Christmas Eve Sermon

Well, I’ll be totally honest with you.  I never really know what I’m supposed to say on Christmas Eve.  I guess I’m supposed to tell you what this is all about and what it all means.  I mean, I feel like I’m supposed to answer briefly these huge questions like what exactly is Christmas, or what does Christ’s birth into this world really mean to us?  It seems like, and it probably is too big a question to answer in just a few minutes this evening. And I’m not sure I really know the answer.  People have been trying to figure it out for 2,000 years.  I’m not going to solve the mystery tonight.

And the fact is, by now Christmas means so many different things for so many different people.  It’s about families gathering together.  It’s a time of reflection for others.  For some its a time of joy and for others it’s a hard and lonely time of year.  I’m not even sure if I can articulate what Christmas means for me.  

But I remember this one time when my Daughter Olivia was 4 - she’s 15 now - and it was right around Christmas. 

We were in the grocery store buying stuff to make cookies to take to homebound church members.  And the grocery store, for some reason is perpetual Christmas for Olivia even today.  When Beverly my wife comes home with groceries Olivia gets really really excited.  She goes through the bags and you’d be surprised how pumped up someone can get over toilet paper.  Every bag is like a new present to her.  So Olivia was already fired up to be in the grocery store.  And of course she’s talking a mile a minute.  

But at one point she stops and looks at me and says, Daddy Christmas is coming up. And I said I know honey.  And she says Daddy, Jesus’s birthday is coming up too.  And I said I know honey.  Then her eyes got really big and she shouts, so the entire grocery store can hear: Daddy!  Is Jesus’s Birthday on Christmas?!?  And I said, It is!  To which she shouts even louder:  Jesus’s birthday is on Christmas!  JESUS IS SOO LUCKY!!  I thought she was going to explode.  

A few days later I asked her if it was Jesus’s birthday, what was she going to get him.  And she offered one of her prized baby blankets for her baby dolls.  She treasured those things above anything else she owned.  And so, after studying theology for about half my life now and after being a pastor for most of my adult life, I realize that despite all my education and reading and studying and struggling with scripture and what it means, of trying to understand what it means to have God in my life or to live by faith or even what it means to celebrate a christ-child being born, Olivia by the age of 4 had a better and deeper understanding of the nature of God and Christmas and perhaps even life than I feel like I could ever hope to have. 

I feel like there is something more to Christmas. That there is this deeper meaning, or that there is something I’m missing.  But really, when I see the happiness that Christmas causes my kids, well it just makes me excited too.  I guess I could stand up here tonight and go through the possible meanings of Christmas that its about peace and what peace looks like and its about love and family and about a light that shines through the darkness that the darkness can’t overcome.  And we could try to unpack what it means that there were shepherds and angels.  And we could try to figure out just what God intended by having Jesus be born when and where he was and what it all means.  And I feel like all that is really important. 

But maybe what’s better, maybe what Christmas is about is just being excited to be alive.  And recognizing that God is alive and God is in this world.  Maybe Olivia writes better sermons than I do because I think she gets it more than I do. You know, I put all this anticipation and expectation on the season itself and the celebrations, and on what I’m going to say.  I want everything to go perfectly and smoothly and I want people to have this deep and moving experience of Christmas. And yet, Olivia in three minutes in the grocery store at the age of 4 reminded me of the difference between trying to create an experience and truly encountering the mystery of God being born in the world.  She was so excited it’s Jesus’s birthday, that Jesus comes into our lives and into our world to be with us, that she’s willing to give something that’s precious to her to celebrate and acknowledge that reality.  And to remember the excitement on that little girls face and see it still live on in all my kids faces these past few days, it gives me hope.  

It gives me hope that the world can and will get better.  That with each new day there is new life being brought into this world and new hope and new excitement.  And maybe what Christmas is about is embracing that hope and excitement and that realization that whatever it is and whatever it means, something fundamentally changed in this world when Jesus was born.  And it calls out the best in us, and it asks us to give something precious of ourselves to this world and to this strange and mysterious God. And it asks us to be excited that we’re alive and that God is alive and that God is working in this world in very strange and very mysterious ways that we don’t always need to understand fully.  We just need to know its happening and that its good and that things will and things do get better.  And maybe that’s reason enough to celebrate Christmas.  Maybe that’s all the meaning we really need it to have. 

So, Merry Christmas.  We’re alive.  God is alive.  And God is working in our world.  

Halleluia 

Amen