Sermon for Christmas

Christmas 2008

“In these days God has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world”.

We are the inheritance of Christ; as he suffered to enter into his glory, so he became incarnate to enter into his inheritance. It’s a poor inheritance, for him who is the brightness of God’s glory and the reflection of his substance, and upholds all things by the word of his power. It is small consolation if all the angels of God adore him; the fact remains that he has inherited clay, and clay made unusable by sin; he came unto his own, and his own received him not. As the clay, we rejoice; but for him we can only feel sorrow.

The Christmas story, the whole story of Christ’s life on earth, is the story of what happened when the Son of God entered into his inheritance. It is perhaps revealing that he only told one parable about an heir, and that was the parable which most nearly approximates to an autobiography. The importance of that parable was realised: all the Synoptics related it. The details vary, but the versions come together at the sharp point: “The lord of the vineyard said: What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; it may be, when they see him the will reverence him Whom when the husbandmen saw, they thought within themselves, saying: This is the heir, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours. So casting him out of the vineyard, they killed him.” The servants who had been sent before him were not asking what was theirs by right of the husbandmen; they were, shall we say, prophets, speaking on behalf of another. But he came unto his own, came to his own inheritance, to that which was his own as much as it was his Father’s; that which was planted by him; far from failing to know him (St John is too kind here) the husbandmen destroyed him precisely because they did know him. This is the heir.

These don’t seem very seasonal thoughts. But it is to this kind of thought that I always find myself turning during Mass on Christmas night; sometimes when I enter the church and see the crucifix, but very often, with a shock, at the eucharist. On the night he was betrayed he took bread…this is my Body which will be given up for you. This is my Blood of the new and everlasting covenant; it will be shed for you. Betrayal? Giving up of his Body, shedding of his Blood? But we’re talking about a baby! We are talking about a baby, yes, because Christ was true Man; but really, we are talking about the Incarnation, the clothing of God in our garment, the entering of the Son of God into his inheritance at the time appointed by the Father for him to become the heir of all creation.

Most rights involve responsibilities and duties. Christ knew what he was saying when he told us that more is demanded of him to whom more is given. Like us, the Son of God receives his being from the Father, but in his case it is the very Godhead he receives, and the task that that entails. To God, no task is a burden, but from the moment of the Incarnation it was a man who had to complete that task and near that burden. Receiving the universe as inheritance means the task of redeeming the universe, transforming it so that it is a worthy kingdom to be delivered up to God the Father, when he shall have brought to nought all principality, and power, and virtue; for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

Christ faced this immense talk not only with courage but with alacrity. Isaiah was speaking from our point of view when he said “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings” and the Song of Songs is speaking of the same thing but from another point of view, the point of view of Christ’s eagerness: “Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills”. It is always a joyful thong to enter into an inheritance, especially if it does not involve the death of one’s father, and so it was for Christ; not as if he loved himself and wanted to receive a benefit – but because he loved the inheritance and wanted to bestow a benefit.

Indeed, all this talk about Christ's inheritance sounds rather strange. If it isn’t the sort of inheritance which requires the death of a father, then it must be the sort which requires a coming of age. But are we to think that somehow Christ came of age at the Incarnation, as if he gained something thereby? “As long as the heir is a child, he differs in nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the father.” Are we to say that of Christ” No; but in this case the usual circumstances are strangely reversed: it is, rather, the inheritance which comes of age. “For we also, when we were children were serving under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman…that we might receive the adoption of children…therefore now we are not servants but children; and if children, heirs also through God”.

This was Christ’s task, and he knew very well what it was to mean for him, from the self-emptying with which it began until the death with which it ended. And in an odd way, it was his own death that completed his entering into his inheritance; because it completed the task of conforming us to him; the task of leading not just the Head, but also the body, into the inheritance. Strange sort of inheritance, indeed, for which the death, not of the testator but of the heir, is required!

The conclusion I find myself coming to is that what Christ inherited was the capacity to make us inherit: that his entering into his inheritance was ours; that as he inherited clay, so we inherited glory. O admirabile commercium! O wonderful exchange! As so often, my confession that I don’t understand is not so much a reflection on my incapacity and littleness as on God’s power and infinity. Somehow, by the Incarnation, I have inherited God.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.