Preached on Christmas Day, December 25, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by Kevin Montgomery.
Isaiah 62:6-12
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:(1-7)8-20
Psalm 97
I love words. I truly do. And that’s not just because I was an English major. Most of us use them everyday without even thinking about them. We use them for objects, like “pulpit.” Actions, like “pray.” We string them into sentences, weave them into languages. We write books or poems. Give speeches or sing hymns. Words written or spoken. Even words signed. We use them for conversations, to create systems of thought and action, to build communities. Words have power.
And here at the start of John’s Gospel, we have “In the beginning was the Word.” Not the kind of word we think of, the words I was talking about before. As powerful as they are, this one is even more so. Actually, it is power. “Word” is a barely adequate translation. This is the Logos. (Pardon my Greek.) It’s the creating and ordering life of God. We often think of words as talking about something else. God’s Word, however, is an effective, you might even say performative Word. It does what it says. “Let there be light.” “Let us make humans in our image.” “This is my body.” “This is my blood.”
But again, “word” hardly begins to encompass what is the divine Logos. Think of it as maybe like music, a song that stirs everything into being and sets it into motion. In C. S. Lewis’s novel The Magician’s Nephew, we have the singing of Narnia into being. It begins with something happening in the darkness, sounding from all around, even the earth beneath. The music continues, and it builds and builds. Then we see the world burst into creation. Thousands upon thousands of stars appear in the sky. New voices ring out, maybe even the stars themselves, but there’s something greater still, “the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.”
All of this is coming forth from the mouth of Aslan, the Christ figure of this series of novels. The song births reality. “When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked around you, you saw them.” It’s not a violent wrestling of order out of chaos. This Word sings the world awake.
We also find this idea of creation as song in the work of Lewis’s friend, J. R. R. Tolkien. At the start of The Silmarillion, we read,
There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones . . . And it came to pass that Ilúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were silent. Then Ilúvatar said to them: “Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music.”
Through this music the world of Arda is brought forth. But not all goes smoothly, for Melkor, the greatest of the Ainur, seeks his own glory and introduces his own chords and melodies at odds with Ilúvatar’s theme, producing discord and dissonance. So Ilúvatar introduces two more themes that grow and develop, marked by gentleness but also power and depth yet contain “an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came.” Melkor’s music, however, became a loud and harsh unison endlessly repeating itself, trying to drown the rest through the violence of its clamor. We hear that everyday, sometimes every hour. Think of all the ways we use language to demean, to deny, to destroy others. Shouting the same things again and again to overwhelm and crush those we consider our enemies. But in Tolkien, that discordant strain cannot overcome the other themes. Ilúvatar could have silenced it. Instead, he allows it to continue for a time, even weaving some of its notes into his own music, transforming them into something new.
Likewise, through the Word we have God speaking the world into being. We even hear it on this Christmas Day. However, this Word, this Song if you prefer, is not simply produced by God. Instead, it is God’s expression of themself. Yes, all things came into being through this Song, but in the beginning the Song was with God. And the Song was God.
But God was not satisfied with just ruling over creation; so the Song entered into the world itself, the very opposite of Melkor’s infernal and oppressive din. The Song enfolded itself into the silence of the womb, and when he was born, the only “word” that he could utter was an inarticulate cry of utter dependence. The Word became an infant, literally “one who cannot speak.” The great Song of creation became a particular human being, Jesus of Nazareth.
And as he grew, his voice did as well, and he went out to proclaim the message he was sent to give. His was not a theme of domination. It was not the expected messianic song of military triumph. It was a message of coming to serve, not to be served. To bring together, not to tear apart. To face the powers and principalities of the world . . . and to accept the death that they dealt. The Word-in-flesh went from the silence of the womb to the cry of utter dependence, to the cry of utter dereliction on the cross and the silence of the tomb. For the theme of strife, now the Song was stopped; now the Word was silenced.
But on that third day, the day of new creation, in the silence of the grave, a still small voice began to sound once more. The gates of the realm of death started to shake and then flung open as the Song of life burst forth. And all creation joins with it. “Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels . . . Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth . . . Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church.” Let the trumpets shout Salvation. The darkn6ess has been vanquished. Let the holy courts resound with the praises of the people. What was silenced sings out once more. What was lost is saved. What was dead now rises once more. And through the baptismal waters of death and rebirth, we not only join our voices with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we become part of that song of love, of hope, of justice, of life. That, that is our Christmas song.