Christmas Day 2023 December 25, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
“Can I tell you a secret?…” Do you remember the first time you heard those words? Perhaps on a playground or in your friend’s room. That moment when you realized that the connection between that person and you had reached some new level of importance. This person, this unique individual with their own hidden world of thoughts and feelings is about to confide in me, to give me a peek into the world that other people don’t get. I must be special to them in some way.
Not that our childhood minds put it that way. We just knew it was significant. Even now as adults, it’s meaningful when someone confides in us; a sign of trust and respect that we have this kind of access that others do not have. To have another person reveal themselves to us binds us to them and, if we’re people of character, instills a sense of loyalty in us.
That same dynamic is what brings us together in this moment, this celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The feast of Christmas is the sharing of the divine secret. God has always been Father to His Son. From before time began, He has always had the Word who is God with him. Yet, who knew it? Adam and Eve walked in the garden with God, Abraham forged a covenant with him, Moses spoke face to face with him, and King David was Man after his own heart. Yet did any of them know the secret of the Son, of the Word? No.
But tonight/today, like a treasured childhood memory of our first best friend, we remember the day God told us, showed us his secret. That his secret was not only spoken to us, but became one of us. Indeed, the most intimate of secrets are those that leave the teller of them vulnerable. By telling us, giving us his secret word, God made himself about as vulnerable as it was possible to be: a newborn child. Utterly dependent on poor parents in an occupied country, unable to even control the movement of his limbs so that he needed to be swaddled.
What can we do but wonder at this ineffable act of divinely humble love? Is it any wonder that so many great hymns of Christmas linger over images of silence, mystery, adoration, and overflowing delight in such profound revelation… that our God loves us so, that he bind us to him with the bands of intimate vulnerability.
And is it not an even greater wonder that our surprising God of paradoxes, the God who can give motherhood to the virgin and life to the dead should so exceed our understanding that he proclaims his secret to all creation even while still keeping us in his innermost confidences? For, unlike the often trivial secrets of our childhood, this revelation of God himself offers friendship that simply cannot remain ours alone. The weight of its glory, the rewards of its fidelity simply must overflow to all the world.
Yet it does not lose the sacred secretive quality. God desires all men to know him and be saved, to see his light shining in the darkness that cannot overcome it and so receive “power to become children of God.” Though he wants all to know the secret of who he is, it can only be truly conveyed by the humblest of mediums. Just as a billboard does not draw us into friendship, so the blaring trumpet of angels cannot make us into the confidants of God’s love.
This is why, although none of divine revelation is actually a secret, it nonetheless seems so hidden to those with worldly and darkened minds. God does not hide himself to avoid discover, but precisely so he can draw us into the only kind of relationship that makes discovery possible: friendship.
This is why he sends glorious angels with hymns of praise to simple shepherds. Though amazed at the angels, the shepherds are told that the greater sign is that of a child in swaddling clothes – a sight so ordinary that it’s a wonder anyone would remember it after seeing literal angels in the sky singing to God. Yet the hiddenness of God is what reveals more and the humble shepherds, the men who had long experience of forging relationships in the quiet spaces of the night… they were able to grasp something of this secret proclaimed from the mountains yet lying in a manger.
This is why the direct forerunner of Jesus Christ is not a mighty king, a triumphant general, or a renowned artist. No, he is an unimportant man living in the wilderness whose very strangeness clothed his loud sermons with the garments of intimate secrecy.
This is why, although everything you need to know about God is written down in a million million books all throughout the world, you must not forget that what they tell you is still a divine secret, a truth that can only be know in the kind of friendship that inspires the sharing of confidences.
“Can I tell you a secret?” God says to you. If you would hear what that secret is, you must draw closer, leaning your ear against his chest to hear his heartbeat, quietly contemplating the silences between his words, the darkness between the days that punctuate just how precious His Word, His Light is.
“Can I tell you a secret?” God says to you. If you would hear what that secret is, you must confess your sins, your betrayals of his past confidences. You must seek to restore that trust, receiving the forgiveness that turns a broken promise into a vow even stronger than before.
“Can I tell you a secret?” God says to you. “Yes” says your heart. “Do tell,” your souls whispers. “This is my son, my only-begotten, the Prince of Peace and rightful heir to all of Zion and he is given up for you. No one has seen him, but to you, I reveal him. You are my child for whom he will die, for whom he will give up his flesh to eat. You have only to receive that secret always, to keep him always in your heart.”
Will you keep his secret? Will you keep it the way he himself did? If you would, then make your words and life a public sermon clothed in the intimate secrecy of quiet prayer, humble sacrifice, and joyful service until all of heaven and earth know that secret too.