First Sunday of Christmas

⁵To him who loves us and freed^* us from our sins by his blood, ⁶and made^* us to be a kingdom, priests serving^* his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.  ⁷Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.  So it is to be. Amen. ⁸ ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Revelation 1:5-8

On this the day after Christmas, people often ask, “How was your Christmas?”  Such a question implies that Christmas is done and past.  Thus, on the day after Christmas we begin packing up Christmas for another year.

But not me!  Everything in me resists that!  I guess that I will always be a child at heart about Christmas.  I never want it to end!  Why suffer a post-Christmas letdown?   Let the celebration go on and on!

Today’s scripture encourages the celebration to continue.  Here are words, celebrating Christ’s coming, taken from the last book of the Bible, The Revelation, or in the Greek manuscript, The Apocalypse.  The word apocalypse means a “disclosure,” or “unveiling” of that previously hidden.  The text is a doxology celebrating the full disclosure of who Christ really is in his coming.   Here is Christ fully disclosed for all the praise, the adoration, and worship worthy of him for who he is and what he had done.

In this text we celebrate Christ, past, present, and future.  We celebrate Christ as in the past he freed us from the penalty of sin and made us a kingdom of priests for the world.  We celebrate Christ in the present as he shower on us his infinite love.  And we celebrate Christ in the future who will come again to rule the nations with justice and peace.  He is coming again and all flesh will see it!  Amen!  So let it be, we pray.

Here in the Apocalypse it is disclosed what all will one day see in his coming – the babe of Bethlehem’s manger is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  As Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, so Jesus, is the first and last of history.  History begins with him and will end with him.  He always is, always was, and always will be.  The Christ of Bethlehem’s manger is the “Almighty,” the one who is powerfully moving all history to its fulfillment of God’s saving purpose.

And finally, the Apocalypse discloses a worshipping cosmos, caught up in worship and adoration of the God-Man, Christ Jesus.  An ancient Greek hymn celebrates the coming of Christ at the completion of all things:

The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light triumphant breaks;
When beauty gilds the eastern hills,
And life to joy awakes.

Not as of old a little child
To bear, and fight, and die,
But crowned with glory like the sun
That lights the morning sky.

And let the endless bliss begin,
By weary saints foretold,
When right shall triumph over wrong,
And truth shall be extolled.

The King shall come when morning dawns,
And light and beauty brings:
Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people pray,
Come quickly, King of kings.

  Read, Reflect, Respond, and Rest with today’s scripture text,
Revelation 1:5-8, and devotional.

Today’s Moments of Diaphany

• an answer to prayer
• evidence of his love and care
• evidence of his creative power and wisdom
• his help to do his work