First Sunday after Christmas

First Sunday after Christmas

Claiming our Reconciliation----Henri Nouwen

( I found this quote on Friday and it was so good for our encouragement that I am reading it to you now)

“How do we work for reconciliation? First and foremost by claiming for ourselves that God through Christ has reconciled us to God. It is not enough to believe this with our heads. We have to let the truth of this reconciliation permeate every part of our beings. As long as we are not fully and thoroughly convinced that we have been reconciled with God, that we are forgiven, that we have received new hearts, new spirits, new eyes to see, and new ears to hear, we continue to create divisions among people because we expect from them a healing power they do not possess.

Only when we fully trust that we belong to God and can find in our relationship with God all that we need for our minds, hearts, and souls, can we be truly free in this world and be ministers of reconciliation. This is not easy; we readily fall back into self-doubt and self-rejection. We need to be constantly reminded through God's Word, the sacraments, and the love of our neighbours that we are indeed reconciled.”

The Lessons and Carols we have heard today have been put together for us by older saints of the Church :”

THE Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was first held

on Christmas Eve 1918. It was planned by Eric Milner-

White, who, at the age of thirty-four, had just been

appointed Dean of King’s after experience as an army chaplain

which had convinced him that the Church of England

needed more imaginative worship “   The original

service was, in fact, adapted from an Order drawn up by

E. W. Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, for use in the

wooden shed, which then served as his cathedral in Truro, at

10 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1880.

A. C. Benson recalled: ‘My father arranged from ancient

sources a little service for Christmas Eve – nine carols and

nine tiny lessons, which were read by various officers of the

Church, beginning with a chorister, and ending, through

the different grades, with the Bishop’. The idea had come

from G. H. S. Walpole, later Bishop of Edinburgh. Almost

immediately other churches adapted the service for their own

use. A wider frame began to grow when the service was first

broadcast in 1928 and, with the exception of 1930, it has been

broadcast annually, even during the Second World War, when

the ancient glass (and also all heat) had been removed from

the Chapel.

Sometime in the early 1930s the BBC began broadcasting the

service on overseas programmes….” From King’s College Service Booklet, 2014

    The heart of the service for me is this passage from the bidding prayer that we heard a few minutes ago and many heard this year on Christmas EVE, “Many of those who took part in the first

service must have recalled those killed in the Great War when

it came to the famous passage ‘all those who rejoice with us,

but on another shore and in a greater light’. The centre of the

service is still found by those who ‘go in heart and mind’ and

who consent to follow where the story leads.”

The Lessons and the Carols tells us the record of God’s plan of Redemption for us in the pages of the Holy Scriptures that we hear from Genesis, the First Promise of a Redeemer :”   And the Lord

God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou

art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field;

upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the

days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and the

woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy

head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. “   The seed of the woman is JESUS CHRIST our Lord.  The woman is the Virgin Mary which we heard about in Luke on Christmas EVE.

The faithful are then read about , beginning with the history of Abraham , the father of the faithful ---who when tested obeyed GOD and offered His Son Isaac but a substitute was found by GOD at the last minute. This is a picture of our Salvation as well in Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb without sin , His blood Shed for us.

But Jesus was not created when He was born. He is as we hear in Isaiah the eternal GOD as is God the Father.  WE as Biblical Christians worship God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  “ For unto us a child is born….the mighty God”

As the Sussex Carol said, “

Then why should men on earth be so sad,

Since our Redeemer made us glad,

When from our sin he set us free,

All for to gain our liberty?

When sin departs before his grace,

Then life and health come in its place;

Angels and men with joy may sing,

All for to see the new-born King.”

We heard the Gospel records of His birth. There can be but one response as in the carol “ In the Bleak Mid-Winter”

What can I give him,

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd

I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man

I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give him,

Give my heart.

Words, CHRISTINA ROSSETTI”

Who are we giving our hearts to?  Not a person of this world, Not a group or a club who follows this or that interpretation, but to Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God , begotten ,not made of one being with the Father , and is LORD of the Church.  So we follow Him and His Body the Church , an organization formed out of His very Word, not the words of men.

I close with the word we heard in the bidding prayer that opened our Carols and Lessons Service today:

“  let us remember before God all those who rejoice with

us, but upon another shore and in a greater light, that multitude

which no man can number, whose hope was in the

Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we for

evermore are one.”