Grotto of the Nativity, located directly underneath the high altar. Set in the stone floor, a fourteen-pointed silver star marks the spot with the Latin inscription: “Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.”

 

When Mary and Joseph arrived in Joseph’s ancestral home of Bethlehem to be counted in the census, one of the villagers—perhaps a relative of Joseph’s—would have given them lodgings. Family dwellings in that area were often built against hillsides and incorporated natural or man-made caves used to shelter animals at night. Mary and Joseph probably received accommodations in just such a cave. Hence, the presence of a manger, a stone feeding-trough for animals, ready for use as a makeshift cradle.

 

Early Christian writers such as Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine point out that the Lord’s birth in a cave, wrapped in swaddling bands and resting in a stone manger, foreshadows his burial in another cave, wrapped in a linen shroud, and lying on a stone slab.

 

This parallel suggests that the Lord’s death on the cross fulfills the purpose for which he was born into the world in the first place. Other writers note that in Hebrew, the name Bethlehem means “house of bread.” So, when we go to the Altar Rail for Holy Communion, we form our hands into a cradle to receive the One who is the true bread from heaven.

 

We don’t know the exact time of the year when Jesus was born. In the early fourth century, the Church settled on December 25th for reasons of its own. Still, Mary bundling him in cloth bands does suggest that it was cold. 

 

"This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger." The sight was sufficiently distinctive that the shepherds knew instantly that they’d found what the angel told them to look for. The sign’s purpose was to confirm the truth of the angel’s announcement: "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."

 

Without the prior announcement, the sight of a swaddled newborn lying in a manger wouldn’t have signified anything much out of the ordinary. Conversely, without the confirming sign, the angel’s proclamation of the Savior’s birth would have gone unverified. The shepherds’ unique calling was to put the two together, the announcement and the sign, and then to go and bear witness to what they’d heard and seen.

 

The shepherds fulfilled this mission admirably. They went as quickly as they could into Bethlehem to see this thing that the Lord had made known to them. When they found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the manger, they related what the angel had told them concerning this child. All who heard their testimony were amazed. The shepherds thus became the first human preachers of the Gospel, the good news that the Messiah, the Christ, had come into the world. Finally, they returned to their fields, glorifying and praising God. The true preaching of the Gospel always leads to worship and adoration.

 

As we celebrate Christmas, a temptation for us may be to join in the seasonal festivities, sing carols, exchange greetings, attend family gatherings, and give gifts—and then forget all about it until next year, and again until the year after that. Perhaps that’s what the shepherds did—maybe they carried on with the rest of their lives just as before, save for occasionally remembering the strange proceedings of a winter’s night and wondering whatever became of that charming young couple and their newborn in the manger …

 

But Mary’s reaction was unique. Luke tells us that she treasured all these words, pondering them in her heart. Here she holds up an example for us. If some aspect of this year’s Christmas celebration touches you, even if you don’t understand all at once what it means, don’t let it go. Hold on to it. Ponder it in your heart. Who knows how it may grow, and where it might lead? 

CHRISTMAS EVE, 2025

Lessons and Carols with the Holy Eucharist

Saints Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

 

First, welcome to Saints Matthew and Mark on this most holy night. On behalf of us all, I want to thank the eight parishioners who accepted the invitation to read. And I want to thank Charlie and the choir for their hours and hours of rehearsal practice. Excellent job, everyone!

 

The rubrics require me to preach a sermon when Lessons and Carols is used as the Liturgy of the Word preceding the Holy Eucharist. But I’m going to keep it brief—partly to keep the length of our proceedings under control, and partly because the structure and sequence of readings that we’ve just heard tells a story that largely speaks for itself. So, rather than commenting on any of the readings, I want to say something about the service itself.

 

The custom of holding the Nine Lessons and Carols service on Christmas Eve dates back to 1880, when Bishop Edward White Benson introduced it at Truro Cathedral in Cornwall, England. Since 1927, it has gained enormous popularity through annual broadcasts, first on the radio and then on TV, from King's College at Cambridge University.

 

One detail always strikes me as unbelievably poignant. Lessons and Carols, as we now know it, begins with the "Bidding Prayer," composed in 1918 by Eric Milner-White, then the newly appointed Dean of King's College. Milner-White had just returned from serving as a chaplain on the Western Front in the First World War, where he had experienced its horrors. In this context, he wrote:

 

Lastly, let us remember before God ... all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude which no one can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for evermore are one.

 

Those words must have spoken with incredible power in their original context. Many present in King's College Chapel that Christmas Eve of 1918 had lost fathers, sons, husbands, brothers, or close friends in the four years of carnage that had ended with the Armistice, little more than a month before, on November 11th.

 

Milner-White's point was very simple. In the midst of a darkened and sorrowing world, the coming of Christ brings light, comfort, and hope—even the hope of eternal fellowship with those whom we love. We continue to proclaim the joy of that hope this evening. The birth of the infant Jesus is God’s greatest gift to you and to me. So we rejoice in his arrival and recommit ourselves to his service.

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A

December 21, 2025

Saints Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

Isaiah 7:10-17

Psalm 24:1-7

Romans 1:1-7

Matthew 1:18-25

 

We’ve just sung one of my favorite hymns—and indeed a favorite hymn at more than one of the churches I’ve served—“God himself is with us.” It was written by the early eighteenth-century German preacher Gerhard Tersteegen, and set to the Swedish melody Tysk. 

 

The phrase “God himself is with us” evokes the Hebrew prophecy of Emmanuel, “God with us,” which we encounter in both our Old Testament and Gospel readings for this Fourth Sunday of Advent.

 

But we need to be careful. The claim that “God is with us” is easily subject to abuse. Down through the centuries, armies have set out on wars of conquest proclaiming that “God is on our side.” To this day, many sincere adherents of various religions deceive themselves into thinking that they’re doing God’s work when they persecute, enslave, torture, or put to death those who believe differently.

 

So, before we claim that “God is with us,” we need to examine carefully whether we’re using that slogan to justify self-serving actions or attitudes. And when we examine the biblical texts, we discover that the sign Emmanuel, “God with us,” was originally given for a very different purpose indeed.

 

Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah is set in the year 734 BC. The young king Ahaz has just inherited the throne of the southern kingdom of Judah in a time of grave crisis. The kings of both Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel have invaded Judah, seeking to overthrow Ahaz and install a puppet king. Ahaz is in desperate straits, as the invading forces vastly outnumber his own.

 

Going out to inspect Jerusalem’s water supply—which is critical to the city’s ability to withstand a siege—Ahaz encounters the prophet Isaiah, who admonishes him not to worry about the city’s defenses but to place his trust in God. And so, our reading begins with the prophet commanding the king: “Ask a sign of the Lord your God.” In other words, “If you don’t believe me, then God will confirm what I’m saying by any sign you choose.”

 

Ahaz protests that he will not put the Lord to the test. “Very well, then,” Isaiah replies, “if you won’t ask for a sign, the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” And, before the child grows old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong, “the land before whose two kings you are in dread will lie deserted.” In other words, the invasion will simply melt away.

 

The saying, as we have it in Isaiah, raises more questions than it answers. Contrary to what we might have been taught, the young woman Isaiah has in mind is most likely not the Virgin Mary, but rather someone alive at that time, known to both Ahaz and Isaiah. So, when this young woman conceives and bears a son, Ahaz will have God’s sign confirming Isaiah’s word that he has nothing to fear from the forces threatening his kingdom.

 

The prophecy does, in fact, come true. Within a few years, the two kings threatening Judah are themselves conquered and absorbed by the Assyrian Empire. And it’s just possible that the sign of Emmanuel foretells the birth of Ahaz’s son Hezekiah, assuring the continuation of the dynasty of King David’s descendants on the throne of Judah.

 

Here, then, we see the difference between self-serving misuse of the claim that “God is with us,” and its true biblical use. The prophecy is given to a king at his wits’ end, facing almost certain defeat and death at the hands of his enemies. More broadly, the sign of Emmanuel comes not to the powerful but to the weak and vulnerable: those who must place their trust in God because they dare not trust in their own strength.

 

But the prophecy doesn’t end there. More than seven centuries later, when the Evangelist Matthew sits down to write the story of our Lord’s birth, he discerns another and greater fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. After all, whatever prophecies might have signified in their own time and setting, God sometimes gives them multiple meanings that become clear only centuries later.

 

Just as Isaiah told Ahaz not to fear the forces invading his realm, so the angel tells Joseph not to fear to take Mary as his wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit: a son, to be named Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. In this way, Joseph receives the confidence to continue in what Saint Paul calls, in today’s Epistle, “the obedience of faith.” So, when Joseph arises from his sleep, he does as the angel has commanded him.

 

But there’s another twist to the prophecy’s history. The Jewish scholars of Alexandria in Egypt produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in the third century BC. In translating Isaiah’s prophecy, they used the Greek word for “virgin” in place of the Hebrew word “young woman.” And, providentially, Matthew was using this Greek version of the Old Testament when he inserted his editorial comment affirming Christ’s virginal conception and birth: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel’ (which means, God with us).” 

 

Here again, we see the prophecy’s fulfillment not in strength but in weakness. As a virgin with child, Mary is vulnerable to allegations of misconduct, and she’s totally dependent on Joseph for protection. In taking Mary as his wife, Joseph similarly risks scorn, rejection, and derision by his peers. And as for Jesus, what can be more helpless, dependent, and defenseless than a newborn baby? 

 

The sign of Emmanuel reassures us that at those moments in our lives when we feel most powerless and vulnerable—when we lose our job, when we receive news of a loved one’s death, when the doctor diagnoses a life-threatening illness—then, more than ever, God himself is with us. 

 

Out of his great love for us, the most high God empties himself of his power and glory in the Incarnation to share the frailty of our human condition so that we might know him as Emmanuel, God with us. At precisely those times when we feel overwhelmed by circumstances beyond our control, he gives us the grace and strength to continue in “the obedience of faith,” knowing that he’ll see us through whatever challenges we may have to face in this life.

 

This is the God for whose coming we’ve been waiting and preparing this Advent, and whose birth we shall celebrate in the coming week. If we’re ready and willing to receive him, he will “come abide within us,” so that we may know his indwelling presence in our lives.

  

THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR A

Sunday 14 December 2025

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington R. I.

 

Isaiah 35:1-10

Psalm 146:4-9

Matthew 11:2-11

 

This dialogue between our Lord and the messengers from John the Baptist in today’s Gospel is one of the most intriguing exchanges in Scripture. It also presents some sharp problems of interpretation.

 

Earlier in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, John has testified to Jesus as the one coming after him, whose sandals he’s unworthy to carry, and who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. When Jesus comes to the River Jordan to be baptized, John tries to prevent him, protesting, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

 

But now, after King Herod has cast him into prison, John appears to be having second thoughts. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” The “one who is to come” unmistakably refers to the Messiah or Christ, the Anointed One of God.

 

Down through the centuries, interpreters have puzzled over John’s apparent doubts and questionings at this point. At one extreme, some early Church Fathers suggest that John has no doubts that Jesus is the one who is to come, and simply asks the question to give him an opportunity to answer in the affirmative. 

 

At the opposite extreme, some modern commentators suggest that Matthew draws on different oral-tradition sources about John the Baptist. These sources don’t always agree with one another. So, the source of John’s question, “Are you the one who is to come?” is unaware of and inconsistent with the separate source of the story of John’s earlier witness to Jesus at the River Jordan.

 

What we need, I think, is an interpretation that both takes John’s question seriously and respects the coherence of Matthew’s narrative. The simplest explanation that meets both criteria is that John’s imprisonment has caused a crisis of faith for both John and his disciples. If God really sent John as the Messiah’s forerunner, then why has God allowed him to be imprisoned? John probably knows that in the absence of some sort of dramatic divine intervention, he’s not going to get out of Herod’s prison alive. 

 

So, the question– “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” – can be paraphrased, “Are you going to come and free me from this prison or not?” For in John’s mind, if Jesus really is the Messiah, then his role is precisely to drive out the Romans, overthrow their client-king Herod, and liberate all in captivity. In the words of Psalm 146, “The Lord sets the prisoners free ….”

 

Some New Testament scholars speculate that John’s ideas derive from popular expectations of the Messiah as a political and military leader who will throw off the yoke of foreign oppression and rule in justice and peace like a new King David. We get a good picture of the sort of Messiah that John is expecting from his own words earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, where he describes the one coming after him who “will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” For John, the Messiah will execute divine judgment on a sinful world, vindicating the righteous and punishing the wicked.

 

Our Lord refuses to answer the question on John’s terms and instead reframes the background of expectations against which his ministry is to be understood. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

 

Such activities don’t meet the expectations of a political revolutionary and military conqueror. But they do fit another strand of messianic prophecy found in the Hebrew Scriptures. We have an example in today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” 

 

So, in effect, Jesus is saying, “If I don’t look to you like the one who is to come, that’s because you’re looking for the wrong things.” God’s kingdom is already breaking into history by way of the Lord’s ministry of teaching, forgiving, healing, and raising the dead in the towns and villages of Galilee. But blessed are those who do recognize its arrival and who take no offense at the one bringing it all about.

 

Having thus answered John’s messengers, Jesus turns to the crowds standing by. For them, John’s imprisonment by Herod has most likely raised misgivings about John’s ministry. How can someone truly sent by God have ended up in prison like that?  But against all such questions and doubts, Jesus affirms that John is not just a prophet but more than a prophet, the promised messenger sent to prepare the way of the Lord.

 

Then Jesus concludes with the enigmatic saying: “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” As the forerunner, John is the last and greatest of God’s prophets. He stands at the threshold of God’s kingdom but is not part of it himself. Now that Jesus has arrived on the scene, John’s work is complete. Jesus is the bearer of that towards which John could only point. Neither John’s imprisonment and imminent beheading, nor indeed our Lord’s eventual arrest, trial, and crucifixion, can impede the kingdom’s progress. On the contrary, both seeming defeats play an indispensable role in advancing God’s plan of salvation for all humanity and, indeed, for all creation.

 

The dialogue between Jesus and the messengers from John the Baptist offers us profound reassurance in our times of frustrated expectations. In moments of disappointment and loss, we’re inevitably tempted to ask where God is and why he lets such bad things happen. But our Lord’s words, “Go and tell John what you see and what you hear,” challenge us to set aside our preconceptions of what God ought to be doing. Instead, we need to look, listen, and pay attention to what God is actually doing. The challenge for us this Advent season is to discern the ways in which God is already present, active, and doing wonderful things in our midst—often in ways that we least expect. If we can learn to do that, then the joy of the Lord’s coming will be so much greater in the end.