Beginning where we left off
Peter Gomes, who preaches at the Harvard University Chapel, has a sermon about the morning after Christmas called “Beginning Where We Left Off” using this passage as the text:
Some folks, even on this second day after Christmas, have to begin where they left off Monday evening. I’m thinking especially about retailers who are given barely enough time to inhale some turkey and rip open a gift before they have to go back to work to satisfy the consumerist demands of our culture.
Some people will get a little downtime between now and New Year’s. Jacquie and I are going to take the whole 12 days off while we visit good friends in Key West and recover from what has been an incredibly long and demanding autumn. But sooner or later, all of us will have to bag up the wrappings, take down the tree, and begin where we left off before Christmas.
Some will do that with sadness and others with a sigh of relief.
We are told that the shepherds returned to their fields with rejoicing – and the Wise Men (who traditionally arrived on January 6) “returned home another way” (Matt. 1:12). Titus, whose words we always read on Christmas Eve, but seldom mention, writes:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 13while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Yes, we are to begin where we left off: same old job, same old responsibilities, same old relationships with the same old people – but we are different, because we know the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all – including us. The joy of Christmas doesn’t end when the last package is unwrapped - because that’s not where the joy comes from. The joy of Christmas goes with us as we return to where we left off before we, like the shepherds and Wise Men, left our jobs and our homes to go see the Baby Jesus.
The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. Luke 2:20
Some folks, even on this second day after Christmas, have to begin where they left off Monday evening. I’m thinking especially about retailers who are given barely enough time to inhale some turkey and rip open a gift before they have to go back to work to satisfy the consumerist demands of our culture.
Some people will get a little downtime between now and New Year’s. Jacquie and I are going to take the whole 12 days off while we visit good friends in Key West and recover from what has been an incredibly long and demanding autumn. But sooner or later, all of us will have to bag up the wrappings, take down the tree, and begin where we left off before Christmas.
Some will do that with sadness and others with a sigh of relief.
We are told that the shepherds returned to their fields with rejoicing – and the Wise Men (who traditionally arrived on January 6) “returned home another way” (Matt. 1:12). Titus, whose words we always read on Christmas Eve, but seldom mention, writes:
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 13while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Yes, we are to begin where we left off: same old job, same old responsibilities, same old relationships with the same old people – but we are different, because we know the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all – including us. The joy of Christmas doesn’t end when the last package is unwrapped - because that’s not where the joy comes from. The joy of Christmas goes with us as we return to where we left off before we, like the shepherds and Wise Men, left our jobs and our homes to go see the Baby Jesus.
It’s the joy of having seen, for a few hours, what the world can be like - what WE can be like - when we live in hope that the world won’t always be the way it was before we left off and we won’t always be the way we were when we left off. For we have seen in Him - and in ourselves - the truth that the dark is passing away and the true light is already shining. (1 John 2:8)
