Isn't That Wonderful! Isn't That Amazing!

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

Nine Lessons and Carols 

Christmas Day 2020

Christmas Day! Christmas and Easter stand at the centre of our faith. The service we are following this year is drawn from the annual “Nine Lessons and Carols” used in the Anglican Church. We have used carols more familiar in our own tradition, and we have heard the Scriptures used each year by the Anglicans.

The Scriptures tell the gospel story through selected passages. They help us hear the big story that undergirds all of Scripture. God made us as part of a good creation. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, rebelled against God and were separated from God. God worked through the patriarchs and the covenant with Abraham to create a people who would represent God in the world. At the right time, then, Jesus was born into this people as the Saviour of the World, the one who came to restore fallen humanity’s relationship with God. Now we celebrate that coming into the world at Christmas, and we anticipate Christ’s return in the second advent, when the whole story comes to its triumphant conclusion.

This story is the foundation of our faith. All of our worship throughout the year tells us parts of the story and reminds us to live our own lives within this story. At the centre of the story is the fact that Jesus is the Incarnate Word of God. The passage that Lee will read for us shortly is called “St. John unfolds the great mystery of the incarnation.” It is a mystery indeed – that God, the Creator of all matter and energy and worlds and space should come into our lives as one of us, this is a mystery beyond explanation!

We could speak together for many hours and not grasp the depth and power of the incarnation. All that we can do this morning is thank God that God came down into our world, that God became one of us and took our pain and suffering, that God brings us life and light so that we can become one of God’s children. Two and a half years ago, my father lay dying. Two days before he died, my sister visited him. She asked, “Dad, would you like me to read to you from the Bible.” Dad replied, “Yes.” She asked, “What should I read?” He said, “John’s Gospel.” She asked which chapter, and he said briefly, “Start at the beginning.”

She started reading, “In the beginning was the Word, and thew Word was with God, and the Word was God.” She came to the climax of this first passage in John, “And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.” As she read these words, Dad raised himself and said, “Isn’t that amazing! Isn’t that wonderful!” His last words to me, mediated by my sister: “Isn’t that amazing! Isn’t that wonderful!” The Son of God became the son of Mary so that you and I and every person can become one with God.

“He came to his own people, and his own people did not accept him; but to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power – the right – to become children of God.” As an early church father (Athanasius) put it – perhaps with some hyperbole, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” Isn’t that amazing! Isn’t that wonderful!

Steinbach Mennonite Church

25 December 2020