Sermon for Christmas Eve
Christmas and Change
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
Most everyone knows the Christmas story and so many, like me and probably you, really love it. And, no matter how many times we have heard it, we want to hear it again. I know that I do.
The simple shepherds in the field watching over their flocks at night; the sudden starlit sky with the angel and the heavenly host proclaiming good news to all of humanity; the shepherds who go and follow the directions of the angels and find Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus lying in the straw surrounded by the silent, innocent benediction of the animals in the stable. We can all picture it. And we all just love it.
No matter how many times we have heard this story, no matter how many times we have seen it portrayed on greeting cards around the Christmas season or in images that we see on television, in film or online, no matter how many times - we just love Christmas and its wonderful, warm, loving image. Hearing it, we just want to be wrapped up in it, just like baby Jesus was wrapped in “swaddling clothes,” the bands of cloth that baby Jesus is described as being wrapped in
Christmas is like that for us. It is like streamers of warm and wonderful family memories of images that we treasure and hold dear, that we wrap around ourselves every Christmas. In cooler climates, it keeps us warm in the winter. It makes us feel comforted and hopeful. It brings us back to childhood - every Christmas, year after year after year.
You know, the truth is no matter how avant-garde or forward thinking or progressive we may believe ourselves to be as Christians, every Christmas we all turn into traditionalists and sentimentalists.
And, we do not want Christmas to ever change. We do not want to ever stop hearing this story in Luke. We never want to stop seeing that image of the baby Jesus in the manger. We want to feel that again and again and again. We can easily become nostalgic for it. It is so comforting to us. We never ever, ever, want our Christmas to change.
And, then, somewhere in the distance we hear the small sound of a tinkling bell. It is the bell of irony. And that small bell reminds us of the irony of our faith that on the very feast of the nativity of Christ Jesus, when we so much want nothing to ever change, we are, in fact, celebrating the great moment of change in human history. We are, in fact, celebrating a moment when God enters into history and nothing is ever the same after that.
Incarnation, that churchy word which means God becoming human in Jesus Christ, incarnation also means change. It means God coming into our time and into our space and into our lives and into our comfort zone and shaking things up and making them be recreated in a new way and challenging us to confront change and to be active in doing something, being co-creators with God in the world around us.
Christmas is nothing but a constant celebration year after year after year that no year is ever the same and that our lives are never the same and that every year we are, in fact, older and, hopefully, wiser, but every year we are still engaged with our God, the God of history, in making things happen.
How ironic, that on a day when we want absolutely nothing to change we are, in fact, celebrating the greatest change ever.
Of course, change is not something that we as Christians should fear. Change is the nature of life. It is the nature of the church.
We must not take our sentimentality for a Christmas season and extend it over the other 364 days of a year to try and build walls of supposed tradition to hold back the change of our creative God. We should not be fearful when the things that we do in the church and the things that the church does in the world around it suddenly seem to be different.
We must not fear the new but be active agents of bringing the new as God brings the new into the world every day, every week, every month, every year, and, yes, every Christmas. Change is the name of the game through Christ Jesus.
So what should we do on this Christmas? How should we celebrate, once again, this wonderful moment of change in our lives? I suggest that we wrap ourselves in Christmas. That we once again enjoy those visions of angels and shepherds and the manger and the baby in the straw and the animals and Mary and Joseph and keep it exactly the way it's always been for us.
Just today, just for this one day, let it be comforting and traditional. Let it be familiar and warm and loving. There's time enough tomorrow for you and me to step out in our own incarnation and once again pick up our gifts and go to work with God to face change and make change for the glory of God's name.
But for today, for this one special day, let us relax into the peace that is holy and into a time where time itself seems to stand still and the winds and tides of change are held back with the sounds of angelic voices drifting through a starry, cold night.
“To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah. This will be a sign to you; you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
We know this story so well. And we respond with the shepherds, “glorifying and praising God for all that we have heard and seen.”
“Glory to God in the highest and peace to God’s people on earth.”
Tonight, this day, every day.
Amen.
(Adapted from a sermon by the Rev. Steven Charleston on the Day1 radio ministry.)
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sunday, December 24, 2018
