Sunday Before Christmas Fr. Lawrence Margitich

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and

of the Holy Spirit, Amen. If you were asked to

choose the reading for this first day of the

pre -feast of Christmas, these five days that

precede the Nativity, if you were asked to choose

the reading for this Sunday before Christmas,

what would you have chosen? I think most of us

probably that selection from Luke because it's

super familiar from Charlie Brown's Christmas.

Which is a great show. I think it's a beautiful,

beautiful presentation of Christmas. But that's

what we would have probably picked. That's what

we're most familiar with. It's got shepherds

abiding in the field and it's got angels singing

glory to God. What more could we want? we weren't

asked to choose the reading for the Sunday before

Christmas. The church gives us something that

we probably would have never chosen. With the

help of our Savior and by your prayers, let me

offer a few remarks. I love this reading. I'm

a liturgical nerd, and without this, it wouldn't

be Christmas for me. I need to hear that. That's

a journey that I take along with those names.

It's a fantastic list of names. On my little

commemoration card, I'll just read a few. Adam

and Eve. Well, let's start at the beginning,

right? Abel, Seth, Enos, Canaan, Malaliel, Jared,

David, Solomon, Ahaz, her who gave birth to Solomon.

Her name's not even mentioned. Bathsheba. Aaron.

Jesse. Hannah. Sarah. Rebecca. Rachel. Rahab,

the prostitute. And on and on it goes. Holy ancestors

of Christ. One of the hymns says, we should ask

their intercessions. So let us do that. 1 ,500

years, more, more than that, our ancestors had

been waiting since Abraham, since Abraham, through

great suffering, through difficulties, deserts,

dens of the earth, being persecuted, being slandered.

hungry, and all of that that you heard in the

epistle to the Romans. God was working through

them, through their faith. And God continues

to work. God hasn't stopped working, not for

a moment. He works in our life. He works in our

world because he loves it. Let's never forget

his divine providence. We trust it. That's what

faith is about. Our history, we know, is not

one of continual moral improvement, evolution

of humanity, banish that idea. It's a jagged

history of ups and downs and falling away, repenting,

falling again, repenting, all of these characters

whose names you heard, that's their life, just

like ours. Yet, in the line of the Theotokos,

the mother of our Lord and Savior, there were

those who remained faithful. Period. Full stop.

They remained faithful. St. Gregory Palamas describes

that line and those people as refining humanity.

Moving us slowly, slowly, slowly, because we

humans don't learn that quickly, morally, ethically,

spiritually. Slowly moving us from the original

rebellion of Eve and Adam to the time of the

Blessed Virgin in which God would become incarnate.

Breaking the dysfunction of our nature. We can

all do that. Some of you have come from very

dysfunctional places. You can break that, and

you have broken that, with your life in Christ.

So, we say this list of names, 42 generations.

Six times seven. Seven times seven would be the

Sabbath, but the new Sabbath. The Sabbath isn't

about a regulation about not doing things. And

rules, that's what the Pharisees were mistaken.

The Sabbath, the seventh Sabbath would be Jesus

giving us the kingdom to be with God. This 42

generational line reaches its great pinnacle

in the Virgin Mary. Note what St. Matthew says.

He says, Eliud begot Eleazar. All these people.

Eleazar begot Mathan. Mathan begot Jacob. Jacob,

in other words, was the father. Jacob was the

father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, not the

father of Jesus, whose father dwells in heaven,

whom we call our father. 1 ,500 years. 42 generations

since Abraham. And then the surprise of Christmas.

Then the miracle of the incarnation of God in

the flesh. And the surprise of Christ's death

on the cross. And his resurrection. And the impossible

surprise, the gift of the church, which makes

us members of that same family. And the generations

will go on and on until it is full and God comes

again in glory. So you see, this Sunday is not

just about keeping and looking and examining

about some historical line. There's much to say

about all of these people. It's about the faith

and the promise to Abraham. Yes, those who witnessed

the promise, who found something better, says

St. Paul. All those people were waiting for something

better. That's this. That's the church, whether

it's full with hundreds of people or only two

or three gathered in the name of Jesus. That's

what's better. We are the recipients of that

long line of people who waited for the promise.

The coming of the Messiah. They endured. They

had endurance, says St. Paul. They had patience,

something we're not too good with. They had hope.

They had hope. What about us? What's the question

we need to examine? We are after the law of Moses.

We have been recipients of that which is better.

We know about the birth, the death, and the resurrection

of Christ. We confess Jesus as our Lord and our

God, the one who became a child in Bethlehem,

the one who was crucified and buried and risen

and was victorious over all that evil and violence

and stupidity and the devil and death. We have

seen the true light. We sing. We have found.

We have been given the true faith. We sing. We

have died and risen with Christ in baptism. We

receive the Holy Spirit. We have the witness

of the saints after Christ. Our hope, our endurance,

our faith is not just something we have to find

somehow deep within us and just get on with it.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels. That

the excellency of the power may be of God and

not of us. We have no ability to show endurance

and strength and hope and faith without God's

grace. God's strength is made perfect in weakness.

Why else would we wear a cross if it wasn't the

demonstration of God's weakness? and his power

through that. This is our condition. Why else

would Jesus come as a child, completely helpless?

God's strength is shown in that weakness. When

we try to have faith, we're not just trying harder,

we're praying that God grants us the gift, because

we cannot do it when we're frustrated, when we're

losing hope with our life. We don't just look

back at the prophets and say, well, they did

it. how did they do it we have all this that

they didn't have we're weak brothers and sisters

let's accept that and then we stop fighting the

idea that somehow we need to be strong and tough

let God's grace be powerful within you Look at

the example of the saints, the prophets, all

those forefathers and ancestors and righteous

women, and see that they had hope, which was

founded on a vision of something far away. But

for us, it's not far. It's here. We have it in

our midst, and we gather together with Christ

present with us. To our Lord be glory and honor

now and ever to ages of ages. Amen.