Sermon | Year A - The Year of Mark

December 24, 2008 | Christmas Eve

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14 [15-20]

I read about a story of an old man who lived in the center of a desolate and hopeless city. Day after day, He would walk outside of his house, onto the streets, and yell to the top of his lungs, "Love, peace, and righteousness!" He would do this like clockwork, everyday, rain or shine.

One day the man's next-door neighbor became tired of the daily yelling. He confronted man, saying, “What do you think you are doing? Are you crazy with all this shouting? Every day you come out of your house and yell 'Love, peace and righteousness!' Do you not realize that nobody is listening to you! Save your breath! You cannot change the world!" The old man replied, "You are right. My shouting about love, peace and righteousness may not change the world; however, maybe it will stop the world from changing me!"

This story is a little like what we are doing here tonight. Every year, we hear the story of Christmas. We hear it in movies, plays, and read it in books. Children's Christmas programs announce it. Choirs and concerts declare it. We put it in our front years with manger scenes. Carolers go from home to home in the cold singing about the Christ Child. It is the same story year after year, and decade after decade, century to century.

We all know the story of Mary and Joseph, the census, the inn, stable, shepherds, and angels. However, we still need to hear it. We tell the story every year because it is a story that actually did change the world. However, from a personal sense, we hear the story because it changes something in us. It preserves what we believe. It retains what we know is true. It is a story that speaks not only to our better nature, but most importantly, it reveals something to us about the nature of the God, we worship.

The Christmas story is like the man yelling in the middle of a desolate city. It points us to what is good. It shows us what is sacred in a world often tarnished and profaned.

If you are anything like me, there have been times this season when I have found myself losing sight of what this time says. Amid the stress and pressures of these weeks, it becomes easy to forget exactly what it is that is being told to us. In the chaos of stores, lines, and deadlines, more than once I have had to say to myself that this celebration is actually about God becoming one of us as a child. It is about God made flesh gracing, blessing, and making holy all those people who have tried my patience as I stood in line, the bad drivers I have fought traffic, and those who beat me to the sale as I hunted for bargains. God became flesh to make them holy. He became a human being to give his life for them. The story of the Christ Child is a voice shouting love, peace, and righteousness in the noise and commotion of those lines.

All of this brings us here to this evening. We come here again tonight to hear the story. We come here to celebrate the birth of the Son of God. We come here because instinctively we know that what happens here is good, true, and right. Here we put away all that has gone before us. Here we begin new like a child just born. Here our sins are forgiven, our faults are forgotten, and our life is made fresh all because God chose to become one of us born in a manger. The Christmas story comes calling, “Love, peace, and righteousness.”

From the time I was a child and first began to hear the Christmas story, the words that have captivated me are the ones describing Mary as pondering all these things in her heart. What did she ponder? What did she think? What did it mean to her?

I think what it means is that Mary’s pondering these events shows the response we are to have to the miracle of Christ’s birth. We ponder what means for the relationships we have, the people we know, and those anonymous faces we bump into in the stores and streets. We ponder what it means for God to become one of us as we look upon those who enter our lives. For it in them, we live the meaning of Christ’s birth. It is in those lives that the meaning or point of Christ’s birth is at work. It is in those lives that sin and forgiveness are at work. It is those lives God made holy on the night of Jesus’ birth. We are left to ponder the meaning of this. We are left to live out the meaning of Christ’s love as it reaches into the lives of those people in our lives both known and unknown, those who are familiar and strangers. Love, peace, and righteousness, the words are being shouted to the world in the birth of Christ. These are shouted so that, in a world that is changing, we do not lose sight of what actually matters. Amen.