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.