Hi First Presbyterian,
It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up. Tomorrow is January 6th, which means it will be the day of Epiphany, which means the Christmas season will be officially over. I’ve been reflecting on a poem that Lee Fox read at our Outreach Committee last night. The poem is called “The Work of Christmas” by Howard Thurman, and it is about the end of Christmastide.
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
In my Mid-Week Meet-Up from a couple weeks ago, I wrote, “If Christ is not born, there can be no death and resurrection. But even more than the simple fact that the birth of Christ allows for the possibility of his death and resurrection, his birth signifies something incredibly important on its own.” What does it mean that God became a human in Jesus Christ? What did Jesus accomplish during the approximately 30 years he lived on the earth before his death and resurrection? Of course, we can read about some of the things he did during that time: he taught, he performed miracles, he befriended sinners, etc. But what do those things tell us about what Jesus believed and what followers of Jesus ought to also believe?
For example, in Luke 18:35-43, when Jesus healed a man with blindness near Jericho, the miracle probably meant a lot for that man. It meant he could find employment for himself and would no longer need to beg for sustenance, not to mention the fact that he regained his eyesight. No wonder Luke tells us the man immediately followed Jesus and glorified God (v. 43)! But should that miracle mean anything to us? We weren’t the recipients of the miracle. We weren’t even there to witness it happening. Sure, the fact that Jesus performed that miracle tells us that he possessed divine, supernatural abilities. But was the purpose of such things just to prove that Jesus was God?
I think the miracles of Jesus, along with all the other things that Jesus did, show us much more, and I think Thurman’s poem gets at the heart of it. The fact of Jesus’ incarnation, the fact of his life on earth, shows us that God cares about things like giving a blind person the ability to work and gain an income. It shows us that, as Thurman puts it, that God cares about feeding the hungry, releasing the prisoner, rebuilding nations, etc.
Today might be the final day of Christmastide, but the work of Christmas never ends. As long as people are lost and broken, the work of Christmas persists. As long as people are hungry and imprisoned, the work of Christmas persists. Friends, can you hear music ringing? “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.” The work of Christmas is just beginning!
Peace to you,
Pastor Neff