Using Our Good Energy: A Homily for the Christmas Eve Late Mass

 Using Our Good Energy

Reflections on Titus 2.11-14

 

RCL Christmas Eve

24 December 2021

 

Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral

New Westminster BC

 

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.  He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.  (Titus 2.11-14)

 

         Yesterday I went to a small family-run pharmacy to receive my COVID booster injection.  The pharmacist prepared the injection and, while he and I continued to chat, administered the booster into my left arm.  I did not feel a thing.  So surprised was I at this, I said to him that this was the first injection I had ever had where I didn’t even feel the initial entry of the needle.  “I channel all my good energy when I give an injection,” he said.

 

         For the last twenty-four hours I’ve been pondering this comment.  What would things be if each one of us, in all our endeavours, channelled ‘our good energy’ into that act or thought?  I think that this is what the writer of the Letter to Titus is trying to say in this evening’s reading.  I know that the language is somewhat morally stiff, especially the bits about renouncing impiety and worldly passions and being self-controlled, upright and godly, not that I’m encouraging impiety and worldly passions and condemning self-control, uprightness and godliness!  It’s the last bit that catches my eye:  “a people . . . who are zealous for good deeds”.  Perhaps zealousness is about ‘channelling our good energy’ into all that we do.

 

         After all did not God channel the divine good energy into creating all that is, seen and unseen?  Did not God channel good energy into each and every human being so that we like Mary can say ‘yes’ when asked to something extraordinary to help bring God’s new world into being?  Did not God channel good energy into all those who have been witnesses to the good news of God made manifest this night in the Child of Bethlehem, some whom we remember, some known only to God alone?

 

         Friends, this is a difficult time to muster our hearts, minds, souls and wills to channel ‘good energy’.  There have been moments in the last few months that I have seriously wished that I could be like a bear – eating everything that I want, searching out a safe place to hunker down for the winter and then doing just that until COVID is a faint memory.  But I’m not a bear – though my family tends to think me as one.

 

         Tonight we celebrate that we are all people within whom there are vastly greater stores of good energy than we may give ourselves credit for.  We celebrate that we are people who have come to the manger not only for solace and comfort but for strength and renewed purpose.  For us the angels sing a song of hope and encouragement.  May that song take seed within us so that we leave this place confident in the power of God that works in us to do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine – especially in times such as these.