Sermon: Christmas Eve

Stressed out over the sheer amount of things to be done to prepare for this night, I called a dear friend a few days ago. “Settle down,” he said, “Christmas Eve sermons basically write themselves.”
My dear friend is usually right, but not this year. Christmas Eve sermons do usually write themselves, as we read the same story every year, we light candles the same way every year. We talk about what we are going to eat and the gifts we are going to open in the same way every year. So the message seems to stay the same year after year. But not this year.
Not this year, because something has changed. Perhaps there is some grace in this change, but most of us come to this night a little bit off kilter. More people than ever before have come to my office this year complaining that they just can’t seem to get in the holiday spirit. It doesn’t feel quite like Christmas, no matter how hard they try, no matter how many times they listen to Christmas songs, buy presents, or bake cookies. More people than ever before have stopped by the office because they have lost jobs this year and can’t afford to buy presents for their kids, and they don’t know what to do. More people have stopped by because they are afraid they are going to lose their homes this year, they’ve lost their livelihoods already. So this year, Christmas Eve doesn’t write itself because it feels like a different kind of year. A scarier year, a year that is ending without things nicely wrapped up. With our financial lives in turmoil, with friends and loved ones unemployed and losing their homes, this year ends a little messy, with people we see everyday tightening their belts and bracing for a coming year that might get even worse.
The story of this night is the same, but our hearing of it this year is different. Caesar Augustus, the most powerful man in the all the world, orders that all people shall return to their homelands to be registered and to pay a tax to the empire. There in Bethlehem these two outsiders, Mary and Joseph, can’t find room in those dark streets, so they stumble into a stable, and prepare for the birth of this most mysterious, most wonderful, most special child. I wonder if in that stable Mary remembered the words of the angel only months before, the angel who came to her and told her that she was with child, that she would give birth to the son of God, and that most of all, despite everything, that she ought not be afraid, because God was with her. I wonder if she carried those words in her heart, that hope of God’s future as they entered that humble stable and prepared for this most important birth, even if it wasn’t what she imagined, even though she was far from her family, I wonder if Mary remembered those words, if she could still hear that angel’s voice, “do not be afraid…”
Do not be afraid, we hear those same words only moments later, as angels fill the skies over shepherds watching their flocks. These outcast, lonely, shepherds not counted in this great census, doing their everyday work on an everyday kind of night. They are the first to hear tell of this good news, as the heavens break open and their everyday life is filled with an incredible light. Unto you, nameless shepherds, is born a savior in the city of David. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid.
And so those shepherds hurry off, leaving their flocks to fend for themselves, because they have heard the greatest of news. In the middle of their everyday life, everything is drowned out by the good news, the gospel in flesh, that God has been born among them. That everything has changed. That the world has been turned upside down, and that they, who are at the bottom of the social world, they who work in the fields, they who live in the fields, they who are so far from the powerful emperor who began this story, they are the first to hear this news. They are the first to rush off with great haste. They are the first to rejoice because it is all true. They are the first to write the Christmas eve sermon, to rejoice at what God has done. In the middle of the every day.
This year is different. Christmas doesn’t write itself. Some of us come to this night in knowledge of our desperate need for this story. Understanding our most desperate need for hope. Perhaps we have become cynical, hearing stories day after day of unending greed in the people around us and even in ourselves. Perhaps we come to this night scared because things appear to be getting worse instead of better- we have realized that we can’t secure our own future, no matter how hard we try, because things happen beyond our control. Perhaps we come to this night with the deepest of sadness, because there is someone missing at the table, there is one stocking that won’t be hung this year. Perhaps we come to this night tired, just tired of the piles of stuff that fill our lives and the pull of all those things that grasp for our time. Christmas didn’t write itself this year, we don’t just fall into the spirit. We very well might enter into another year with more sadness, more despair, more darkness, more cynicism. What we need is that greatest of hopes, that reminder that we need not be afraid, because a baby has been born to shake the world from its moorings, a baby has been born to offer us hope, hope against cynicism, hope in the goodness of the world, hope that God will always be with us, will be with us so much that God will be born among us, hope that sadness and grief and pain and anger can’t have the last word, because God has so wrapped us in love that God was born among us. Born in that little child, born on that holiest of nights so that we need not be afraid.
On that cold, dark night, God met the people with the greatest of promises, in the midst of their fear. In the midst of a census meant to count them and tax them, in the midst of an oppressive rule and questions if God was even with the Israelites anymore, in the midst of greed and corruption and violence, in the midst of every reason to be afraid, God is born to two outsiders in a stable in Bethlehem. God’s reign is announced not in halls of power, but in fields among the lowliest. God’s reign is testified to by outsiders, not by kings and princes. And they go no longer afraid, no longer afraid because the promise is real. God is with us.
Tonight, born in the city of David is our Savior, Jesus Christ. Emmanuel, God with us. Tonight all that we are in bondage to, all the fear and the cynicism, all the hopelessness and the anger, all the pain and the things that separate us from each other and from God, on this night we are told that in the midst of all that we bring, God meets us. God lives among us. God has come to set us free. We do not know what the next year will look like. We do not know if we will hear more stories of pain and despair, we don’t know if those stories will be our own. But on this night, we do know that God’s reign has been proclaimed among us. That God is with us. That despite our fears, despite our lack of the Christmas spirit, despite all we might bring to this snowy evening, God’s reign has already begun. Jesus Christ has lived that we might have life. That we might, like Mary, ponder these things in our hearts. That we mi ght, no matter what surrounds us, that we might hear God’s word, “Do not be afraid.” Amen.