The Last Day in Advent and Christmas Eve
For this last installment of the Advent blog, I offer my sermon from Emmanuel Church this Christmas Eve, which is in fact something of a riff on today's reading in Watch for the Light, Martin Luther's "To You Christ Is Born."
“I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11
The Reverend Luther Zeigler
Emmanuel Church
A young boy named Timmy is writing a letter to God about the Christmas present he so badly wants, the newest version of Nintendo. “Dear God,” Timmy begins his letter, “I’ve been good for six months now.” But then, after the briefest flash of conscience, he pauses, and crosses out “six months” and writes “three months.” Then, there is another moment of reflection, another pause, and Timmy tries again, this time crossing out “three months” and writing instead “two weeks.”
But then Timmy thinks better of things, gets up from the writing table and goes over to the crèche that his mom and dad have set up in the living room. There, he sees the manger scene, at the center of which is the Blessed Mother, her husband-to-be, Joseph, and the baby. Timmy takes a good hard look at the Holy Family, gently picks up the figure of Mary, wraps it in a cloth, and puts it in a drawer in his room. He then returns to his writing table, confidently picks up his pen, and starts the letter again: “Dear God, if you ever want to see your mother again, I expect a Nintendo under the tree!”
Poor Timmy, I’m afraid, is laboring under a misconception about who God is and how God acts in our lives. But you can hardly blame Timmy. The truth of God becoming human in the infant Jesus, on the one hand, and the story of Santa Claus, on the other, have become so intertwined in our celebrations of Christmas that we sometimes forget what is gospel and what is just jolly (if somewhat misguided) Christmas fun.
I’m guessing little Timmy’s ideas about God may have come from singing Christmas songs like “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” You know the song, the one where Santa is “making a list and checking it twice, He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice, Santa Claus is coming to town.”
This song, like so many others, envisions a Santa whose main task is to divide the world into nice boys and girls, and naughty ones. And, then once Santa has sorted the nice from the naughty, his job on Christmas Eve is to give the nice boys and girls the presents they want, and to the naughty, well, they are lucky if they get coal in their stocking.
So, you can imagine why poor Timmy is stressing so as he sits there writing his letter to God. If he’s been raised on the gospel of Santa Claus rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Timmy is worried to death that he is going to be out of luck on Christmas morning – and all because, like the rest of us, Timmy knows that he is naughty almost as often as he is nice. So, driven to desperation by worry, Timmy compounds his naughtiness by upping the charges from the mere misdemeanor of deceit to the grand felony of kidnapping!
The Gospel of Santa Claus may well be a shrewd parenting strategy to incentivize our children to behave – although, frankly, in my experience, such “reward and punishment” schemes rarely work for long – but to the extent this view of Santa is intended to reflect the reality of God, it is just bad, bad, bad theology.
Timmy would have been much better off had he read C.S. Lewis in his childhood rather than listening to silly Santa songs, for if he had, he would understand this simple yet profound gospel truth: God does not love us because we are good; we are good because God loves us.
The reason the Christmas story is such good news is because God became human in Jesus not merely to redeem all the nice boys and girls; he came to redeem us all, the naughty as well as the nice. How do we know this? Listen to the angel’s message in Luke: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11. The angel doesn’t say a Savior is born just to the good guys; God becomes human in Jesus for everyone.
Indeed, notice to whom the angel speaks the good news first. The first people to receive the good news of the Incarnation are the shepherds. Now, we are accustomed from Christmas pageants to view shepherds as these cute, little, innocent sheep herders standing devotedly in their pure white robes under the midnight sky, but this is exactly the wrong picture. In first century Palestine, shepherds were a poor and disreputable lot, those who couldn’t quite cut it in the real world. At the bottom of the social ladder, shepherds were the sketchy ones: unskilled, uneducated, and otherwise unemployable. And these shepherds, the ones working the night shift during the Nativity, they were probably the lowest of the low.
Yet, of all the people on earth to whom God first could share the good news of God in Christ, this is who he picks: the outcast, the un-deserving, those whom the rest of the world despise. The last are the first to hear the good news. And the first, the mighty and powerful King Herod, he is the last to find out what’s what, he is the clueless one, the furious king who searches and searches for the Christ Child, but never quite finds him.
And notice too that God chooses to be born not in the imperial palace in Rome, but instead in a shabby stable, one fit not for royalty but for animals. From the very beginning of his precious life, the infant Jesus hangs with the disreputable and forgotten, having been turned away by the innkeeper who is too busy taking care of those with means enough to stay in an inn.
Of all the other images of this night, let us remember first and foremost that our first glimpse of the Christ child is as a homeless child in a stinking stable.
So, if little Timmy is worried that he is not good enough for God, he has got it all wrong. God in Jesus comes first to those who are loathed by the righteous and upright. If the Nativity story teaches us anything, it is that God in Jesus seeks out the naughty before the nice. What we’re celebrating this night is God’s willingness – indeed, even eagerness – to meet us in the mess of our lives, to join us in the bewildering chaos of being human, to come down from heaven and share in our confusion as much as our clarity, in our mistakes as much our accomplishments, in our sufferings even more so than our joys.
The Christian story isn’t like Greek mythology, where all-powerful gods and goddesses step all over the small people, and where battles are fought and the weak are destroyed—and then the whole bloody cycle starts again. Our God begins his life among the most vulnerable creatures on the planet, and then, and as he grows up, he chooses to walk not in the corridors of power, but rather he wanders from town to town looking to help the helpless, those who have run out of options – the lepers, the crazy people, the widows, the whores, the down-on-their-luck fishermen.
And then, when he is confronted by the authorities who are threatened by his compassionate ways, who are upset that he is not playing by the rules, that he is messing with the social order, then this man Jesus chooses to die rather than to fight back, choosing to love his enemies rather than to hate them. And this love of his, its power is what triumphs in the end. This is who our God is. The Nativity story is such a better story than the one about Santa Claus.
For what we celebrate this night is an eternal love story. Not one of those Hallmark love stories, but rather a down-to-earth love story between God and broken people like you and me, a story in which God becomes human so that he can be there for us at both the best and worst moments of our lives. And this love that God has is not some abstract love. Listen again to what the angel in Luke says: “I am bringing you good news of great joy . . . to you is born this day” a Savior.
Jesus was, and is, born for you. The good news of Christmas is not just a distant bit of history. Jesus is being born again and again each time a person opens her heart to him. So, as you leave this church tonight, ponder these words in your heart, just as Mary did so many centuries ago: The birth of the infant Jesus, and God’s love in Christ, is for you.
And please don’t misunderstand my story about Timmy. I love Santa Claus, I love the songs of the season, I love the flurry of fun and joy in the morning as we madly unwrap the presents as fast as we can. But to dear, sweet Timmy, I would just say this: Yes, God wants you to be good. But God’s love does not depend upon your goodness. Whether you’re naughty or nice, or somewhere in between, God will take whatever you have to offer, and make it good. And despite your and my best efforts to mess up our lives and to hold God hostage to our own notions of what is best for us, God in Christ never, ever stops loving us, all the way from the stable to the Cross. This is the good news of Christmas.
Christmas Eve Sermon 2017
“I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11
The Reverend Luther Zeigler
Emmanuel Church
A young boy named Timmy is writing a letter to God about the Christmas present he so badly wants, the newest version of Nintendo. “Dear God,” Timmy begins his letter, “I’ve been good for six months now.” But then, after the briefest flash of conscience, he pauses, and crosses out “six months” and writes “three months.” Then, there is another moment of reflection, another pause, and Timmy tries again, this time crossing out “three months” and writing instead “two weeks.”
But then Timmy thinks better of things, gets up from the writing table and goes over to the crèche that his mom and dad have set up in the living room. There, he sees the manger scene, at the center of which is the Blessed Mother, her husband-to-be, Joseph, and the baby. Timmy takes a good hard look at the Holy Family, gently picks up the figure of Mary, wraps it in a cloth, and puts it in a drawer in his room. He then returns to his writing table, confidently picks up his pen, and starts the letter again: “Dear God, if you ever want to see your mother again, I expect a Nintendo under the tree!”
Poor Timmy, I’m afraid, is laboring under a misconception about who God is and how God acts in our lives. But you can hardly blame Timmy. The truth of God becoming human in the infant Jesus, on the one hand, and the story of Santa Claus, on the other, have become so intertwined in our celebrations of Christmas that we sometimes forget what is gospel and what is just jolly (if somewhat misguided) Christmas fun.
I’m guessing little Timmy’s ideas about God may have come from singing Christmas songs like “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” You know the song, the one where Santa is “making a list and checking it twice, He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice, Santa Claus is coming to town.”
This song, like so many others, envisions a Santa whose main task is to divide the world into nice boys and girls, and naughty ones. And, then once Santa has sorted the nice from the naughty, his job on Christmas Eve is to give the nice boys and girls the presents they want, and to the naughty, well, they are lucky if they get coal in their stocking.
So, you can imagine why poor Timmy is stressing so as he sits there writing his letter to God. If he’s been raised on the gospel of Santa Claus rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Timmy is worried to death that he is going to be out of luck on Christmas morning – and all because, like the rest of us, Timmy knows that he is naughty almost as often as he is nice. So, driven to desperation by worry, Timmy compounds his naughtiness by upping the charges from the mere misdemeanor of deceit to the grand felony of kidnapping!
The Gospel of Santa Claus may well be a shrewd parenting strategy to incentivize our children to behave – although, frankly, in my experience, such “reward and punishment” schemes rarely work for long – but to the extent this view of Santa is intended to reflect the reality of God, it is just bad, bad, bad theology.
Timmy would have been much better off had he read C.S. Lewis in his childhood rather than listening to silly Santa songs, for if he had, he would understand this simple yet profound gospel truth: God does not love us because we are good; we are good because God loves us.
The reason the Christmas story is such good news is because God became human in Jesus not merely to redeem all the nice boys and girls; he came to redeem us all, the naughty as well as the nice. How do we know this? Listen to the angel’s message in Luke: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11. The angel doesn’t say a Savior is born just to the good guys; God becomes human in Jesus for everyone.
Indeed, notice to whom the angel speaks the good news first. The first people to receive the good news of the Incarnation are the shepherds. Now, we are accustomed from Christmas pageants to view shepherds as these cute, little, innocent sheep herders standing devotedly in their pure white robes under the midnight sky, but this is exactly the wrong picture. In first century Palestine, shepherds were a poor and disreputable lot, those who couldn’t quite cut it in the real world. At the bottom of the social ladder, shepherds were the sketchy ones: unskilled, uneducated, and otherwise unemployable. And these shepherds, the ones working the night shift during the Nativity, they were probably the lowest of the low.
Yet, of all the people on earth to whom God first could share the good news of God in Christ, this is who he picks: the outcast, the un-deserving, those whom the rest of the world despise. The last are the first to hear the good news. And the first, the mighty and powerful King Herod, he is the last to find out what’s what, he is the clueless one, the furious king who searches and searches for the Christ Child, but never quite finds him.
And notice too that God chooses to be born not in the imperial palace in Rome, but instead in a shabby stable, one fit not for royalty but for animals. From the very beginning of his precious life, the infant Jesus hangs with the disreputable and forgotten, having been turned away by the innkeeper who is too busy taking care of those with means enough to stay in an inn.
Of all the other images of this night, let us remember first and foremost that our first glimpse of the Christ child is as a homeless child in a stinking stable.
So, if little Timmy is worried that he is not good enough for God, he has got it all wrong. God in Jesus comes first to those who are loathed by the righteous and upright. If the Nativity story teaches us anything, it is that God in Jesus seeks out the naughty before the nice. What we’re celebrating this night is God’s willingness – indeed, even eagerness – to meet us in the mess of our lives, to join us in the bewildering chaos of being human, to come down from heaven and share in our confusion as much as our clarity, in our mistakes as much our accomplishments, in our sufferings even more so than our joys.
The Christian story isn’t like Greek mythology, where all-powerful gods and goddesses step all over the small people, and where battles are fought and the weak are destroyed—and then the whole bloody cycle starts again. Our God begins his life among the most vulnerable creatures on the planet, and then, and as he grows up, he chooses to walk not in the corridors of power, but rather he wanders from town to town looking to help the helpless, those who have run out of options – the lepers, the crazy people, the widows, the whores, the down-on-their-luck fishermen.
And then, when he is confronted by the authorities who are threatened by his compassionate ways, who are upset that he is not playing by the rules, that he is messing with the social order, then this man Jesus chooses to die rather than to fight back, choosing to love his enemies rather than to hate them. And this love of his, its power is what triumphs in the end. This is who our God is. The Nativity story is such a better story than the one about Santa Claus.
For what we celebrate this night is an eternal love story. Not one of those Hallmark love stories, but rather a down-to-earth love story between God and broken people like you and me, a story in which God becomes human so that he can be there for us at both the best and worst moments of our lives. And this love that God has is not some abstract love. Listen again to what the angel in Luke says: “I am bringing you good news of great joy . . . to you is born this day” a Savior.
Jesus was, and is, born for you. The good news of Christmas is not just a distant bit of history. Jesus is being born again and again each time a person opens her heart to him. So, as you leave this church tonight, ponder these words in your heart, just as Mary did so many centuries ago: The birth of the infant Jesus, and God’s love in Christ, is for you.
And please don’t misunderstand my story about Timmy. I love Santa Claus, I love the songs of the season, I love the flurry of fun and joy in the morning as we madly unwrap the presents as fast as we can. But to dear, sweet Timmy, I would just say this: Yes, God wants you to be good. But God’s love does not depend upon your goodness. Whether you’re naughty or nice, or somewhere in between, God will take whatever you have to offer, and make it good. And despite your and my best efforts to mess up our lives and to hold God hostage to our own notions of what is best for us, God in Christ never, ever stops loving us, all the way from the stable to the Cross. This is the good news of Christmas.
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