January 5, 2025 – Second Sunday after Christmas
Kahu Gary Percesepe
This Christmas Eve was my first at Keawala’i. I’d like to share some reflections about that evening. I’m trusting that looking deeper into what we experienced will usher us into a Presence, which is the true meaning of Christmas.
There was a big crowd. That’s always good to see, but that’s happened before and is not notable. We were treated to a good deal of talk and singing about the baby Jesus, the manger, the shepherds, the angels, and at the close of the service we wished each other Mele Kalikimaka, which triggered a wave of more music by Uncle George and Louise, and soon the people got up, hugged, took many pictures of the crowd, the church, the sea and sky, then headed for their cars and drove off into the night.
But none of this takes us to the deeper meaning of what happened. So far, we have merely described what is beloved to us about Christmas Eve, and why it triggers sentimental thoughts and emotions of Christmases past and long ago.
The turning point of Christmas Eve came for me when I looked at the script which I’d written for Georgia and me. I was to read the mysterious Prologue to John’s gospel which echoes the first words of the bible, “In the beginning.” Reading my script, I saw that all I had in my notes was “talk about the transition.” And I realized that I had not written anything more than that: I was to somehow talk unscripted about the transition from what we had heard and seen thus far about Christmas, and how things change when we hear those majestic words that place the Incarnation of Jesus Christ coming into the world within the larger context of God’s self-revelation to humankind: how before the foundations of the universe, God had foreseen the need not merely for a revelation of God’s strange Otherness—don’t we know enough about that? Don’t we already know the ways of God are not our ways? That God is not like us? That God is everything we are not: stable, reliable, constant, Creator and sustainer, strong where we are weak, awake when we’re sleep, true when we are false, right where we are wrong, bringer of order to all our chaos, a God who is Wholly Other than us?
But looking deeper into Christmas, I see a kind of holy desperation in God –the lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, only wants to connect with us. To be fully present with the ones he delights in. What we see in the revealed Word of God is the humanity of God. Jesus is Word made flesh, meaning God is human. And because being human involves suffering; this means God suffers. God suffers when we fail to sense the presence of Jesus in us and in this church and in the world. When there is no room for Jesus, the church flounders, and the world suffers.
When I came to that place in the script of a carefully timed, rigorously planned Christmas Eve I realized my notes were useless. My job was simply to invite a Presence to come over us, as it did to Mary, and for the glory of the everlasting God to overshadow us, to reveal… a baby. One of us. One sent to us. The beating heart of God is human, and all God wants for Christmas is you.
We keep flailing away with our religion, trying to earn God’s favor, trying to be moral, but the Word of God says, forget your religion, forget your moral striving, forget your sin and selfishness, this has never been about you, don’t you get it? God doesn’t want your religion. The Word of God, which was from the beginning, is now and ever shall be wanting to be present with you, to dwell with you always, even to the end of the age. Emmanuel. God is always already with us, family.
When all human lights go out and you breathe your last and you close your weary eyes and are carried to The Other Shore, then you will know more clearly what you now see dimly at Christmas, that you were created for God’s delight and there is nothing you need to do, but rest in that eternal love.
On earth we sometimes get a glimpse of this glory, and on Christmas Eve it was on display. It’s not religion God desires. Religion is nothing more than the sum of all human attempts to reach God, but why? God has already come. It’s not correct religion we need, it is a person, Jesus Christ. The very Word of God is in this place and only wants to connect. Will you open your heart to receive the Word of God, allow it to be implanted within you, to guide and comfort you?
When we open our hearts to the mystery of a Presence we needn’t worry about the future of Keawala’i. Boards and committees may seem important, but what’s more important than organizing our lives and activities in response to the revealed Word of God that you hear in this sermon and in the bible, and in the sacrament, the feast of Christmas to which we are now summoned, the real presence and the real meaning of Christmas? Amene.