There's a temptation, I think, when you're the intern
and you're asked to preach on Christmas morning, to try and preach the best
ever Christmas sermon. To try and craft some perfect words that will somehow be
all things to all people. A sermon that people who have been attending this
church for decades, months, weeks, or just this morning alone, will feel
encapsulates the spirit of Christmas.
And in doing so I began to wonder just how we have
come to be here at this time on this day for this purpose. We have gathered
here for centuries to tell each other an old, old story. To tell each other of
a young woman who travelled many miles and gave birth to a baby boy,
simultaneously just like and unlike every other child who has ever been born. To tell each other of the shepherds and the wise men
and the innkeepers and the animals. To tell each other of the little town of
Bethlehem and the coming Emmanuel on that silent, holy night.
We come together on this holy morning to sing with
gusto my mother's favorite hymn -- joy to the world! The lord is come! Our God
has come to be with us again this morning. Our God has shown such love for us
that God would participate so fully in our human experience as to walk among us
on this, our broken earth. To come into our world in the humblest of ways—in a
lowly manger—and to leave it in the humblest of ways—hanging on a cross.
We celebrate this morning not just the old story of
the birth of a baby. Because it is not just the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that
we as the people of Christ have gathered for centuries to proclaim. It is the
birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ that brings
us to this table. It is the other old stories of Jesus and his friends that we
will tell all year, year after year, that we have begun to tell anew in this
Christmas season.
For our God came among us those many years ago, and
our God walks among us now. Christ comes to us each time we eat and drink with
our friends in memory of him. Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup,
we celebrate the birth and the death of this God-with-us.
There’s another temptation at Christmastime, I think,
to sort of gloss over the parts of the story that aren’t rosy and joyful. Like
the part where Joseph’s family was so morally outraged that, rather than take
him and his very pregnant fiancée Mary into their homes in Bethlehem, they
allowed them to be relegated to a barn.
And we look at all these adorable nativity scenes with
glowing candlelight and soft hay and quietly mooing cows…as though any one has
ever been in a barn that smelled good or was comfy to sleep on the floor of or
had quiet animals in it. It’s more likely that this experience was smelly and
dirty and noisy. Most of God’s glorious creation is smelly and dirty and noisy,
frankly.
And upon Jesus’ smelly, dirty, noisy entrance into
this world, we also tend to forget just why it is that God has come to dwell
with us. The Christ child is not born into a utopian society just so that God
can revel in the human experience of perfection. We know that it is in fact
quite the opposite.
Jesus is born into a world of injustice and political
oppression and fear and violence and hunger. And he is born into a region with
a ruler who orders the death of all of the children his age—for fear that this
“newborn king” could usurp the throne.
Our gospel text for this morning even reminds us that
Jesus came into a world in which his own people did not accept him. The
rosy-cheeked child we envision in the glowing manger this morning will, a few
decades later, be crucified for his crimes against the empire.
But we don’t like to talk about that. Because
Christmas for our culture has become sentimental and glitzy and more about
Santa Claus and wrapping paper than it is about the beginning of the most important
story ever told.
Some of our most beloved Christmas songs hearken to
the reality of the birth of Jesus. “O Come O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive
Israel that mourns in lonely exile,” we sing. “From depths of hell thy people
save and give us victory over the grave.” Jesus came into a world that needed saving. He didn’t just come to
us to change the whole way our world worked because God felt like it, or
because whatever we were doing needed a little revision. The Christ child was
born into a world that was desperate for change. And God walks among us today
in a world that is still desperate for change.
The Gospel according to John tells us that a light
shines in this darkness, and that darkness shall not overcome it. From the very
beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, it’s
written. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld its glory.
This tiny, smelly, noisy, dirty, baby boy is the Word made flesh.
On that holy night, that baby boy began to change the
world. The story goes that a star shined brightly above his birthplace, so that
all could know their newborn king had come. Just hours after his birth, people
began to come from miles around to simply be in his presence. And he grew up to teach us to love our God and
love one another. He grew up to teach us to pray for our enemies and to care
for those who are in need. He grew up to speak truth to power and challenge the
oppressor. He grew up to revolutionize a society and reform a people. He grew
up to bring light to those who sit in darkness. And we celebrate all of this
anew this morning.
And there are many songs we know and love that speak
to this. “A thrill of hope,” we sing, “the weary world rejoices for yonder
breaks a new and glorious morn.” This morning is that new and glorious one.
Each morning, from now on, is new and glorious.
And so as we go on our way rejoicing this morning,
despite what advertisers would tell us, the Christmas season has not come to an
end this day. This morning we have, like the shepherds, been told a very
important story. And, like the shepherds, we will go out and tell to others
what has been told to us about this child -- and we will all be amazed.
We will all be amazed at the power of God to bring
good news to a weary world. We will be amazed at the power of God to show up in
the unlikeliest of places and the unlikeliest of people. We will be amazed by
the power of God to live and breathe among us all those centuries ago and even
to this day. We will be amazed by the power of God to draw us together, again
and again, to this old book, these ancient rituals, this simple bread and cup
-- to be always making us new.
Merry Christmas! Amen.