Christmas Day & First Sunday after Christmas – Year A
December 25 & 28, 2025
Context
Welcome to Christmas week. We’ve been dwelling in the Waiting Rooms of Christmas: Apocalypse, Wilderness, Prison, and Public Disgrace. This week we finally arrive at the manger, where all the waiting rooms converge. Here, we undergo the mystery of the Incarnation — a child wrapped in soiled clothing, resting in a feeding trough in a borrowed barn. Luke calls the child “Messiah.” Matthew calls him “Emmanuel” (God with us). John calls him “Word made flesh.” This child is the “sign” of how God transforms all of Creation (who waits) with God’s very presence.
John the Baptist reflected for thirty years on the shape of this sign. He broke the silence with these words: “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). And two thousand years later, yet another prophet spoke. She too focused on the image of the lamb. Her words are more somber than one might expect on Christmas, but for those who have survived those haunting waiting rooms, these are indeed words of life. And they come in a series of beautiful questions.
The stanza pointing to the possibility of a “shivering God” held in “icy hearts” plumbs the depths of the Incarnation.
'Agnus Dei' by Denise Levertov (1923 – 1997)
Given that lambs
are infant sheep,
that sheep are afraid and foolish, and lack
the means of self-protection, having
neither rage nor claws,
venom nor cunning,
what then
is this ‘Lamb of God’?
This pretty creature, vigorous
to nuzzle at milky dugs,
woolbearer, bleater,
leaper in air for delight of being, who finds in astonishment
four legs to land on, the grass
all it knows of the world?
With whom we would like to play,
whom we’d lead with ribbons, but may not bring
into our houses because
it would spoil the floor with its droppings?
What terror lies concealed
in strangest words, O lamb
of God that taketh away
the Sin of the World: an innocence
smelling of ignorance,
born in bloody snowdrifts,
licked by forebearing
dogs more intelligent than its entire flock put together?
God then,
encompassing all things, is
defenceless? Omnipotence
has been tossed away,
reduced to a wisp of damp wool?…
…is it implied that we
must protect this perversely weak
animal, whose muzzle’s nudgings
suppose there is milk to be found in us?
Must hold in our icy hearts
a shivering God?
So be it.
Come, rag of pungent
quiverings,
dim star.
Let’s try
if something human still
can shield you,
spark
of remote light.
Question
What stirs in you as you imagine the Christ child nudging for milk in the cold, trusting you to hold what you do not feel capable of offering?
Expand the rows below for more resources for Christmas Day and the First Sunday after Christmas.
Gospel Lectionary Text
Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)
2:1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.
2:2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
2:3 All went to their own towns to be registered.
2:4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.
2:5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.
2:6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.
2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
2:8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.
2:9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.
2:10 But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:
2:11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
2:12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."
2:13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
2:14 "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"
2:15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."
2:16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.
2:17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child;
2:18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.
2:19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
2:20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Reflections
Making Room
By Lina Thompson |
Many years ago, I started collecting nativity scenes – both elaborate and simple, traditional and contemporary, from many different places. Some included the whole entourage of characters (shepherds, magi, angels, animals), and others just had Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Girardian Lectionary Weekly Reflection:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
an excerpt from Dry Salvages
in "Four Quartets" by T.S. Eliot
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Gospel Lectionary Text
Matthew 2:13-23
2:13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him."
2:14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt,
2:15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son."
2:16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.
2:17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
2:18 "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more."
2:19 When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said,
2:20 "Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child's life are dead."
2:21 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.
2:22 But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.
2:23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."
Reflections
Hope in the Darkness
By Trisha Welstad |
Each year the season of Christmas gets me excited. Even as the days get colder and darker the warm feelings of Christmas and all the wonder the holidays bring propels me into preparations for celebration. My two small children, just old enough to grasp the meaning of this season, have joined in on the traditions.
Born in Dreams
By Joel Kiekintveld |
The Advent and Christmas seasons are a time to remember God’s call on our lives is constant, and it comes in many forms, whether we are sleeping or awake. It's a call to a heavenly perspective that allows us to release our fears and see good news in the least likely places.
Praying Eucharistically - Weekly Homily by James Alison:
Girardian Lectionary Weekly Reflection:
Understanding the Bible anew through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard.
Poetry
Rachel
by Steve Garnass Holmes
Herod sent and killed all the children in Bethlehem
who were two years old or under…
Then was heard “Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
-Matthew 23.16, 18
A vulnerable God will upset insecure people.
Tyrants and bullies who fear how fragile we are
will lash out against whoever reminds them.
And the weak and poor, the vulnerable,
and the children, especially the children, will pay.
Rachel weeps for her little ones in a thousand Bethlehems.
In the notes of our carols, hear her wail,
beneath our jingle bells, her devastated silence.
Round yon virgin is dust; in her lap a blanket
with blood and the smell of a baby’s hair.
This is no intrusion on the Christmas story.
It is the story. God comes, fragile among the fragile,
poor and powerless among the poor.
And this child will die young among them.
Pray for those who mourn these days,
and for those who exercise power.
Sharpen the blades of your hope on the stone of grief;
temper your joy with thirst for healing.
Sit with Rachel. Trust that sometimes
the best way to “keep Christ in Christmas”
is to weep.
Prayer
This week, the call to prayer comes from the Street Psalms Centering Prayer: Suscipe
“Take Lord and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will, all that I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you Lord I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. I ask only for your love and your grace. That is enough."
