The Last Time Boxing Day Was Also the First Sunday After Christmas—a Short Sermon with reference to Real Life, Is 63:7-9; Heb 2:10-18 and Mt 2:13-23

By on December 26, 2021.

Source: GENEralities
The Last Time Boxing Day Was Also the First Sunday After Christmas—a Short Sermon with reference to Real Life, Is 63:7-9; Heb 2:10-18 and Mt 2:13-23
 The last time the First Sunday after Christmas happened on Boxing Day was 2010. Possibly the lowest of all low Sundays. As I listened to this morning’s sermon, I wondered what I’d said on that day eleven years ago. So I looked it up and here it is:After the midnight service and all, I got to bed around 130 Christmas morning. At 330am the dog we are dogsitting decided she wanted to go out and bark at passing reindeer or anything else she imagined was there. I lay awake trying to think warm thoughts and was just about ready to go back to sleep when at 430am granddaughter Samantha woke, calling her sister Emily. I got in there as quickly as I could to try and head off the house being awakened that early. Samantha told me she had arranged to wake Emily if she woke up first. I told her it was still the middle of night.I lied to my granddaughter on Christmas morning!She seemed happy with that and seemed to settle down again. I got back to sleep for another couple of ours. We had a lovely day of gifts, lazing about, good food, family (including Skyping Okotoks and NZ) and naps. And shot through it all was aching fatigue (strenuously denied, of course, by the children) and the emotional hyper-rawness that comes with it plus some grief and anxiety over some family health issues. I’m sure all of you have experienced the same kind of thing. This is the context in which the first Christmas happened only, judging from this morning’s readings, more so. Listen to some of the words and things we heard about in the readings: affliction, suffering, death, the devil, flee, destroy, a furious king, dead babies, weeping, loud lamentation and fear. On top of that there was God’s wrath. From our Hebrews reading:Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Heb 2.17)…“to propitiate,” relates to putting away the divine wrath. When people sin, they arouse the wrath of God (Rom 1:18); they become enemies of God (Rom 5:10). One aspect of salvation deals with this wrath, and it is to this the author is directing attention at this point. Christ saves us in a way that takes account of the divine wrath against every evil thing. ( Gaebelein, F. E., Morris, L., Burdick, D. W., Blum, E. A., Barker, G. W., & Johnson, A. F. (1981). The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 12: Hebrews Through Revelation (30). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.)All this is the context in which every celebration of Christmas has happened since, including yesterday. And, try as we might, we can’t make it otherwise. There’s not enough tinsel or Christmas lights or candle-light services in the whole world to do it. We simply cannot manage life well enough. We need help. Which is the point of Christmas. In Jesus, God the Father, comes to his troubled people, hopelessly tangled in their own sin, so vulnerable to effects of the sins of others, to suffering and death. And he did it supernaturally. The angel of his presence saved them;  in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isa 63.9)The only way to get out this life alive is accept the redemption the Father offered supernaturally in Jesus. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist. (Heb 2.10)The only way to get out this life alive is to acknowledge with faith who made us and for whom we therefore exist. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. (Heb 2.14-15)The only way to be set free from that lifelong slavery get out this life alive is to ask for and receive that deliverance. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” (Mt 2.19-20)It might not be the only way to get out this life alive, but it helps to believe in an enchanted creation filled with wonders like dreams sent by God, angels, a virgin birth and resurrection from the dead. I wish you all a Merry, Bright and enchanted Christmastide. 

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