It’s still Christmas, in case you haven’t noticed! We’re still celebrating the days of Christmas, which number 12, the feast of Christmastide. Tomorrow is the Feast of the Epiphany, in which we remember the story of the wise men coming to visit the baby Jesus. Even if some of your decorations are already being packed away, and the thank you notes are being written, and you are down to the leftovers in the fridge, we are still in the midst of the magic of Christmas. And it’s actually these twelve days of Christmas I like most of all.

The flurry of getting ready is over and now there’s a sense of restfulness. As I play the Christmas CD’s now, after the 25th of December, I can take the time to listen to the words more carefully. I look at the tree, trying not to pay attention to all the pine needles that have dropped, and I focus on individual ornaments, remembering the stories that go along with them. I replay the fun we had on Christmas Day, and the joy of being with family.

Those of you who were here on Christmas Eve at the late service will remember the solemn and simple singing of “Silent Night” as we knelt in the church after midnight. I hope the calmness and the brightness we sang of as we welcomed the Savior into our midst is with you still these days of Christmastide.

On Christmas Eve, we heard the Christmas story from Luke’s gospel – the story so familiar to us all of Mary and Joseph, the baby in the manger, the star and the shepherds and the angels. Luke’s Christmas story enables us to picture in our mind’s eye the coming of Christ into the world. It is descriptive and detailed and comforting to retell each year.

The Christmas story we hear this morning, on the other hand, the story from John’s gospel – is bigger than any scene we can imagine. John’s story is a cosmic story. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not over come it.”

What we call the Christmas story, in the language of Christianity, is the Incarnation – the coming of God into our midst as one of us. It is the biggest and most important news story the world has ever or will ever hear. Whether we use the intimacy of Luke’s Bethlehem story to tell that story or the cosmic majesty of John’s story, in the end we cannot grasp it fully – we can only believe it by faith and live into it with thanks.

All we know for sure, in hearing the Incarnation story from John’s gospel, is that we understand the darkness and brokenness of humanity and our need for a saving light to help beckon us forward. All we know for sure is that Jesus is the Light of the World, and that God became incarnate as Jesus to bring us that life-saving light.

Last Sunday we prayed in the opening collect: “Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word; Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord…” The light of God has come into the world through the person of Jesus Christ and is therefore given to all of us willing to open our hearts to let that light in.

But the light of Christ, once in our hearts, is meant not to stay there, making us feel warm and cozy and loved, like the way we feel when we put up our feet by the fireside at home. Instead, the light of Christ, enkindled in our hearts, is to shine forth from our hearts outward like a crackling bonfire signaling and drawing others to the love and light of Christ. Jesus will go on in his lifetime to say, “Don’t hide your light under a bushel.”

So, allow the light of the incarnate Word to illumine your homes, your relationships, your workplaces, your neighborhoods. Let the light of Christ become incarnate in your own words, actions, thoughts and feelings. What we celebrate at Christmas is God’s gift of his Son to us. And just like we write our thank you notes for the Christmas gifts we received a few days ago from friends and family, so we too express our thanks to God for his gift of love to us in coming to be with us in the person of Jesus. Only we can’t write a one-time only thank you note to God for his gift to us and be done with it.

We can, however, live out our thank you note to God by the way we live life every single day. We acknowledge our thanks to God in giving us his Son by loving others as he loves us, by forgiving those who have wronged us, by worshiping him and being in prayer with him, and by serving him as our Lord day by day.

On this 11th day of Christmas, as we near the end of the Christmas celebration, offer your thanks and praise to God. Offer your life as a means by which the light of Christ – the Incarnate Word – can be made known to the world. Let us receive with thankful hearts the new life offered to us and let us remember…

How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend on us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide in us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.