2018
Christmas Eve Sermon
Bill
Carter
By
my calculation, this is the 35th time I have preached on Christmas
Eve. That’s not counting the teenage youth group Christmas pageant, where I
portrayed the front end of a donkey. 35 Christmas Eves. It takes a while to get
it right.
So
I thought that I would tell you tonight what Christmas is all about. Ready? I
am aiming for the heart of it all. I’ve
cut away the fake tinsel and the artificial light. No mention of gift cards, snowflakes,
or chestnuts. I’m going put Christmas in three words. You might want to write
this down. Here goes.
Union
with God. That’s it.
We
can expand on that, I suppose. Fortunately I have a few minutes to do that, especially
for that guy in the camel hair coat who will meet me at the door and say, “What
exactly did you mean by that ‘union with God’ thing?” That’s a good question.
Some
people don’t think such a thing is possible, like the Puritans who came to
America four hundred years ago. They hated Christmas. They did everything they
could to shut it down. They broke off from the Anglicans, accusing them of partying
too much. They complained there was too much merriment in late December, too
much frivolity, too much celebration, too much brazen activity. Those Puritans declared,
“The Gospel is made of sterner stuff!” So they outlawed celebrations of this
night and stated that all must spend their time in repentance.
Hate
to tell you, but this brand of church came from the Puritans. Well starched. Stiff
backed. Affectionately known as the “Frozen Chosen.”
They
believed there is no way any human person could ever be united with God, that we
are too tainted, too dirty, too broken, too corrupt. It was not uncommon to
attend a Puritan church around Christmas time and hear a two-hour sermon about how
bad you were. When the congregation was properly chastised, the preacher would
remind them that Christ died to take away our sin. If only they repented, their
sins might be taken away. That’s the only way they knew how to get united
to God: through the cross. They thought you couldn’t really live with God until
you died. And then, maybe.
With
that, they pulled on grey overcoats and shuffled home to a dinner of cold
porridge. Merry Christmas, Frozen Chosen.
This
was all they knew. I don’t blame them for that. Life was hard. Living like Jesus was difficult,
and still is. Their only connection to God was through the preaching of their
sins, with the tail-end reminder that God could remove that sin if only they
were penitent enough. For them, life was only about the death of Jesus. Not
even a resurrection could lift their hearts. And so they squelched Christmas.
But
here’s the thing: Christmas is the truth of God’s union with us. What did God
do? Became a human child. That is the Christmas story. The Creator sets aside
all power and heavenly privilege and becomes part of the Creation. “God is with
us” – that’s the message. That’s the heart of it all. It’s what we are singing
about. And if that’s true, maybe there’s more to life than the death of Jesus. Maybe
there’s also resurrection. And maybe, the birth of Jesus matters too. Maybe his
birth matters for our life.
Here
is what one brilliant soul (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) had to say:
Christ took upon
himself this human form of ours … In the Incarnation the whole human race
recovers the dignity of the image of God … Through fellowship and communion
with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we
are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and
retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ
incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore.[1]
Now,
that’s a lot of theology, especially for those who have had a couple of glasses
of wine. So
let’s hear it in words from the Gospel of John. First, this verse: “What has come into being in him was
life, and the life was the light of all people. “ And then this one: “The
Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory . . . full of
grace and truth.” And if that’s still too much, here’s a line from a
Christmas carol: “Light and life to all he brings.”
Light
and life. These are the gifts of God. We don’t have to work for them. They are
already there, ready to be received. Rather than stretch and strain and stress
out, it’s so much better to lean back, breathe in the air, and say, “Thank you
God for light and life.” For God has
dignified human life on the day that Jesus was born. It was the sign that God
wishes for heaven and earth to be united. We don’t have to wait until we die
before we live with God. We can live
with God here and now. In the depths of
prayer, the mystics call this “union with God.”
Now,
any of us can lose that sense of living with God. God is quiet enough that a
lot of us are accustomed to living only with ourselves. And we do have the freedom
to mess up our lives as much as we want. But to mess up your life – or somebody
else’s life – is not to own our God-given dignity. And if we wear ourselves out
at Christmas time, we are not accepting the grace of God that says, “I made
you, I became like you, and I love you just the way you are.”
Bonhoeffer
was right: “In
the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.”
We
do not need to live as those separated from God if we can receive the gift of God-with-us. We do not have to allow
our brokenness to break anybody else if we can receive the gift that God holds
our broken pieces and offers
to mend whatever can be mended. We don’t have to poison our own bodies or twist
our minds or pull our arms out of joint by reaching for what we think we do not
have; God has already entrusted great riches to each one of us. For our part,
we can open our hands to receive what God has already given us and then we can do
something beautiful with everything that we have received.
What
we have received is life, God’s life - that's the light in everybody’s eyes. No
need to make this harder than it is. The Christmas invitation is to stand in
the light. Receive the life. And remember, on a night like this, God was found
among us … and has never gone away. That’s what Christmas is all about. Union
with God. God with us. It's the all in all, and it's enough. I don’t know about
you, but it makes me want to sing. Makes me want to dance.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of
Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995) p. 301
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