Tag: Nativity

O Magnum Mysterium

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Saturday, December 24, 2022 || Christmas Eve || John 1:1-14

Tonight, I’d like to share with you a great mystery. It is the mystery of God’s movement in creation in the singular way that we call the Incarnation; that is, the presence of God coming among us in the flesh and blood person of Jesus of Nazareth. Notice, I said I’d like to share this mystery with you. I’m using the verb “share” on purpose, because it is way above my paygrade to try to “explain” this mystery. 

This isn’t the type of mystery one can explain. This isn’t like the kinds of mysteries my mother loves to read – Whodunnits. In those books, a mystery is set forth: say, how does the killer manage to murder someone in a room locked from the inside? The plot revolves around the detective attempting to solve the puzzle. In the end, the detective figures out that the bell rope used to call for the maid is replaced with a poisonous snake, which somehow slithered unnoticed out of the room in the ensuing hubbub of discovering the body. Mystery solved. No more mystery. 

The mystery of God’s presence in creation is not this kind of mystery. The mystery of God cannot be solved. It cannot be grasped. But the mystery of God can be embraced. My prayer for all of us this Christmas is that we embrace this mystery of God’s movement, even as God embraces us with God’s love.

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The Stone Manger

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Friday, December 24, 2021 || Christmas Eve || Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

Two and half years ago, I stood in a long line of pilgrims in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. As I inched forward I took in the beautiful mosaics being painstakingly recovered on the walls and floors. I tried to count the oil lamps and candles hanging above the altar. Ahead of me was a short set of stairs that bent away to the left under the sanctuary. This was my destination, along with the pilgrims from my group, not to mention the hundreds of others from other groups who had descended upon the Church of the Nativity that morning. Finally, I reached the top of the stairs. I had to duck to enter the low-ceilinged chamber. The pilgrims ahead of me shuffled along, each stopping for a brief moment to touch something on the floor. I, too, approached. There…there was the spot – marked by a gold many-pointed star. There was the spot (the Church remembers) where Jesus was born. I touched it like everyone else. And I felt…nothing.

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A Bard’s Christmas Song

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

Here is the yearly iteration of my Christmas Day sermon/song. It is a musical rendition of parts of John 1 and Luke 1-2. I absolutely love singing it, and it is the highlight of my Christmas worship every year. This is the first time I have recorded the song since 2012.

Continue reading “A Bard’s Christmas Song” →

Rightside Up Again

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Tuesday, December 25, 2019 || Christmas Eve || Luke 2:1-20

One of the unique things about the Gospel according to Luke is how concerned the text is with setting, with time and place. Several times, Luke tells us when and where the events are happening. You’ve all heard an example of this tendency a million times: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”

Why do we care that this registration happening while Quirinius was governor of Syria? The ancient world did not have reliably standardized calendars, so to date an event, one reliable way was to delve into Roman records. Rome was an empire, and if there’s one thing the Roman Empire did better than oppressing nations it conquered, it was record-keeping. So Luke uses the information available to date the birth of Jesus, and so this Quirinius guy had his named immortalized in the best-selling book of all time.

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Advent with the Beginning of Luke

Published on by Adam Thomas2 Comments

Announcing “Advent with the Beginning of Luke,” a new daily devotional book for your Advent observance. Entries from December 1st through Christmas follow the first two chapters of the Gospel according to Luke – from the birth announcements of John and Jesus to the songs of Mary and Zechariah to the birth of Jesus, and culminating with the presentation in the temple. This Advent study will make a meaningful addition to your personal or group preparation for the feast of the Incarnation. Continue reading “Advent with the Beginning of Luke” →

The Uniqueness of the Incarnation

Published on by Adam ThomasLeave a comment
Sermon for Christmas Eve, December 24, 2017 || The Eve of the Feast of the Nativity || Hebrews 1:1-4; John 1:1-14

Imagine the scene in your mind’s eye: Mary collapses in the hay, her body racked with the utter exhaustion of labor. Joseph wraps the newborn in cloth he has ripped from his own traveling cloak and kisses his son’s eyes clean of the life-giving fluids of the womb. The baby boy tests out his lungs, and the shrill shriek of new life startles the placid animals dozing in their stalls. Mary beckons Joseph to hand her the baby, which he does – reluctantly. She places the naked infant on her own bare brown skin, and he inches his way to her milk, an impossible crawl for one so new, but he manages it just the same. Joseph watches, rapt with awe and wonder. The wild star burning bright in the night sky, the echoes of angels’ song – neither could compare to the beauty of the newborn, this treasure Mary holds to her breast.

Christus Natus Est. Christ is born. Continue reading “The Uniqueness of the Incarnation” →

Part of God’s Story: A Christmas Pageant

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment

This is the script for a new Christmas Pageant written for Advent 2017. At St. Mark’s we have an abundance of small children (under 4), so this pageant is written with them in mind. Seeing them jump up excited when it was their turn to run up on stage was so wonderful!

If you’d like to hear a monologue version of this from the early service, please click here.

Narrator is seated on a stool slightly stage right of central entrance. Children are all seated on the floor in front of narrator, speaking characters are in the sacristy.

In the beginning, God had a story to tell: the greatest story ever told, the story of Creation. And God began that story with four simple words: “Let there be light.” Everything God created was a character in the story: birds and bugs, land and lizards, fish and flowers, mammals and the moon. Birth and life, death and decay were also characters, as were both cataclysm and cultivation. For untold generations, God’s story of Creation grew in the telling until a new group of characters entered the tale, characters who somehow knew the story was being told. Continue reading “Part of God’s Story: A Christmas Pageant” →

Our Impatient Savior

Published on by Adam Thomas1 Comment
Sermon for Christmas Eve 2016 || Luke 2:1-20

We all know the Christmas story so well. We’ve listened to it our whole lives: in storybooks about the animals in the stable; in Linus’s monologue in A Charlie Brown Christmas; in the pageant; in carols about angels and little towns; and in the second chapter of Luke’s account of the Gospel, which I just read. We all know the Christmas story so well that we tend to crystallize it, to turn the story into a Norman Rockwell painting and hang it over our mantles. Continue reading “Our Impatient Savior” →

The Best Christmas Pageant Never (A New Christmas Pageant Script)

Published on by Adam Thomas5 Comments
Performed at St. Mark’s in Mystic, CT on Sunday, December 18, 2016

In an homage to the preferred story-telling method of one of my writing heroes, Aaron Sorkin, this new Christmas pageant takes place during a rehearsal for a traditional Christmas pageant. Over the course of the play, the traditional elements of the pageant get untangled from each other and we distill the stories as told by Matthew and Luke. Continue reading “The Best Christmas Pageant Never (A New Christmas Pageant Script)” →