Second Sunday After Christmas Day
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VIII, Cycle A
Object:
Theme For The Day
The meaning of Christmas? Light in our darkness!
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 31:7-14
The Exiles' Joyous Return
This is a joyous song of homecoming. Those who are returning are the Jewish exiles, journeying from Babylon to Jerusalem. They are the faithful remnant (v. 7), those whose faith and life the Lord has preserved through long years of suffering and deprivation. God is the principal actor, here (v. 8). The people do not save themselves; the Lord, in the fullness of time, has decreed it is time for them to return home. The company of fellow-travelers is unique. Among them are the most vulnerable of society, those who would be least likely to undertake an arduous journey: the blind, the disabled, expectant mothers -- even mothers who are in labor. The exiles come weeping (v. 9) -- although it is unclear whether the tears flow from the pain they have known, or from their joy in being on the road at last. Very likely, it is both. The word "consolations" in this verse is based on the Greek of the Septuagint; the original Hebrew is "supplications" -- emphasizing the prayers of the people, as they travel. The people's return is not only a benefit for them, but is also a witness, to all the nations of the world, of the Lord's faithfulness (v. 10). "The Lord has ransomed Jacob" (v. 11) -- but with what payment?
Christians may be quick to answer that the ransom price is the death of Jesus, but this poem had other meanings for the people of its own day. Perhaps the price of the people's freedom was Cyrus of Persia's ascendancy over the Babylonians. When they reach the land of their forbears, God's promise is plenty forevermore (verses 12-14).
Mourning shall be transformed into joy. The image of water occurs twice in this passage: first, the brooks of water along which the Lord will lead the people, so they need not even fill their waterskins (v. 9); and, second, the "watered garden" that shall be their life, after their return (v. 12). Given the fact that the country through which they travel home is a desert, and that they are returning to a plundered and ruined land, this is an extraordinary promise.
New Testament Lesson
Ephesians 1:3-14
God's Purpose In Jesus Christ
The Pauline epistles contain some sentences of great complexity and beauty, and this passage is one of them. Although various translators decide to punctuate these verses in different ways, it is possible, based on the Greek, to treat this entire passage as a single sentence. It begins and ends by glorifying God. In between is some magnificent theology. This passage touches on election (v. 4), adoption and grace (v. 5), redemption and forgiveness (v. 7), the mysteries of the divine will (v. 9), the divine plan (v. 10), hope (v. 12), and the Holy Spirit (v. 13). Preachers can pick and choose one or two from amongst these many themes and run with them. Through all these verses there runs the theme of time -- not just chronos, or clock-time, but xairos, "the fullness of time" (v. 10). The God who is glorified in these verses exercises sovereignty not only over the created order and all who dwell in it, but even over time itself. A phrase that occurs over and over in this passage is "in Christ," or "through Christ." To the apostle, Jesus Christ is all in all: the means by which God's overarching plan is carried out.
The Gospel
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
The Word Become Flesh
This passage is either the entire prologue of John, or the latter portion of it -- depending on whether the optional verses 1-9 are used. It is easy to see why the lectionary editors have made this selection for the season of Christmas: this passage speaks of the eternal Word who "became flesh and lived among us" (v. 14). For those who have recently heard last week's gospel lesson -- Matthew's account of the Massacre of the Innocents -- John's frank acknowledgment that "the world did not know him" and "did not accept him" (verses 10-11) has chilling overtones. There is an awful price to be paid when the world turns from the one who is its salvation. In light of the world's tendency to turn away from God, the promise in verse 12 is extraordinary: Jesus the Word offers, to those who believe in him, "power to become children of God." In the ancient world, family ties were everything. The family into which a person was born -- or, the family into which you were adopted -- wholly determined his or her place in society. Social mobility, as we know it today, was virtually unknown. This power to become children of God effectively overturns the facts of a one's own birth (v. 13). We have seen the Word's glory -- literally, his brightness or radiance (doxa -- verse 14). The concept of Christ's bounteous fullness (v. 16) echoes the "fullness of time" concept in today's epistle lesson (Ephesians 1:10). Christ is all-sufficient, and is himself the completion of God's unfolding plan that began with Moses (v. 17). The privileged position of Christ is mentioned twice in this passage: "glory as of a father's only son" (v. 14) and "close to the Father's bosom" (v. 18). Yet, this Christ who dwells so close to God is supremely generous, using his insider access to benefit others.
Preaching Possibilities
A sermon on this text could begin with the preacher asking the people where, in the Bible, they would look to find the Christmas story. If they're not sure, they could always do this by a process of elimination.
Of the four gospels, one of them -- the gospel of Mark -- has no Christmas story at all. Mark begins his gospel with Jesus as an adult. So, Mark is out.
That leaves three. Two of those three -- Matthew and Luke -- provide rich fodder for the Christmas story we know and love. Matthew tells of Joseph's dream, and of the coming of the wise men; Luke tells of the angel's visitation to Mary, and the angelic choir singing to the shepherds.
That leaves John. It is in John's gospel that we find the third -- and much lesser-known -- Christmas story. It's a Christmas story altogether unlike the others.
It would be a challenging task to write a children's Christmas pageant based on John's Christmas story. John tells of no parents traveling to Bethlehem -- no shepherds or angels, no wise men following a star. There's not even a babe lying in a manger:
"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. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
A Christmas pageant based on the gospel of John could be a real boon to budget-conscious churches. You wouldn't need even bathrobes or cardboard crowns; no manger of old two-by-fours, stuffed with straw; no foil-covered shoeboxes, either, representing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You wouldn't even need actors.
All you would need is a single candle.
The church would be bare and dark; the chancel stripped of pulpit, chairs, flowers, communion table -- everything that's usually there. The only thing visible would be a small, insignificant table, on which would sit a single, unlit candle.
The worshipers would file in, and sit for a very long time, silent as a Quaker meeting. They would sit long enough to begin to feel uneasy at the silence -- and maybe even a little scared of the dark (childhood fears returning). At long last, someone would march solemnly in, and without a word, light that single candle.
The darkness would be pierced, pushed back by the one thing that has power, ultimately, to push the darkness back: the light. And that would be that.
No one, of course, would seriously try to put on a Christmas pageant based on John's gospel. Yet, having imagined it, perhaps we can begin to see how different John's Christmas story is. There's no color, music, or pageantry -- just one blazing, incontrovertible truth, a single statement so profound that maybe the only way to appreciate it is to sit in utter darkness and watch the candle-lit shadows play across the ceiling: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
"The world," John also says, "did not know him." What the world knows, at Christmas-time, is "holiday cheer" -- a mindless, several-weeks-long party. It is, by and large, a party to which the poor are not invited: for who can afford parties when you're worried about finding enough to eat or a roof over your head?
It is not the sort of party to which the sick and disabled are invited, either: unable as they are to venture out and see the sparkling lights on the houses or rub elbows with the shoppers in the malls.
It is not a party to which those who are grieving feel especially welcome: for many of them find themselves regarding Christmas with a certain wistful sadness, much as Tiny Tim, in the old movie version of A Christmas Carol, gazes through the toy-store window at treasures he may never hold.
"We have seen his glory." The Greek word John uses, here, for glory is doxa. It's the root of our word, "doxology." When we sing the doxology in our weekly worship service, we sing, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow..." To worship -- to truly worship -- is to give God glory. Or, more properly, to worship is to reflect back something of God's glory (for such illumination did not originate with us).
The Greek word, doxa, does mean "glory," but it also has a more basic, literal meaning. It means light or radiance. It's no accident that the secular celebrations of Christmas often have light at their center. Why else would homeowners totter atop rickety stepladders, in the dead of winter, to hang strings of lights from their eaves? The world seems, in its holiday revelry, to be desperately grasping at anything that resembles glory, but somehow never catches it. How else to explain the "holiday blues" that afflict so many around New Year's? Having failed to glimpse true light inside the gaudiest package under the tree, or suspended in the last drop out of the wine-bottle, the secular world simply hunkers down for many more weeks of winter.
Here's where John's vision of life in the dead of winter, of a glowing candle piercing the darkness, is so powerful. You don't need to have had a perfect Christmas, you don't need to have received the gift you always wanted, and you don't even need to have celebrated Christmas at all. All you need is to have encountered the one who is at the heart of the celebration and to have known, as you did so, that -- as the carol says -- "light and life to all he brings, ris'n with healing in his wings."
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we are in darkness: we confess it.
Despite all our frenzied striking of flint against steel,
we have failed to kindle the flame of devotion.
The tinder is damp; the logs soaked through.
Our situation seems hopeless:
but no, not hopeless!
For we have seen his glory. We have seen it!
The Christ Child has shone light into our darkness:
and we can never be the same again.
In the days remaining of this Christmas season,
may we learn to bear his light to others,
for the sake of his dear name. Amen.
To Illustrate
Many years ago, the British Bible scholar J.B. Phillips wrote a little piece about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, encouraging us not to forget it at Christmas. His words are classic, and they bear repeating:
"I believe that at least once a year we should look steadily at the historic fact, and not at any pretty picture. At the time of this astonishing event only a handful of people knew what had happened. And as far as we know, no one spoke openly about it for thirty years. Even when the baby was grown to be a man, only a few recognized him for who he really was. Two or three years of teaching and preaching and healing people, and his work was finished. He was betrayed and judicially murdered, deserted at the end by all his friends. By normal human standards this is a tragic little tale of failure, the rather squalid story of a promising young man from a humble home, put to death by the envy and malice of the professional men of religion. All this happened in an obscure, occupied province of the vast Roman Empire.
"It is 1,500 years ago that this apparently invincible empire utterly collapsed, and all that is left of it is ruins. Yet the little baby, born in such pitiful humility and cut down as a young man in his prime, commands the allegiance of millions of people all over the world. Although they have never seen him, he has become friend and companion to innumerable people. This undeniable fact is, by any measure, the most astonishing phenomenon in human history. It is a solid rock of evidence that no agnostic can ever explain away."
-- excerpted from "The Christian Year," Good News: Thoughts on God and Man (Macmillan, 1963)
***
The German theologian, Helmut Thielicke, on a visit to the United States not long after World War II was taken by his hosts to visit the brand-new United Nations building in New York. Included in the tour was a visit to the UN's interfaith chapel -- a plain, nearly empty room of austere beauty. The only decorations in the chapel were a set of spotlights that shone on the back wall.
Thielicke's faith had been forged in the crucible of war. He knew there are some times, difficult times, when you simply need to know what you believe in and be clear about that. He was appalled at the vague, unspecific religiosity of that chapel. Later, he wrote of what he had seen:
"The spotlights were ignorant of what they were illuminating, and the responsible [people] who were invited to come to this room were not shown to whom they should direct their thoughts. It was a temple of utterly weird desolation, an empty, ruined field of faith long since fled… only here, where the ultimate was at stake, only here was emptiness and desolation. Would it not have been more honest to strike this whole pseudo temple out of the budget and use the space for a cloakroom or a bar?"
-- as told by Gordon MacDonald, "Speaking into Crisis," in Leadership Journal, Spring 2002
***
The word "Christmas," means "Christ-mass," and in fact it's a sort of nickname. The holiday's real, official name is the Feast of the Incarnation. Can you imagine how different our holiday would be, if we started calling it by its real name? "Incarnation" literally means "in the flesh." It's the Christian doctrine that declares Jesus to be not some divine being masquerading in human clothing, but rather the God who lives -- and eventually dies -- as one of us.
If you send some friends a card that says "Merry Christmas" -- even if it depicts angels or shepherds or wise men -- they're likely to understand, on a practical level, that what you're wishing them is a happy mid-winter festival. That's how far the meaning of the word "Christmas" has become devalued in our culture. Yet what if you sent them, instead, a card wishing them a joyous Feast of the Incarnation? (I'm not saying you should; just go with the flow here, for a minute.) If your friends knew the meaning of that word at all -- which is somewhat doubtful -- they would instantly understand you to be wishing them more than just free-floating good cheer. They would know you to be wishing them a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ -- the one who, as John's gospel bears witness, "became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."
***
I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
-- Thomas Merton, from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
The meaning of Christmas? Light in our darkness!
Old Testament Lesson
Jeremiah 31:7-14
The Exiles' Joyous Return
This is a joyous song of homecoming. Those who are returning are the Jewish exiles, journeying from Babylon to Jerusalem. They are the faithful remnant (v. 7), those whose faith and life the Lord has preserved through long years of suffering and deprivation. God is the principal actor, here (v. 8). The people do not save themselves; the Lord, in the fullness of time, has decreed it is time for them to return home. The company of fellow-travelers is unique. Among them are the most vulnerable of society, those who would be least likely to undertake an arduous journey: the blind, the disabled, expectant mothers -- even mothers who are in labor. The exiles come weeping (v. 9) -- although it is unclear whether the tears flow from the pain they have known, or from their joy in being on the road at last. Very likely, it is both. The word "consolations" in this verse is based on the Greek of the Septuagint; the original Hebrew is "supplications" -- emphasizing the prayers of the people, as they travel. The people's return is not only a benefit for them, but is also a witness, to all the nations of the world, of the Lord's faithfulness (v. 10). "The Lord has ransomed Jacob" (v. 11) -- but with what payment?
Christians may be quick to answer that the ransom price is the death of Jesus, but this poem had other meanings for the people of its own day. Perhaps the price of the people's freedom was Cyrus of Persia's ascendancy over the Babylonians. When they reach the land of their forbears, God's promise is plenty forevermore (verses 12-14).
Mourning shall be transformed into joy. The image of water occurs twice in this passage: first, the brooks of water along which the Lord will lead the people, so they need not even fill their waterskins (v. 9); and, second, the "watered garden" that shall be their life, after their return (v. 12). Given the fact that the country through which they travel home is a desert, and that they are returning to a plundered and ruined land, this is an extraordinary promise.
New Testament Lesson
Ephesians 1:3-14
God's Purpose In Jesus Christ
The Pauline epistles contain some sentences of great complexity and beauty, and this passage is one of them. Although various translators decide to punctuate these verses in different ways, it is possible, based on the Greek, to treat this entire passage as a single sentence. It begins and ends by glorifying God. In between is some magnificent theology. This passage touches on election (v. 4), adoption and grace (v. 5), redemption and forgiveness (v. 7), the mysteries of the divine will (v. 9), the divine plan (v. 10), hope (v. 12), and the Holy Spirit (v. 13). Preachers can pick and choose one or two from amongst these many themes and run with them. Through all these verses there runs the theme of time -- not just chronos, or clock-time, but xairos, "the fullness of time" (v. 10). The God who is glorified in these verses exercises sovereignty not only over the created order and all who dwell in it, but even over time itself. A phrase that occurs over and over in this passage is "in Christ," or "through Christ." To the apostle, Jesus Christ is all in all: the means by which God's overarching plan is carried out.
The Gospel
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
The Word Become Flesh
This passage is either the entire prologue of John, or the latter portion of it -- depending on whether the optional verses 1-9 are used. It is easy to see why the lectionary editors have made this selection for the season of Christmas: this passage speaks of the eternal Word who "became flesh and lived among us" (v. 14). For those who have recently heard last week's gospel lesson -- Matthew's account of the Massacre of the Innocents -- John's frank acknowledgment that "the world did not know him" and "did not accept him" (verses 10-11) has chilling overtones. There is an awful price to be paid when the world turns from the one who is its salvation. In light of the world's tendency to turn away from God, the promise in verse 12 is extraordinary: Jesus the Word offers, to those who believe in him, "power to become children of God." In the ancient world, family ties were everything. The family into which a person was born -- or, the family into which you were adopted -- wholly determined his or her place in society. Social mobility, as we know it today, was virtually unknown. This power to become children of God effectively overturns the facts of a one's own birth (v. 13). We have seen the Word's glory -- literally, his brightness or radiance (doxa -- verse 14). The concept of Christ's bounteous fullness (v. 16) echoes the "fullness of time" concept in today's epistle lesson (Ephesians 1:10). Christ is all-sufficient, and is himself the completion of God's unfolding plan that began with Moses (v. 17). The privileged position of Christ is mentioned twice in this passage: "glory as of a father's only son" (v. 14) and "close to the Father's bosom" (v. 18). Yet, this Christ who dwells so close to God is supremely generous, using his insider access to benefit others.
Preaching Possibilities
A sermon on this text could begin with the preacher asking the people where, in the Bible, they would look to find the Christmas story. If they're not sure, they could always do this by a process of elimination.
Of the four gospels, one of them -- the gospel of Mark -- has no Christmas story at all. Mark begins his gospel with Jesus as an adult. So, Mark is out.
That leaves three. Two of those three -- Matthew and Luke -- provide rich fodder for the Christmas story we know and love. Matthew tells of Joseph's dream, and of the coming of the wise men; Luke tells of the angel's visitation to Mary, and the angelic choir singing to the shepherds.
That leaves John. It is in John's gospel that we find the third -- and much lesser-known -- Christmas story. It's a Christmas story altogether unlike the others.
It would be a challenging task to write a children's Christmas pageant based on John's Christmas story. John tells of no parents traveling to Bethlehem -- no shepherds or angels, no wise men following a star. There's not even a babe lying in a manger:
"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. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
A Christmas pageant based on the gospel of John could be a real boon to budget-conscious churches. You wouldn't need even bathrobes or cardboard crowns; no manger of old two-by-fours, stuffed with straw; no foil-covered shoeboxes, either, representing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You wouldn't even need actors.
All you would need is a single candle.
The church would be bare and dark; the chancel stripped of pulpit, chairs, flowers, communion table -- everything that's usually there. The only thing visible would be a small, insignificant table, on which would sit a single, unlit candle.
The worshipers would file in, and sit for a very long time, silent as a Quaker meeting. They would sit long enough to begin to feel uneasy at the silence -- and maybe even a little scared of the dark (childhood fears returning). At long last, someone would march solemnly in, and without a word, light that single candle.
The darkness would be pierced, pushed back by the one thing that has power, ultimately, to push the darkness back: the light. And that would be that.
No one, of course, would seriously try to put on a Christmas pageant based on John's gospel. Yet, having imagined it, perhaps we can begin to see how different John's Christmas story is. There's no color, music, or pageantry -- just one blazing, incontrovertible truth, a single statement so profound that maybe the only way to appreciate it is to sit in utter darkness and watch the candle-lit shadows play across the ceiling: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
"The world," John also says, "did not know him." What the world knows, at Christmas-time, is "holiday cheer" -- a mindless, several-weeks-long party. It is, by and large, a party to which the poor are not invited: for who can afford parties when you're worried about finding enough to eat or a roof over your head?
It is not the sort of party to which the sick and disabled are invited, either: unable as they are to venture out and see the sparkling lights on the houses or rub elbows with the shoppers in the malls.
It is not a party to which those who are grieving feel especially welcome: for many of them find themselves regarding Christmas with a certain wistful sadness, much as Tiny Tim, in the old movie version of A Christmas Carol, gazes through the toy-store window at treasures he may never hold.
"We have seen his glory." The Greek word John uses, here, for glory is doxa. It's the root of our word, "doxology." When we sing the doxology in our weekly worship service, we sing, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow..." To worship -- to truly worship -- is to give God glory. Or, more properly, to worship is to reflect back something of God's glory (for such illumination did not originate with us).
The Greek word, doxa, does mean "glory," but it also has a more basic, literal meaning. It means light or radiance. It's no accident that the secular celebrations of Christmas often have light at their center. Why else would homeowners totter atop rickety stepladders, in the dead of winter, to hang strings of lights from their eaves? The world seems, in its holiday revelry, to be desperately grasping at anything that resembles glory, but somehow never catches it. How else to explain the "holiday blues" that afflict so many around New Year's? Having failed to glimpse true light inside the gaudiest package under the tree, or suspended in the last drop out of the wine-bottle, the secular world simply hunkers down for many more weeks of winter.
Here's where John's vision of life in the dead of winter, of a glowing candle piercing the darkness, is so powerful. You don't need to have had a perfect Christmas, you don't need to have received the gift you always wanted, and you don't even need to have celebrated Christmas at all. All you need is to have encountered the one who is at the heart of the celebration and to have known, as you did so, that -- as the carol says -- "light and life to all he brings, ris'n with healing in his wings."
Prayer For The Day
Lord, we are in darkness: we confess it.
Despite all our frenzied striking of flint against steel,
we have failed to kindle the flame of devotion.
The tinder is damp; the logs soaked through.
Our situation seems hopeless:
but no, not hopeless!
For we have seen his glory. We have seen it!
The Christ Child has shone light into our darkness:
and we can never be the same again.
In the days remaining of this Christmas season,
may we learn to bear his light to others,
for the sake of his dear name. Amen.
To Illustrate
Many years ago, the British Bible scholar J.B. Phillips wrote a little piece about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, encouraging us not to forget it at Christmas. His words are classic, and they bear repeating:
"I believe that at least once a year we should look steadily at the historic fact, and not at any pretty picture. At the time of this astonishing event only a handful of people knew what had happened. And as far as we know, no one spoke openly about it for thirty years. Even when the baby was grown to be a man, only a few recognized him for who he really was. Two or three years of teaching and preaching and healing people, and his work was finished. He was betrayed and judicially murdered, deserted at the end by all his friends. By normal human standards this is a tragic little tale of failure, the rather squalid story of a promising young man from a humble home, put to death by the envy and malice of the professional men of religion. All this happened in an obscure, occupied province of the vast Roman Empire.
"It is 1,500 years ago that this apparently invincible empire utterly collapsed, and all that is left of it is ruins. Yet the little baby, born in such pitiful humility and cut down as a young man in his prime, commands the allegiance of millions of people all over the world. Although they have never seen him, he has become friend and companion to innumerable people. This undeniable fact is, by any measure, the most astonishing phenomenon in human history. It is a solid rock of evidence that no agnostic can ever explain away."
-- excerpted from "The Christian Year," Good News: Thoughts on God and Man (Macmillan, 1963)
***
The German theologian, Helmut Thielicke, on a visit to the United States not long after World War II was taken by his hosts to visit the brand-new United Nations building in New York. Included in the tour was a visit to the UN's interfaith chapel -- a plain, nearly empty room of austere beauty. The only decorations in the chapel were a set of spotlights that shone on the back wall.
Thielicke's faith had been forged in the crucible of war. He knew there are some times, difficult times, when you simply need to know what you believe in and be clear about that. He was appalled at the vague, unspecific religiosity of that chapel. Later, he wrote of what he had seen:
"The spotlights were ignorant of what they were illuminating, and the responsible [people] who were invited to come to this room were not shown to whom they should direct their thoughts. It was a temple of utterly weird desolation, an empty, ruined field of faith long since fled… only here, where the ultimate was at stake, only here was emptiness and desolation. Would it not have been more honest to strike this whole pseudo temple out of the budget and use the space for a cloakroom or a bar?"
-- as told by Gordon MacDonald, "Speaking into Crisis," in Leadership Journal, Spring 2002
***
The word "Christmas," means "Christ-mass," and in fact it's a sort of nickname. The holiday's real, official name is the Feast of the Incarnation. Can you imagine how different our holiday would be, if we started calling it by its real name? "Incarnation" literally means "in the flesh." It's the Christian doctrine that declares Jesus to be not some divine being masquerading in human clothing, but rather the God who lives -- and eventually dies -- as one of us.
If you send some friends a card that says "Merry Christmas" -- even if it depicts angels or shepherds or wise men -- they're likely to understand, on a practical level, that what you're wishing them is a happy mid-winter festival. That's how far the meaning of the word "Christmas" has become devalued in our culture. Yet what if you sent them, instead, a card wishing them a joyous Feast of the Incarnation? (I'm not saying you should; just go with the flow here, for a minute.) If your friends knew the meaning of that word at all -- which is somewhat doubtful -- they would instantly understand you to be wishing them more than just free-floating good cheer. They would know you to be wishing them a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ -- the one who, as John's gospel bears witness, "became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."
***
I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
-- Thomas Merton, from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
