Preached on the First Sunday in Christmastide, December 31, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.
Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147:13-21
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18
My parents, Nancy and Gary Crippen.
“…[We were] born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of [humanity], but of God.”
Here is another way this verse has been translated and proclaimed:
“[We were] born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a [person]’s decision, but of God.”*
In short: We were born of God.
In being born of God, we belong to God. And we belong to God first: our belonging to God supersedes any claim we may have on ethnic or genetic heritage, or any privilege we enjoy in this divided and unjust world; our belonging to God runs deeper than any human affairs or accidents that brought us to this place and time; our belonging to God explains our very existence, far more than the decision a parent made to have a child, far more than any human decision, any human cause, any human circumstance, that gave rise to you, or to me.
We were born of God.
And so, once again, at the dying of another year, in the season when we contemplate God appearing alongside and among and between us, in Christmastide when we glimpse the divine veiled in human flesh — in this moon of wintertime, we perceive our deepest identity. We discern the most profound meaning of our existence. We discover who we are, no matter what we’ve been told about ourselves by our parents, by the dominant culture, by all of the powers of the world. Today, on the seventh day of Christmas, we acclaim that no matter our origins, no matter our histories, and no matter what happens next, we were born of God.
These profound contemplations come from just one short verse in a soaring and glorious hymn, a majestic poem, a solemn, ancient text that could be chiseled on a granite frieze above the entrance to a castle, or carved along the rotunda at the crossing of a cathedral: this is John’s Prologue, a grand new proclamation of the creation of the world. Like the first book of the Torah, John launches into his song by singing the words, “In the beginning…”. And like Genesis, John begins with the Word of God; but in this creation narrative, the Word not only creates light, the Word is light.
And then, a little later on in this grand poetic text, John builds further on the Genesis vision of God creating the universe, and John sings of God making a home in this created world, a home right here, just here, in human community. When we sing John’s Prologue, we sing about our wondrous birth as God’s own children, as God’s beloved. We are where God dwells. God does not merely form us from clay and blow God’s Spirit of life into us. God takes on human flesh: God dwells here.
We — we who were born of God — we are those among whom God makes a home. The Word becomes flesh not only in a long-ago baby; the Word becomes flesh here and now, in us.
This week I focused on one of my less ultimate identities: ‘member of a human family.’ This is a powerful identity, surely! But it can’t compare to my identity as one who was born of God. I went home to be with my family of origin, the family that lends me my ethnic and genetic heritage; the family that gave birth to me in the ordinary rising and falling of generations; the family formed by my parents, who consciously chose to have children.
It was good to see my kin. It often is good to see them. We can skip over so much and just begin talking. I can instantly read subtexts and non-verbal messages. It is sometimes delightful to find overlaps, places where I recognize parts of myself in others: my niece Natalie, for example, likes to wander into mischief, much like me. My nephew William reminds me of our shared lightness of heart.
But there are awkward and unpleasant overlaps, too. Sometimes I see in my closest relatives the very things I wish were different about myself. You know how families are: they often hold up a mirror, an honest mirror, and that can be sobering.
As I’ve said many times now, the cause for all these home visits was my father’s death on November 30. Now, I am born of my father: I am his son. But his death reminds me, even if I don’t need or want the reminder, that I am not ultimately born of him: I am ultimately born of God, who conquers the grave, and abides with me — and abides with you — eternally.
And so I accept — consciously — the faint melancholy that accompanies many of these family visits. (And sometimes the melancholy is not faint at all.) We broke bread together this past Monday in what we call the “sibling dinner,” a once-a-year holiday gathering of all seven of us children of Gary and Nancy. It was a fine enough dinner, but it wasn’t the Feast to come. It was not the meal I share at this altar, this cosmic Table where all souls are offered a seat. I love them dearly, but my kinfolk are not where it all begins and ends for me.
And this takes me back to John’s Prologue, perhaps the most sublime work of literature that survived antiquity and has been handed down to us. To be “born of God,” for those who first sang this Prologue: this truly was good news of profound comfort and relief for them, because they had just been thrown out of their synagogues, cast out by their clans, rejected by their families. As followers of the Risen One, their new ideas were too much for their human families to bear: it was all a step too far.
And this is often how it goes, as we struggle in this mortal, melancholy arena. We struggle apart and together, with family, with friends, with coworkers, with neighbors, with those we call our enemies, with those who see us as their enemies. I love my family beyond my own ability to understand, let alone describe, and yet there are missed connections, neglected opportunities, lost chances.
As I shared with most of you on Christmas Eve and Day, I went home in part to sort through old letters written by my parents. I ran across an old journal of my mother’s, and wondered whether any of us should read it, let alone share its contents widely. But I think I can ethically share one small entry she made. It was 1974: I was four years old, and she paused to reflect on me, how I was doing, what I might need at that time, and what I might need specifically from my mother. She endured several hard years of back surgeries to treat post-polio syndrome, and she lamented her inability to interact freely with family due to her severe physical limitations. But she was able to walk short distances. She wrote: “Perhaps Stephen and I should walk together each day and talk.”
I have uncertain memories of those years, so we may have had one or two walks of that kind, but I do not believe that we did. It is hard to calculate the immense weight of responsibilities and hardships my parents were facing. It is fully reasonable to conclude that my mother simply was not able to grant herself, or me, that lovely wish for us. Human birth, human identity, human family: these are lovely blessings, but they are bound by finitude, by the frailty of our bodies, by the swiftly changing years. Only our birth in God endures beyond these limitations.
And so my mother and I, we will have those walks. In my ministry alongside you, here and now, I take steps on the path we all share as God’s beloved people, we who were born of God. My mother, who dwells forever in the Communion of Saints, joins us every time we gather here, to walk, to wonder, to work, to pray, to sing. I carry her desire to walk with her kinfolk, and I received from her the assurance that God in Jesus weaves all human persons into one clan, one people, one Body.
And I even hold firmly in my heart a fierce hope that I will one day walk with my mother along that other shore, where we will have much to discuss. Oh, we will have so much to discuss.
Be assured, then, good friends in Christ, that as this year dies, and as all our ties of family and friendship succumb to the finitude of this world, we nonetheless are forever the children of God, given birth by God to abide with one another, and with God, in all times and places.
I pray for a blessed and happy new year for you, and for all of us. Perhaps we should walk together each day and talk.
***
*Translation taken from The Revised New Testament – New American Bible, in Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1988), 23.