A Flexible Christmas

Sermon preached Sunday, December 24, 2020, Christmas Eve, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA. 

I’m going to hazard a guess and say that last year on this day, you had no idea what the next twelve months would bring. None of us did!

We’re here doing something completely different because that is what’s required: adapting and flexibility and living into the unknown. We’ve changed the way we do worship on a weekly basis and, of course, we’ve changed the way we’re doing Christmas Eve worship so that we can still see one another, even through car windows, and we can still sing carols, even along with the radio, and we can still celebrate Christ’s birth.

The truth of the matter is: the first Christmas took quite a bit of flexibility as well.

Mary and Joseph’s life had been upended by the census and they had to travel, while Mary was very pregnant, so that they could be counted.

They arrived on the scene in the Bethlehem and didn’t have a nice guest room to stay in, but rather the same space that was occupied by animals.

When Jesus was born, a makeshift bed was made in a feeding trough.

And after Jesus’ birth, Joseph is told in a dream to flee down to Egypt to escape King Herod’s rage.

As much as we love the peaceful images of the nativity, nothing about that first Christmas would have been routine or “normal” or expected. …and that’s exactly what makes it so remarkable.

God is always choosing unexpected ways to come to us and taking on our flesh and coming to live among us is the most unexpected way of all.

So, yes, this year has thrown us curveballs. We’ve had to adjust and adapt and always expect things to change…but we also know that even in the midst of all of that, God can do some remarkable things.

In a little bit, we’re going to sing “Silent Night” together. It’s one of the most beloved Christmas Carols and it is so many people’s favorite thing to stand in the sanctuary on Christmas Eve, to have the lights turned out, and to sing this beloved song by candlelight.

…but do you know that it’s the result of a last-minute change, an unexpected problem that caused this carol to come into existence?

In 1818, a young priest named Joseph Mohr was preparing the Christmas worship service. A flood had come through the town and damaged the organ and he was faced with the prospect of there being no music on Christmas Eve—something that would have disappointed his congregation then as it would disappoint so many congregations today.

Two years earlier, Mohr had written a poem and he took the text to a school teacher and church organize Franz Gruber and asked him to set the words to music for guitar and two voices. In an afternoon, the music was done and “Silent Night” was born.

Guitar was not even an approved instrument for worship at this point! But Mohr and Gruber used their creativity and flexibility to make something beautiful happen. And God used this unexpected hardship of a damaged organ to bring to life one of the most cherished of all Christmas songs.

So, when we sing it in a few minutes, think of the words—but also think of the story. How is God acting in unexpected ways? Where might God unexpectedly show up when all else seems lost?

Because God will. Because God did.

On a silent night, Christ, our Savior, was born.

Amen.

The Meaning of Christmas

Sermon preached Tuesday, December 24, 2019, Christmas Eve, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA.

I’m not going to lie, I love Christmas movies. I love the ones that are genuinely good: clever, heartwarming, sweet without being saccharine. But I also love the ones that are so terrible that I think they are actually amazing.

This holiday season, I had even more time than usual to indulge in these deliciously awful movies. I watched all three “A Christmas Prince” movies on Netflix in a marathon one day. I watched movies that I first saw on tv ten or more years ago, but now can stream. I watched ones that I make a point to watch every year, and ones I’ve never seen before. In short, I watched ‘em all, with no discernment as to their quality.

In a lot of ways, the movies—at least the wonderfully bad ones—are incredibly similar. There are stock characters and stock story lines. As an example, one trope you see over and over again is the overworked city guy or gal who doesn’t celebrate Christmas (obnoxious and/or unsupportive fiancé optional) has to go to a small town, which is likely the town they are from, and save a business and/or festival and rediscover themselves and Christmas and a local love interest who is likely their high school sweetheart. There, you can now say you know the plot to over 50% of Hallmark’s Christmas movies. 😊

Everything always reaches a climax on Christmas Eve. Snow will start to fall, especially if the locals have been talking about how there hasn’t been snow. And everyone will talk about the “real meaning of Christmas.” Of course, these are movies marketed to a wide audience and movies that focus on the secular part of Christmas that has developed alongside the religious celebration, and so when they talk about the “real meaning of Christmas,” it’s usually some combination of family, friends, hope, love, and generosity. It’s about people coming together and supporting one another. The one thing you never hear it being about is God or the incarnation.

I’m not bashing these movies—I’ve admitted that I love watching them!—but the endings always make me smile a bit when the real meaning of Christmas—of Christ’s Mass—isn’t ever Christ.

We’re all here tonight because we know what that meaning is—the real meaning of Christmas is the incarnation: God coming into our world and into our flesh to live among us and bring us back into a good and right relationship.

For those of you who were here in worship on Sunday, I’m going to repeat myself a bit, but the message bears repeating. The incarnation, the notion that God is with us here and now, always and forever is what makes today important. It is central to our theology. The sacrifice on the cross is not the saving act we know it to be if it is not God’s own self being crucified. And it’s not only our salvation that is at stake—it’s the notion of a God who knows what it is like to be human.

So, we don’t need to ask hypothetical questions about if Jesus knew hunger—we know he did, when he spent weeks in the wilderness with no food. We don’t need to ask if Jesus got angry—we know that he angrily threw corrupt vendors out of the temple. We don’t need to ask if Jesus got tired—he slept and found time to rest away from other people. We don’t need to ask if Jesus got sad—he wept when he learned his friend Lazarus had died, even knowing that he would be raised from the dead.

Tonight, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the beginning of God’s dwelling with us in human form. We celebrate God’s willingness to lay aside God’s power. We remember how humbly the divine can break into our lives.

Because if God can choose to come as a baby in a tiny village, in a stable surrounded by animals, to parents of no importance or influence…how else might God be choosing to come to us?

Might God be coming to us in the tiny details of nature we so often overlook? Or in the stranger on the street we avoid making eye contact with? Or in the child we’re too busy to give appropriate attention to?

The incarnation tells us there is no person and no thing that God cannot use to reach out to us.

So, there’s nothing wrong with celebrating the themes of love or generosity or hope at Christmas—those are the themes of our faith. And there is certainly nothing wrong with watching some harmless Christmas movies. But we know that Christmas is only Christmas because of Emmanuel—God is with us; only because of the incarnation; only because the infinite chose to become finite.

Amen.

Drop the Blanket

Sermon preached Monday, December 24, 2018, Christmas Eve, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA. 

Our scripture today told the story of Christmas from the time Mary and Joseph receive the news from the angels until Christ’s actual birth. Four narratives, telling four parts of the Christmas story. And in three of those narratives, the angels say the same thing.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel Gabriel tells Mary. “Do not be afraid…for you have found favor with God.” (Luke 1) An angel of the Lord appears to Joseph and says, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1) Finally, an angel appears to a group of shepherds in a field and declares, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people.” (Luke 2) Words to a perplexed teenager, words to an anxious husband-to-be, words to terrified shepherds. Over and over again: “Do not be afraid.”

Interestingly enough, in the fourth reading, our designated Gospel reading for this morning, there are no angels, no announcements, no exhortations of “Do not be afraid.” In this fourth reading, Christ is finally born and there is no more fear. God comes into our world, takes on our flesh, and fear is no longer in the driver’s seat.

It’s not that there was nothing to be afraid of—of course there was! Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem because of a census required by the occupying Roman Empire. The threat of violence was never far away if Roman soldiers thought the people around them were getting a little too uppity or encouraging sedition.

More threats came from the local ruler, King Herod. When he discovers that Jesus exists and that he is to be a king, he takes it upon himself to kill all children in and around Bethlehem under two years of age to prevent anyone from usurping his throne. Mary, Joseph and their young son are forced to flee their home, travel to Egypt as refugees, and hide there. As Jesus grew older and began proclaiming God’s word to all people, many of the established religious leaders felt their position and power being threatened, leading them to plot Jesus’ demise.

There was and is still plenty in the world to cause fear and anxiety…but the birth of Jesus, the coming of God to dwell among us in our own flesh…this gives us peace and knowledge and strength that is far greater than fear.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with Peanuts, the comics and movies starring Charlie Brown. Many of you probably watched A Charlie Brown Christmas at some point in the past month or so. Anyway, the story of that Peanuts special is somewhat straightforward. Charlie Brown is struggling with the over-commercialization of Christmas and his inability to figure out what Christmas is all about. He arrives at the rehearsal for the Christmas play, and he is still struggling. He asks loudly if anyone can tell him what Christmas is all about. …and then comes Linus.

Linus, if you remember, always has a security blanket. He is teased for it. His friends and family try to trick him out of using it and try to take it away, but he needs it. It gives him comfort when he is afraid or unsure. This Linus is the one to tell Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about by reciting verses from the Gospel of Luke, lines that we heard tonight in our third reading. It’s simple and yet remarkable…but someone pointed out to me something even more interesting this year: Linus and his blanket are inseparable, but as he recites from Luke’s Gospel, he drops his blanket. He doesn’t need it because of the story he’s heard, the story that has been passed down to us, the story we heard tonight, the story that changes the whole world.

Linus picks his blanket right back up again when he’s done. He will be afraid again…just like we will. We will still be afraid of being taken advantage of, of our loved ones dying, of not being able to pay our bills. We will still be afraid getting hurt, physically, emotionally and spiritually. We will still be afraid, from time to time, that we may not be as good of a person as we want to be. We will still be afraid, we will still find ourselves struggling with anxiety, we will still need to be comforted…and that’s when the Christmas story does its best work.

The message tonight and tomorrow, the message of the incarnation is deceptively simple: God came to us to show us exactly how much we are loved. Another pastor put it this way:

“When God surveyed humanity and realized how dark and difficult our days could be, how confused we get about our identity and place, how many painful things we do to each other out of that confusion and insecurity, God decided to do something about it. And so after giving the law and sending the prophets, God got involved. Personally, intimately involved with God’s fallen creation.” (David Lose, http://www.davidlose.net/2015/12/christmas-eveday-c-keep-it-simple/)

God got involved, but not in a way that brought destruction or judgement or condemnation. No, God got involved and brought hope, light and a Savior willing to die on the cross to show the incredible extent to which God loves us. God did not give up on us, abandon us, or decide that a different creation might turn out a little bit better. Tonight, we celebrate the Good News that God is always finding ways to come to us, to find us, to meet us where we are in our world, just as God came as an infant born and laid in a manger.

Do not be afraid, for Christ is born. Son of God. Word of God. The Light of the World. The Good Shepherd. The Way, the Truth, and the Life. Wonderful Counselor. Almighty God. Prince of Peace. Lamb of God. Messiah. Emmanuel.

Christ has come. Love has come, and never will leave us.

Do not be afraid.

Amen.