I have to admit something I’m a little ashamed of. When I first found out Christmas would be on a Sunday this year, I was a little irritated.
Every year we meet at my parents’ house for breakfast on Christmas morning. We’ve done this for as long as I can remember. Well, Christmas on Sunday means that I have responsibilities here and I can’t be there for breakfast, so when I first realized this, I was irritated. Christmas Day on a Sunday put a big kink in my plans. Some of you may have felt that way as well. I felt ashamed of that, I want to say the moment I thought it, but I think it took a while. But the shame didn’t make me stop thinking about that inconvenience. It just kept irritating me. Eventually I could get a little bit excited about the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday, but I still felt inconvenienced, I still felt a little irritated.
Last night I watched a candlelight service from Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. In his sermon, their pastor, Adam Hamilton, read a quote from Dietrich Bonheoffer. And I felt a little more ashamed, because I realized why I had felt ashamed in the first place. It is something Bonheoffer wrote in a journal he kept while he lived in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. He wrote, “Every year we celebrate Christmas, but do not take it seriously.” I was ready to celebrate Christmas, but I have not taken it seriously.
Today we gather to celebrate the birth of the Christ child. We celebrate Jesus, God incarnate, born into this world.
I think part of the reason we don’t take Christmas seriously is that we forget how serious the story really is. The story becomes too familiar. It becomes too easy. We tend to not hear the story. We hear it, but we know it already, so do we really listen? This morning I invite you to listen. To hear again the story of Emmanuel.
I want to read a few different passages this morning. Three accounts of the same event, though you wouldn’t know it just by reading them.
Luke 2:1-20; Matthew 1:18-2:12; John 1:1-14
Our scriptures today tell us about God made flesh, coming to this world. The account from John’s Gospel echoes the beginning of Genesis. “In the beginning was the word…” For John, we return to the beginning, for a new beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. Then, Emmanuel, God with us, came to this earth to begin the renewing of this earth. Later John’s gospel will recall a conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, a Pharisee. In that conversation, Jesus talks about new beginnings. “No one can see heaven without being born anew.” It is that new beginning that Jesus brought to the world. It is that new beginning that Jesus brings to us. A few verses later, John gives us one of the best known verses in the Bible. And it is a verse that has a lot to say to us on this Christmas morning. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.” God so loved the world. Do you hear God’s love in that story? Do you hear how much God really loves you?
Well, let me say this. God loves you. God loves you enough to come into this world so that you, through faith and in spite of our sin, can have eternal life. God loves you enough to come, not in a blaze of glory or with trumpets sounding like an approaching king. God came as a baby. A helpless infant born to low income parents who were travelling far from home. A baby who could do nothing for himself. God’s love for each of us is present in every word of the account of Jesus’ birth. God’s love is present in the use of the unexpected doing great things. Mary, a young girl from a poor family. Joseph a carpenter, not a master carpenter, but a simple carpenter. A tekton, as opposed to an archi-tekton. Born in a dirty, smelly cave meant to shelter animals, and laid in their feeding trough as his first bed. Visited by a group of shepherds. Shepherds were seen as a lower class of people. They were shifty, not trustworthy. And this is who God chose to use to first tell the world about Jesus. Likely a few months or even a couple of years later, the family is visited again by a group of astrologers who came seeking the prophesied Judean messiah.
God takes seriously the act of loving us. So that begs the question, do we take seriously God’s ultimate act of love? How can we take Christmas seriously?
First and foremost we can take seriously what Christmas means for God. Love. God loves us and we are called to Love God and to love God’s people. After their visit to Joseph & Mary & Jesus, the shepherds “returned, glorifying and praising God.” That’s another way we can take Christmas seriously. Tell people what it means. God came to the earth because God loves us, so that all who believe can have eternal life.
So, Go and tell others what Christmas really means.
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