|
Meditation for December 25, 2025
Christmas Day
Isaiah 52:7-10
How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,
together they sing for joy;
for in plain sight they see
the return of the Lord to Zion.
Break forth together into singing,
you ruins of Jerusalem;
for the Lord has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God.
Meditation by Jeremy O’Neill
There are quite a few options for scripture readings for this day, as you might imagine. Beyond the birth narratives and familiar prologue to John’s Gospel, most churches will read from Isaiah 9 (“the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”) alongside selections from Titus on this day. The passage I have selected from Isaiah 52 is included in the Revised Common Lectionary’s “option 3” for Christmas, but my anecdotal experience says that the first two options are far more popular.
One of the beauties of having four in-person services in a span of 24 hours is that we get to work through the lesser known Christmas readings in spaces such as these mediations, which offer us another perspective on a familiar holiday story.
In many ways, Christmas is about Peace in the midst of violence and death. Because of this, I am intrigued by the position of the messenger in the prophet’s words in this passage. What does the messenger announce? Peace. This is also the first thing Jesus announces after his resurrection, as he encounters the disciples and says “peace be with you.”
Now, Jesus proclaiming peace is something that is easy for us to take for granted. We can easily equate peace with other platitudes like being nice to one another. But peace is more than a lack of conflict or violence. We describe a desire for “peace and quiet” as a longing for simplicity, lack of disruption, and a break from annoying noises. However, true peace is much more complicated than a lack of negative stimulation.
It is also important to note that there is a difference between being peaceful and being passive. Prominent activists like Ghandi or Martin Luther King are remembered as being peaceful, but that certainly does not mean they were passive or even all that quiet. Peace can be disruptive, especially in a culture where violence and noise are normative. So the messenger who announces peace is not just stating the obvious. The arrival of Christ changes everything, and ushers in a peace that shakes the foundations of society. We too can be voices for that sort of peace. We can be voices of countercultural Christian witness to the God whose peace passes all understanding.
In a world where one can tweet incendiary things at any hour with few consequences or accountability, I believe that we need messengers of peace whose words bring healing more than ever. So on this quiet Christmas Morning, may we find peace somewhere in our lives as we honor the birth of the one who is our true peace, the baby in the manger.
| 
