Bishop Robert Duncan’s Christmas Homily
Bishop Robert Duncan, moderator of the Anglican Communion Network and bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh delivered the following Christmas Homily at Trinity Cathedral in downtown Pittsburgh on December 24
God rest you merry, gentlemen,
let nothing you dismay;
remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day,
to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy; O tidings of comfort and joy!
The hymns and carols of Christmas are one of the greatest treasures of Christian theology – simply stated – anywhere to be found. Over and over they capture the whole truth about Jesus and about us, about the stunning redemption God has worked through His one and only Son, and about the present and the future that God has opened to all of us willing to accept this unmerited gift.
In the culture in which I was raised I was blessed in a manner that few children are today. Over and over again I heard the carols, even the obscure ones, with all their verses and stanzas, and I came to know many of them by heart. They are my rudimentary theological foundation. When I went off to college and to life they went with me as much a part of me as my physical frame or emotional make-up, a spiritual grounding that has proved unshakeable through all the trials and challenges of human life in this world. A pastoral question that haunts me is this: How might we re-immerse ourselves and our children and our society in these carols? But that matter is for another sermon. Today – tonight – I would have us just focus on the “good news of great joy” of which the angel to the shepherds speaks. (Luke 2:10)
Have you ever thought about the word merry? It is a rarely used word that might well be lost to the English language were it not for one festival alone: Christmas …Merry Christmas! Few words survive from Anglo-Saxon into English, and these are the words that Latin and French could not eradicate – or more nearly sophisticate – from the vocabulary of the ordinary inhabitants of the British Isles. One of those ineradicable concepts was that of mirth, of that which makes us merry. The idea is limitless joy, or as the dictionary puts it “laughing gaiety.” The carol says it: “Let nothing you dismay.”
Merry is at the heart of Christmas, because Christmas is the heart of the gospel. Easter is the head of the gospel – because the head must consider the cost – but Christmas is simply pure joy, what one ancient carol calls “sweet joy,” dulce jubilo. There is everything to be merry about at Christmas.
The epistle for Christmas Eve, from Paul’s Letter to Titus, tells us that “the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men.” (Titus 2:11) There is absolutely no one left out who desires to be included: not shepherds, not foreigners, not you or me, or anyone who wants to accept this Savior. No sin is beyond His reach. The whole creation is made over, for even the animals are present and the stars of the universe share in the proclamation. What does the carol say? Why was Christ’s birth? To be “our Savior.” “To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.” “All?” Yes, all who believe in Him. (John 1:12) Or as the carol says in stanza three: “to free all those who trust in Him from Satan’s power and might.”…”O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy; O tidings of comfort and joy.” Never was there a cause for more merriment in all the world!
And what about fear? “’Fear not, then’ said the angel, ‘Let nothing you afright…’” It is the Son of God here, and He is for us. Heaven and earth are joined now. That is why the angels appear. No one need be afraid of the dark anymore. Indeed, the darkness is on its way out, and the endless day of the Revelation to John is coming. St. Paul, after his conversion, will describe it this way: “[Therefore]…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38–39) These are tidings of endless comfort, daily comfort, unspeakable comfort.
Even to our dear sister, Anne, organist of Kittanning Church for fifty years, who lost her dear son this week, murdered by his own nephew – and to you and to me – there is nothing finally to fear, nothing that cannot be bought back (“redeemed”). Pain, addiction, loneliness, betrayal, loss, want, grief, purposelessness, the dullness that comes from having too much, even homelessness and exile…There is nothing that is beyond the reach of this feast and this Savior. The tidings tonight truly are of limitless “comfort” and endless “joy”. Dare we add, laughable gaiety in the face of absolutely anything you or I may be asked to face? No fear. No dead ends.
[So] to the Lord sing praises, all you within this place,
and with true love and charity each other now embrace;
Our carol even takes us to the fullness of the Great Commandment, to the consequence of praising the Lord and of loving others because God has first so loved us. God keep us merry. God rest us merry.
And one more thing: there is the Great Commission finish, bidding us endlessly to tell the tidings we have heard yet again today:
This holy tide of Christmas doth bring redeeming grace. O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy;
O tidings of comfort and joy!
So, my dear brother and sisters: God rest you merry. Amen.
Posted December 26, 2006