Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on December 24, 2016
Scripture text: Luke 2:1-7
I try to have a sense of how I’m going to preach Christmas Eve some weeks before the day arrives. In an effort to find some ideas, I went through my sermon blog to review old Christmas sermons and I found some inspiration in the very first Christmas Eve sermon I preached here. In it, I ranted and raved against the “Christmas rules.”
Well, not much has changed in four years. I still hate the Christmas rules, those requirements that are placed upon all of us to have a sense of artificial cheer and sentimentality during this time of year. Be happy. Be joyful. Be full of mirth. OR ELSE!
In recent years, there’s even been a new rule. The old ones weren’t enough, so they added a new one. Back during my childhood all those years ago, “Happy Holidays” was a perfectly acceptable greeting for people during this time of year. But not anymore. Now using that particular phrase makes you are some manner of Christmas apostate. A heathen who rejects the true spirit of Christmas. Another rule. Yet more Christmas rule nonsense.
I don’t like these rules because they create an aura of fakery and deceit around this holiday. They force us to feel things we might not. They force us to gloss over memories that might be painful. They force us to pretend that the world is not what it is, to ignore the fact that our fellow citizens celebrate a whole myriad of holidays from Hanukkah to Kwanzaa to Mawlid to Yule to New Year’s Eve. I doubt many of even us Christians will forego that last one in order to somehow make Christmas the sole holiday of the season. I know I won’t.
These rules force us to pretend. To be something we are not. To feel things we may not. I don’t like that kind of fakery. I like the truth. I like what is real. And I’m not alone.
You see, all the very BEST Christmas stories don’t obey the rules. All the best Christmas stories begin dire and dark. The Grinch is going to steal all the Christmas presents. Scrooge is a horrible nasty person who’s going to be damned if he doesn’t shape up. George Bailey is about to jump off a bridge and kill himself. Even Charlie Brown is made fun of for his wimpy little tree, and Rudolph can’t play any reindeer games. These are not happy stories, at least not the start. They are grounded in the real and often painful experiences of human beings.
Luke’s Gospel story of Jesus’ birth, the story of the first Christmas, does not begin as a happy story either. That’s because it’s not some fairy tale fantasy. It is not perfect and pretty like a Norman Rockwell painting. It is grounded in the real world. Luke begins the story not with “Once upon a time,” but with a statement of the political order of the day. “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus” and this happened “while Quirinius was governor of Syria.”
The decree is for a census, to discover the population of the vast Roman Empire. Older translations of this story, like the KJV, cut to the chase. The census is for a tax. A tax of this magnitude can only mean one thing. The Empire is going to war. There is an invasion planned, perhaps of Briton or Germany or Parthia (modern day Iran.) Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Then as now, those lands where human civilization was born are seemingly a place of unending conflict and turmoil.
This is the world into which Jesus is born. A world upon which a shadow of death and suffering lies. People are going to die in the Empire’s war. There will be disease and famine, with refugees displaced from their homes. It will be a nightmare and this is the world into which Jesus is born..
Jesus’ birth is the coming of light into the darkness. Hope in the midst of despair. Love in the midst of hatred. Mercy in the midst of vengeance. Life in the midst of death.
THIS IS WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT. Jesus comes into the real world, the world in which we all live. A world that is what it is, not what we pretend it to be.
This world’s been broken since before the beginning of human history. Sin and death has plagued us and our forebears for as long as we can remember and even before. But the birth of this child that we mark on this night is the beginning of a new reality, one where that which is broken is set right.
This child, once he becomes a man, shows us what that looks like. He makes the lame to walk and the blind to see. He heals people of horrible disease. He welcomes strangers and outcasts. He forgives the guilty, embraces the broken-hearted. He brings to life again the dead. In small ways, Jesus puts things right, a preview of what is to come for all of us.
This world is broken, but it will not always be so. There is still a shadow of death and suffering cast upon us, but it is fading. It is fading because God is at work in our world. He wants the wrong set right. He’s wanted that since day one.
Christmas is the culmination of a promise made to the patriarch Abraham at the dawn of human civilization. I will make of you a great nation and from your descendants shall come a blessing for the whole world. That blessing would be the one to put right what has gone wrong in this world. That blessing would be a child born in a manger, born in the shadow of the pain of war, born to set the world free.
God lives in the real world with us. Jesus was born into the real world with us. And because of that, the real world in which we live is changing. Tears will be wiped away. Sorrow and death will one day be no more. All that is wrong will be put right. THIS IS WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT. It’s about a broken world being put right.
To those whose Christmas memories are not always joyful, here is your hope. To those who feel pain on this night, here is a salve for your wounds. To those who keenly feel the absence of loved ones, know that this child in the manger has come to bring them to life again. To those of us who live in the real world and not a picturesque fantasy, a real Jesus has come to bind up our wounds and to put the world right. He has come in love offering hope and bringing light and life to a darkened world. That is Christmas. That is why we are here tonight.
Merry Christmas and God’s blessings be upon you all. Amen.
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