Scripture text: Isaiah 9:2-7
Merry Christmas everyone.
In my previous call in WV, I gained a reputation for being the pastor who didn’t like to play by the Christmas rules. Rules? There are rules to Christmas? Well, of course, there are. We all know them well. “Smile, it’s Christmas!” “Nothing bad can happen at Christmas.” “It’s the most perfect time of year.” Everything’s great and wonderful and happy. TV turns into Hallmark-y feel-good sappy programs where everything has a happy ending because it’s Christmas. Radio turns into Christmas carols non-stop 24/7. These are the rules. I hate them.
Yeah, there. I admitted it. I love Christmas, but I hate the Christmas rules. It’s just not me. I’m not a sentimental guy. I don’t go for extravagant displays of emotion about most things, and this time of year is no exception. I’m not one to put on a smile just because of a rule or a tradition or an expectation by others. If there’s a smile on my face this night, it’s because it’s real. It’s because I mean it.
And I don’t like schmaltzy saccharine-sweet pop culture either. I’m the kind of guy who thinks “Die Hard” is the best of all Christmas movies. It is totally unpretentious. There’s no sentimentality in it. No nostalgia (although it is over 20 years old now). No pretending that evil has disappeared. Bad things still happen. Evil still exists, even on Christmas.
While it’s still a bit of Hollywood fiction, it feels more real to me than most things about this holiday. It doesn’t play by the rules either, and I guess that’s why I like it.
What is real to you this night and what is just “playing by the rules?” Do we know where that line is drawn anymore? We go insane in our desperate attempts to create a perfect Christmas. We pack into stores and fight tooth and nail for that perfect ham for Christmas dinner or that perfect toy. We sing all the right songs and wear all the right clothes. We go to church, maybe the only time of year we do so. All for the sake of the rules. So I ask again, in the midst of all the traditions and expectations, the sentimentality and the nostalgia, what is real to you on this night?
For many, maybe even some of you, what is real is not the presents that will often lie broken and forgotten in a week’s time. It’s not in the visiting family and friends that will be gone again in a few short days. It’s not in the time off from work that lasts maybe 24-hours in our over-worked and under-paid world. Nor is it in the spirit of kindness, good cheer, and charity that will sadly vanish from our society like Cinderella’s carriage at midnight on the 25th. None of that is real because it is gone almost as quickly as it comes.
What is real is the pain that doesn’t disappear just because it’s Christmas Eve. What is real is the loneliness, which remains despite the cheer of this night. What is real is the illness that doesn’t stop ravaging our body despite the date on the calendar. What is real is the fear. Is there a job for me? Can I make ends meet to support myself, my spouse, my children?
Is that what is real to you this night? If so, then I am here to tell you that this night, the promise of this night, what is REAL about this night is especially for you.
You see, YOU are the reason we are here. YOU and your pain and your fears and your brokenness, that is the reason for the season. Oh, but Pastor, we say “Jesus” is the reason for the season. Yes, but why Jesus? Why did he come? Why did God bother to incarnate as a human being and be born in a manger on this night?
Why indeed if not to give God’s answer to the messed up world that we live in? A world in which pain, hypocrisy, grief, and guilt are real 24/7/365 for people. They don’t go away on this night any more than they do on any other, no matter what the rules are. We may pretend for this one day they aren’t there. But they come back. They always come back.
And it is because they haunt us so that this little baby is born in a manger. Christmas comes BECAUSE our world is so screwed up, not in spite of it. So...
- To the young man sitting on the edge of his bed, gun in hand, ready to end it all, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your pain and broken heart.
- To the teacher who just learned one of his students was killed in an accident on the morning of Christmas Eve, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your grief and shock at this tragedy.
- To the family who lays to rest one of their own on Christmas Eve, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your sorrow and loss.
- To the one who lies in the hospital on this night uncertain of what disease keeps him there, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of your fears and anxieties about the future.
- To all of you here present who hide secret wounds behind a holiday smile, I say to you that Christ came for you and he came because of all you bear inside, the things the world never sees. Pain, guilt, regrets, whatever they are. He came for you and to give God’s answer to those things you carry within.
THAT is what’s real tonight. A world of sin and death and pain and a God who comes within it to set right what has gone wrong. Darkness into which the light has come.
It’s amazing to me how many of these classic Christmas scriptures begin in darkness. That’s not coincidental. “Those who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.” “A light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” We live in a dark world, my friends, but now the light shines out.
The funny thing about all our pretending is how it drowns out that light. What is light in the midst of light? Do you even see an individual light in a well-lit room? But make that room pitch black and your eyes will be drawn instantly to the flash of a candle being lit. You will never miss it.
That is what Christ is in our world. The flame of a candle in darkened room.
That flame burns in the darkness for you. Its light comes forth for you. For you, not as you pretend to be in the midst of holiday traditions, unwritten rules, and self-imposed demands of perfection, but for the real you: flawed, imperfect, and wounded. The Christ child comes for that person, living in that dark place. He comes for you in your grief, in your sorrow, in your fear and he says to you “I love you. I came for you. I will set right what has gone wrong for you.”
That is what is real. A savior come into a broken world and into broken lives to put things right. Christ comes in flesh. Christ comes as a human being with all that goes with it. All the pain, all the limitations, all the struggles. He knows what it means to be you.
And to make right what is wrong, he takes on all the world’s pain, all the world’s sin, into himself and goes to a cross. He does this for you; he dies for you. He dies to set things right, to bring an end to sin and death, to pain and sorrow. Then on the third day he rises and proves to all that it is done.
Jesus didn’t come into the world to give us one day of pretend bliss a year; he came to give us real joy for an eternity. This he did for you and you and everyone. To the hurting and the happy. That’s God’s answer to the evils that plague us in life. That’s what real on this night and every night. Light in the darkness. Our true hope, our real hope, in a broken world. Amen.
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