The Power to Become the Sons of God

Certainly we love the music of Advent and Christmas and welcome it every year with eager anticipation, but the texts resonate so deeply with us as well.

They are words that don’t just affect us with their beauty, but stir our souls with the magnitude of their meaning:

One example is the Collect for the first Sunday of Advent that we get to repeat every day:

“ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.”

Or the King’s College “Bidding Prayer” (written Dean Eric Milner-White) that has almost entered into the vernacular:

“Beloved in Christ, be it this Christmas Eve our care and delight to prepare ourselves to hear again the message of the angels; in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and the Babe lying in a manger. […]”

But these words can also speak change into our lives. Most years, I revisit Phillips Brooks’ Christmas Sermon about the Wise Men.

I want this year to be different. On this St. John the Evangelist’s Day, I really want to claim the promise and grow:

“[…] the very moment that the birth in Bethlehem was a fact it became a power. […] This is the day, dear friends, to bind two sayings of St. John together, and hold them in our hands and see them shine together with the Christmas glory: first, this verse: " As many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God "; and then this other verse:" Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know . . . we shall be like him."

It is to such souls I most wish that I could speak this morning. Christ is real to them. They have indeed come from the East to Jerusalem. But who is this that he should save them? It is a mere child, this Christ of theirs. How weak he is, this Christ within them. But oh, my friends, if he be only there! If only, led by whatever star he has sent, by trouble or by happiness, you have indeed come from the vague open land of sacred aspiration and given yourself to him, then there is infinite growth before you, infinite entrance of his life into your life, infinite changing of your life into his. Remember that childhood means not weakness alone. It means likewise promise and growth.

“Before the Marvel of this Night,” led by the star, I give my life to Him and ask and look for the infinite growth before me, infinite entrance of His life into mine, infinite changing of my life into His.