A Christmas Ever Sermon

by Heather McCance

Tonight we hear again a story. It's a story we all know, it's a story most of us have grown up hearing over and over again. It's a story many of us have had a part in acting out, in our bathrobe-and-towel shepherd costumes and our tinsel angel halos. It is, perhaps, one of the most famous stories of them all.

And as we listen to the story again, if we're really listening, our imaginations fill with images; poor shepherds on a cold night, brilliant light surrounding thousands of angels singing beautiful music to God, the peace of a stable full of animals with a newborn baby and his young mother sleep off the exhaustion of labour and birth while a young man stands by, overwhelmed by the enormity of birth and the responsibility of fatherhood.

And yet, for all the power and wonder of this story, many of us are not here tonight just to hear it. We know the story. Neither are we hear to sing the story in the carols. We know the carols, too. For many of us, knowing the story is not enough. Many of us have come here tonight with a question in our hearts.

So what?

Even if I buy that Mary was a virgin, which is pretty tough to swallow. Even if I believe in angels, which is so far removed from my life that I can't even conceive of them. Even if I believe in a traveling star moving through the heavens until it came to a certain spot, and then stopped dead cold, which my rudimentary understanding of physics tells me is simply not possible.

If this night was just about the simple, literal, factual truth of the story, we could all go home now. In fact, if this night was only about that, we could all just read the story in our Bibles at home and save ourselves the trouble of dressing up and coming out on a cold night and cramming ourselves into a pew with people we don't know.

But it's not. Because the story is true. Whatever you believe about virgin births and angels and stars, underneath the literal details of the story we hear tonight there is a truth, deeper than any of us can go on our own.

That's the point. That deeper truth of Christmas is what draws us here, year after year, to hear the same story and sing the same carols, over and over again. Because while that story and those carols cannot express the full truth, because they are only words, or even because they are only words and music together.

And mere words will never, ever be able to express and contain the truth that lays at the deepest heart of the Christmas story. Because the deepest truth of Christmas is the very heart of God.

By whatever process, be it forming everything from nothing over a period of seven days, or be it by the processes we've come to call the Big Bang and evolution, the Creator of the world formed the whole universe and everything that is in it. And so at the beginning, we have another truth that we cannot express in words. The closest we get is perhaps when we look up at the stars on a clear night, and realize the awesomeness of our Creator anew.

And that Creator had a plan for this creation, and for the human race in particular, who are those whom God favours because we were made in God's own image. That plan was about peace and harmony and goodwill and justice and love. That plan was about happy endings and happy beginnings and happy middles, too. That plan was full of joy for all of creation.

But God loved us so much that we were given the free will to choose how to live. God could have forced us to live in peace and harmony and goodwill and justice and love. If I'd been God, I suspect I might have done that, it seems that it would have been much less trouble. But instead, God wanted us to choose to live that way with one another. And we failed to do that.

And because we weren't able on our own to fulfill the plan of our Maker, God looked upon us and loved us, and came to us in a way that is deeper than anything we could have imagined. And in coming to us as one of us, God began to bring that plan to its fruition.

It was only a beginning, and what a small beginning. A 7 lb bundle of flesh, lying in a feeding trough in a poor stable in a backwater little town.

But in that small, helpless, squawking baby lay the very heart of God, the vulnerability of the Lord of all the heavens, coming to us. Emmanuel, God-with-us. And once God became one of us, the plans of the Maker of the Universe could begin again to unfold.

And by becoming human, God affirmed the decision to allow humans to make their own decisions. Again, God refused to make our choices for us. God in Christ came to us as one of us, god worked through a very human person, and in the end suffered and died as a very human person to show us the very power of the love God has for us.

God's plan has begun to unfold, because God-in-Christ, that tiny baby, was born on that Christmas night 2000 years ago. The redeeming love of God, the renewing love of God, the power of the love of God was shown in that act. God so loved the world that God's own heart, God's own Child, became one of us.

It doesn't mean that we can now treat others shabbily or do whatever we please living consequence-free. But it means that God's transforming love for all of creation is stronger than any sin we can commit. God's love in Christ is stronger than the worst we could possibly do to hurt it. God's love in becoming incarnate in the Word-made-flesh brings us the power to become children of God, to become co-workers in bringing to fulfillment the plan of God for peace and harmony and goodwill and justice and love. And God's love in living as one of us means we never, ever have to do it alone.

It sounds, perhaps, a long way off from the stable in Bethlehem and the angels and the shepherds and the traveling star. It sounds, perhaps, a long way form the Christmas carols and the trees and the wreaths and the presents.

But some of you who came tonight with a question in your hearts, So What? And this is the answer, this is the truth that our stories and our carols show us a glimpse of. In coming to us as a helpless baby, God's plan of peace and harmony and goodwill and justice and love began to be fulfilled. And through that small beginning, the Creator of the Whole Universe showed us that whatever darkness and sin and brokenness we human creature might do, the power of Divine love is stronger, and calls us constantly to wholeness and light and love. And that, my friends, is so what.

Amen.