Christmas Eve Sermon

We'll resume regular-type posting in the New Year.  For now, here's the Christmas Eve sermon.  This year was an extra challenge, as many people come to Christmas looking for the usual joy, peace, and goodwill, but the shadow of events in Connecticut and Oregon--plus our empathy for all those who have lost loved ones, especially children--colors our feelings this Christmas.  I didn't try to preach a sermon that was happy or sad.  Rather I wanted to ask whether the Christmas Story was big enough for all of us at the same time no matter where we were on that spectrum.  I wanted to preach a sermon that would reflect the beauty and joy of this event but still be meaningful--and not alienating--if the folks experiencing tragedy firsthand were sitting in our pews.  I don't know how I did.  I suppose you can see.

The Christmas text is Luke 2: 1-20, found by clicking here.

The sermon:

Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2012

When’s the first time you realized life wasn’t in your control?

Maybe it was when your first crush didn’t work out.  Did your parents keep cooking liver and onions when all you wanted was mashed potatoes?  Were you treated unjustly by a teacher?  Got fired from a job?  For many of us it happens when we get sick, or even just older…confronting our own mortality.  Or maybe not our own mortality, but mourning the loss of a loved one whom we wish was here on this holiday.  For some it happens in the most tragic of ways, like for our brothers and sisters in Connecticut and Oregon whom we remember tonight.  Life out of your control can be dangerous, fearful, sometimes horrifying.

That’s part of why we find the Christmas story comforting, isn’t it?  A baby arrived!  What could be more innocent and pure than that?  There sit a couple in a manger, a small, intimate setting.  Alongside lie some cows, sheep.  Here come some visitors…a couple angels, later three wise men.  A star shines from above just on this spot, no other. It’s like the manger is a little haven, separated from the rest of the world.

And look how we celebrate Christmas.  We go out and grab the world!  Presents, exotic foods, strange and wild trees…we bring the world into our house for the benefit of our family.  Goose!  (Does anybody eat goose anymore?  Oh well.  Anyway…)  Goose:  flying wild and free, soaring through the skies.  Nab, grab…now it’s goose sitting in a pan on the table for our consumption and enjoyment.  Tree:  great minion of the forest, living for decades under the sun and rain.  Saw saw saw.  We hang little glass balls and lights on it.  Isn’t it cute?  Presents:  things we couldn’t imagine getting on any other occasion, yet somehow they appear under our tree, just for us…just for the people we love most.  It’s small, intimate, tame, and totally under our control.  How we love this Christmas story!

Except that isn’t really the Christmas story…not all of it anyway. We’re talking about a mother and father forced out of their home by a tax-collecting dictator, forced to travel an astonishing distance by foot just at the time their child would come.  Except it wasn’t entirely their child, or at least it wasn’t his.  He wasn’t the bio dad.  This thing had come and disrupted his life despite his wishes and dreams.  Nor was this an expected pregnancy for mom.  An angel showed up one day and said, “Guess what?”  And the first thing she said in response was a polite version of, “Why me?  Nobody’s going to believe this is true.”  And the angel gave a holy version of, “Too bad…it’s happening anyway.  You’re the chosen one.”

Then this couple finally gets to town just when the baby is coming and there’s no room in the inn.  Even when they explain and beg they get shoved out into the stable.  Not only can’t they control the baby coming, they can’t control where it’s going to be born.

The baby comes and they make it through that uncontrollable wave of everything.  (Don’t even ask!)  Then they have to deal with cows and sheep making noises and smells. Weird shepherds—themselves terrified by an uncontrolled appearance of angels--and foreigners come in at all hours to stare because somebody leaked the news and now suddenly Mary and Joseph are Bethlehem’s William and Kate.  Later on the local king will decide that he wants their baby killed so they’ll have to flee to the strange land of Egypt as exiles.

And then there’s the child itself…a baby like any other.  It’s helpless, unable to feed itself, unable to change itself, unable to communicate outside of basic cries and coos.  It doesn’t know anything of the world.  It’s totally dependent on mom and dad for protection, for sustenance, for everything.  It doesn’t control anything, not even itself.

This is the actual Christmas story…the part we don’t talk about as much.  It’s not intimate.  It’s not snuggly.  It can’t be acted out by precious four-year-olds in donkey and sheep costumes.  It’s scary, inconvenient, dangerous, and totally out of the control of everyone involved.  Hearing it turns our conceptions about the meaning of Christmas on their ear just as the event itself turned over the lives of everyone who participated in it.

In times like this questions arise…the same questions we ask every time we feel out of control no matter what caused it:  “What’s the meaning here?  What purpose to all of this?  What do we believe?”  Some ask these questions in academic fashion but others—those who have experienced the tragic part of “out of control” firshand--ask it with an anguished cry that no snuggly, safe Christmas story can answer.

Do we believe?  That’s the question that surrounds Christmas.  Have you noticed that every movie or show about Christmas deals with this theme in one way or another?  Oh, they seldom talk about Jesus himself, preferring the goodness of humanity or Santa or what have you.  But the same question resonates through all of them.  “Do you believe?”

We answer this question so poorly, too…not only in the movies but in real life.  We want to believe, to find some significance in our belief, but we’re robbed of the chance because we define “belief” in the impoverished, plastic way the world has taught us.  When we ask, “Do you believe?” we mostly mean, “Do you credit this as being real?  Do you think it exists?”  No goodness or growth comes out of answering that question positively or negatively.

Try this on for size.  Everybody all at once look at me.  Now believe really hard that my rapidly receding hairline doesn’t exist.  Come on!  Work at it!  Do I have the mane of vibrant and curly hair I once had as a youth?  What?!?  You couldn’t make my receding hairline not exist with your belief?  What kind of not-believers are you?

Now turn to the person you came with tonight…spouse, family, friend, whomever.  Turn to them now, put your hand on their shoulder, and say this:  “I believe you exist.”  There you go.  Everybody happy?  Have you changed or deepened your relationship?  Have you learned anything new about the person?  What would you think if people started coming up to you and saying, “Congratulations!  I believe you exist!”  Your first response would be, “So what?”  Your second, “Who are you and why are your beliefs so important that you think they are the litmus test of my existence?”  Answering the question accomplishes little.

Belief doesn’t mean screwing your head up in this or that fashion or coming to some kind of academic conclusion about the validity of something.  You know what belief means?  Trust.  Mental certainty can only come when you’re in control, when you can apprehend everything, stand above it and make a judgment.  Trust happens in those moments when you’re out of control, when you have little other choice.

Joseph and Mary and the Baby Jesus, the shepherds and wise men…they didn’t have any kind of mental certainty that this was going to turn out well.  In fact every step of the process so far had told them the exact opposite, from the weird and unplanned pregnancy to the barn-based delivery…let alone dealing with the baby.  Who looks at their newborn child and says, “I am academically prepared for every possible contingency and I am certain that my parenting of you will be superior and that all things will turn out well in every instance”?

They didn’t have that kind of belief. It’s not possible, no matter what movies and cynics tell you.  All they had was trust.  “I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t control what’s going on, in fact it seems to be going wrong most of the time.  But I trust.  I trust you mom and dad, that you will feed me and take care of me.  I trust you, spouse, that you’re not going to leave me alone with this screaming child.  I trust you community of shepherds and wise men, that you’re going to help us through this crazy time.  I trust you, God, that as mixed up and sometimes tragic as all this is—and remember this baby’s life would one day end with a summary execution on a cross—that you will take care of us and bring us all to goodness.”

Now try this.  Turn to that same person you did a minute ago.  This time look at them, take their hand, and say, “I trust you.  Things won’t go perfectly.  Life will be out of our control.  We won’t always be happy.  Sometimes we might be so mixed up that we can’t see straight.  But I believe in you and I trust you, no matter what.”

Now what have you done?  Can you see the difference?  And guess what?  As we trust we remember that most of the best things in life also happen in ways beyond our control:  the love you feel for a spouse that causes you to marry them, the love for your children that draws more out of you than you ever thought you could give, the zest for life that causes you to risk things instead of clinging to surety…the trust God had placing his only Son in the hands of mixed-up people like us, and the trust we have that that same Son delivers and saves us, bringing us to goodness no matter what circumstances, even tragic ones, define our lives.  It does get better.  Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.  That is our trust.

And that is the real Christmas message, not a story of an isolated, pristine manger disconnected from reality, but a birth and a resulting web of relationships, grace, and love that touches all of life…all of our lives…transforming them, embracing and holding their sorrow yet somehow also bringing out their beauty and joy. 

Whether this is the happiest or saddest Christmas you’ve ever known, whether it’s the full or lonely, whether you have what you want or you’re still seeking, this day is for you.  Beauty beyond your control or desire is entrusted to you and nothing…nothing…will take that gift away.

A blessed Christmas to each of you.  May God’s love shine in your heart, and through you to a world that needs it.  Amen. 

--Pastor Dave