Christmas Eve Sermon by The Reverend Loree Reed

Luke 2: 1–20
Isaiah 9: 2–7
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to Thee, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Even as a child, a small child, I sensed something beautiful, something mysterious about Christmas.  I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t yet have words to describe what I sensed.  But I knew I had glimpsed it one Christmas morning when my father preceded my brother and me down the stairs into the still–dark living room to plug in the string of lights on the Christmas tree.  And as we watched from the stairs, that light suddenly illuminated his gentle face, revealing the love and joy he had for us – as he turned the ordinary, the everyday into something beautiful for his children.
I felt it when we entered our church’s sanctuary one morning – early for once.  Was it an Advent morning?  The first Sunday after Christmas?  I don’t remember.  I just remember the holy hush I felt when we entered that beautiful vaulted space.  And I remember the scent of evergreens.
Finally, I heard the mystery hinted at, alluded to in the words of the carol you and I just sang – ‘O little town of Bethlehem.’  “I puzzled over the words, “and in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.”  What light were they talking about? I wondered.  Was it like the light I’d seen reflected on paved streets after a rain?  Or something altogether different?  Once again, I didn’t know.  But I knew I was hearing a mystery alluded to, a mystery that others seemed to understand, but I couldn’t yet fathom.  What was it, then, that made Christmas so special?
It would be years before I read the Christmas story for myself and even more years before I began to use words like “holy” or “transcendent” to describe what I’d sensed.  But this evening I see Luke trying to show us what it all means by the way he tells us the story of the first Christmas.
He begins by naming the major players of the era – Augustus Caesar, the Roman emperor who ordered the census that demanded everyone return to his hometown to be registered . . . and Quirinius, the governor of Syria, who enforced the emperor’s law.  They were the power brokers, the movers and shakers of their day, the ones who must be obeyed.  They were the ones who determined other peoples’ realities.
Then, without fanfare, Luke gives us the quiet sentence that changes everything.  I read it tonight in the King James Version, because that’s the version I first heard as a child.
And while they were there the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.  And she brought forth her first–born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn.
It’s a quiet sentence, a seemingly innocuous sentence – but oh, it changes everything!  The lines in that carol we just sang, “O little town of Bethlehem,” express its deeper meaning perfectly.
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
The gift, you see, was more than just the gift of a baby.  Rather, the gift of that baby opened a whole new reality, a whole new world to all who would receive it.
So who received this deeper revelation that night?  Certainly not those who considered themselves wise or important, the power brokers of the world.  No, this secret world was deliberately hidden from those who think they already know and control everything.¹  And it wasn’t revealed to Mary and Joseph that night either, for angels had already revealed to them what God was doing.  Instead, the wondrous gift was revealed that night to the lowest of the low – to shepherds, abiding out in the fields outside Bethlehem, all night long with their sheep.  There was nothing high and lifted up about them, nothing important at all.  They were simply unlettered, unwashed herders of livestock existing at the margins of their community, far from the centers of respectability and prestige.²  You don’t get much lower than that.
Yet it was to them, these rough shepherds, that the skies opened up that night and the angelic host of heaven spilled out, singing praises to God.  The angels wheeled around those dark skies in bright glory, praising God for the grace he was showing that night to all of humankind and announcing, “Peace on earth! Good will to all.”
No wonder those shepherds fell to the ground in fear!  This was a whole new world, a new level of reality altogether from anything they had ever seen.  And up to this moment it had been hidden from them.  No wonder they were terrified, unable to make sense of it.  So one angel flew down to explain the inexplicable to them.
Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
This is the doorway, the low doorway through which God comes to us – not through our strength or our abilities, but through our vulnerability, our fear, our lowliness.  And that’s how it happened for those terrified shepherds.  They listened to the angel’s words. They believed . . . and took off running to Bethlehem . . . to see for themselves.  And when they found Mary and Joseph and the baby – just as the angel had told them – they fell to their knees again – this time, not in fear, but in worship.
This was the secret world, the hidden world my child’s heart had intuited.  It was the world that beckoned to me long before I could make sense of it.  And tonight, through the words of our carol, it beckons to each one of us.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him . . .  still . . . the dear Christ enters in.
Merry Christmas!
Amen.
¹ Walter Brueggemann   Celebrating Abundance; Devotions for Advent   (Westminster John Knox: Louisville, Kentucky, 2017) p. 26.

² John Philip Newell   “Look to the Child”   Sermon for Decembesr 25, 2011 on Day One
 
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