Children of God: The First Sunday After Christmas (December 31, 2023)

“But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

In today’s Old Testament reading, we got a concise glimpse into Israel’s hope. But Israel’s hope, while culturally and historically specific to their context, touches on a universal impulse. “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Certainly, the prophet Isaiah didn’t have to look far to see people who were trapped in darkness; Israel, God’s chosen nation and the recipient of his holy law, was trapped in the darkness of sin and rebellion. But Israel was just a microcosm of humanity’s problem: all of us who have sinned are stuck in the shadow of death, unable to generate light from our virtues or merits. And this is why the prophet’s hope is in a coming future Day of Deliverance ushered in by the birth of a child: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: And the government shall be upon his shoulder: And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, the mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” This is the long-expected Messiah who delivers the people from the darkness of sin and death and brings them into the light. Interestingly, this theme is picked up in the book of Revelation when St. John describes the New Heavens and the New Earth, he specifies that there, there is “no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”

And we know who this is: none other than our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” To help us better see the connection between Jesus and the Messiah, the Angel reveals two names for the the Christ child: Jesus, his proper name, and Emmanuel, which is more of a title. The name Jesus is a take on the Hebrew name Joshua which means “God saves.” Like his Old Testament forebear who brought the people into the Land God promised their ancestors, Jesus is the agent of our salvation: “Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” But how does he do this?

The answer is in the second name, or title, that the Angel reveals to Joseph: Emmanuel “which being interpreted is, God with us.” The darkness of sin alienated us from God: Adam and Eve were ejected from the Garden of Eden; Israel was exiled from the Land of Promise; and we know this reality after we commit what is known as a mortal sin, those sins that are so serious that it’s spiritually deadening. According to 1 St. John 5:16, there is “a sin which is not unto death” and “a sin unto death.” When we fall into it, it alienates us from God. But the beauty of Emmanuel is that the light shines in the darkness of our hearts and the darkness cannot overcome it. Our salvation is in the fact that God is with us; that God has become one of us and borne our sins all the way to the Cross. “hail th'incarnate Deity, pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus, our Immanuel.”

And so, in Galatians, St. Paul can state with confidence that God’s plan has been carried out “when the fulness of time was come” and “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.” To help us better understand the mission of God in the world, he uses in analogy. The source of the analogy is a child underage. In the absence of his Father, the child would not be entrusted with the finances and responsibilities of the family estate; rather, caretakers and stewards would be appointed to ensure that the estate is administered responsibility either until the Father’s return or the Son came of age. The target of this analogy is to say that humanity was trapped in bondage to the elemental principles—principles like Sin, Death, and the Law—until the fullness of time. But now that Christ has Son, the result is Sonship. Jesus, the begotten Son, has come so that we might be adopted Sons, as he says a few verses earlier in chapter 3: “ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” or in Romans 8: “ye have received the Spirit of adoption.” And the beautiful thing is that we now have access to the Father, a relationship so close that we can use the personal term of endearment “Abba Father.” The closeness of this relationship changes everything. As Jesus says, “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”

I’m going to tell you a story because I experienced this rather intimately. I try to go to Confession on a regular basis. When you go to Confession, you’re supposed to list your sins in a somewhat detached way: you don’t want to make yourself sound better and you don’t want to make yourself sound worse. This day, however, I was, under the guise of context, making myself sound worse. About halfway through my list, the Priest stopped me and said, “You are rightly naming your sins but the way you’re commenting on each one is casting you in the worst possible light. The God I represent does not condemn you; the God I represent is a loving Father who wants what’s best for his children.” He ended the Confession there, gave me the absolution, and sent me on my way. In other words, maybe without intentionally thinking about it, I was thinking of Confession like a courtroom in which I was being prosecuted by myself; but, the problem with this is that I was thinking of it all wrong. In my self-examination and in the act of confession, I needed to be reminded that God is a loving Father who wants what’s best for us.

And so with what remains of this Christmas season, I would encourage you to remember that the birth of Jesus Christ the Son of God points all of us to the reality that we are Sons and Daughters of God. What God declares to be true of us is far more important than the stories that we tell ourselves or that we let others tell about us. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, who you are, or what anyone says; God loves you like a Father loves his child because that’s exactly who you are. And that means no matter your struggle, your sin, or your circumstances, look to your heavenly Father who gives you good gifts. Depend on him. One of the promises of Sonship is that we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, an opportunity to live beyond legalism which ends in dehumanization, but to become actually human, following the Christ Child, the God-Man, who took on our humanity so that we might share in his divinity.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.