Sermon — December 25, 2023
The Rev Greg. Johnston
I should say before I begin: Merry Christmas! It’s such a delight to see each one of you here this morning. It’s a very different vibe from last night.
I should also say: I’ve been lazy with this sermon. A couple weeks ago I finished writing a little piece for News & Notes about the Holiday Night Out, and when I finished it I realized, “Oh no. I can’t send this out. I think I just wrote my Christmas Day sermon.” But of course, knowing the likely attendance numbers this morning, I sent it out anyway. So I apologize to any of you avid readers of News & Notes if you’ve heard some of this before. Although, if you read the newsletter that thoroughly and you showed up on Christmas morning, you probably like me well enough to forgive me.
So, a few weeks ago, a group of us from St. John’s stood out in the cold on Main Street as part of Charlestown’s Holiday Night Out, which is a nice little event that the businesses in town put on every year. Local shops have special craftspeople come in to put on demos, or they hold open houses, or they give out soup in the cold. Santa Claus comes to The Cooperative Bank for photos. And a few people have tables or stands out on the street, selling things or handing out treats. The organizers, clearly community-minded people, placed the elementary schools and the church right next to Santa Claus, so we got a steady of stream of kids and parents coming by our table, and we handed out so many little gifts bags of candy canes and chocolates that we had to set up an assembly to make more of them.
(And you see, the secret was, each of those little goodie bags came with a fridge magnet of that stained-glass window, and a card with that verse from the First Letter of John—“God is love, and whoever loves is born of God, and knows God”—and our Christmas service schedule. If you just stick stuff in candy bags and hand them out on the street, it’s pretty much free advertising.)
The candy bags and cookies were popular. But after the rush of kids seeing Santa had died down around dinnertime, by far the biggest draw was a voice crying out in the wilderness: “Free raffle!” Simon’s voice, to be clear. Not John the Baptist. But in terms of turning heads, they were more or less on par.
It was stunning. There’d be people walking by on their way home from work or their way out to dinner in full-on Boston mode—eyes straight ahead, you don’t exist, don’t bother me—when suddenly they’d hear “Free raffle tickets! Win a gift basket!” Yuppies, Townies, small children. It turns out everybody loves a free raffle.
And why not? What do you have to lose? (Beside your frozen fingertips as you fumble with the pen.) The raffle really was completely free.
But here’s the thing: it made us sixty bucks.
Because it turns out that if you put out a tip jar—donations welcome, nothing expected—and you give people cookies and candy and raffle tickets for free, you kind of end up covering the cost. It was funny. There was one older woman who said, “Oh I’m sorry, I don’t have any cash,” and we told her “No, take a ticket! It’s free!” “No, but you want donations!” she said. And it felt so liberating, even transgressive, to just say, “Seriously, just go ahead! It’s free!” And then there was the young guy, 20-something, on the way out to dinner with his friends—the kind of guy who you would never picture buying tickets for a church raffle—who slipped a 20 in the jar. By the end of the night, as we got colder, we started really playing it up: “Take a cookie! Please! Set us free! When these are gone, we can go home and warm up!”
It’s funny the way your expectations change things. I doubt we could’ve sold 60 one-dollar raffle tickets. There’s no way we could’ve made change for all that. If we’d charged $5 for tickets and only sold twelve, that would be kind of sad. But giving out 75 free raffle tickets, and collecting sixty bucks in tips—that felt good.
And that’s what grace is. That’s what love is. That’s what Christmas is, as much as we try to make it about anything else. Christmas is not about reciprocated gifts, about making sure that you send a Christmas card to everyone who sends one to you, about giving and receiving things in turn. And it’s not about the gifts you deserve, about toeing the line between naughty and nice. It’s about the gift we have been given that we can never repay. The gift that we absolutely do not deserve. On Christmas, we celebrate the gift of God given to us in Jesus Christ, a gift given to a world that “did not know him,” a gift given to people who “did not accept him”; the gift of a light that enlightens the world, the gift of the power to become children of God.
On Christmas, we are offered free tickets to a raffle better than any St. John’s could offer, because in God’s great raffle, everyone’s a winner: there is a gift basket for every single person who turns aside to take a ticket.
We human beings walk through the night in Boston mode, eyes straight ahead, huddled up against the cold. And sometimes through our earmuffs, we hear a voice inviting us to feel a little bit of joy. We see a light shining on the side of the path. We feel a little warmth coming from someone else, and when we hear that voice or see that light or feel that warmth, it is the presence of God among us, inviting us to stop for a minute, and turn aside; to risk the mild inconvenience of cold fingers to receive an incredible gift. There’s a tip jar, on the table, to be sure; God invites us to love, as we have been loved. But the tickets are free. The gift comes first. God loves you without reservation and without precondition. God loves you completely free of charge. And that’s the only way this whole thing could possibly work.
I wonder what our lives would look like if they were shaped a little more like grace. I wonder what our Harvest Fair would look like if the Turkey Dinner was “pay what you can,” $20 suggested donation. I wonder what our relationships and friendships would look like if we stopped keeping score and started caring for one another free of charge. I wonder whether it would free us up for joy, to be able to give light to the world free of charge.
For “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” (Isaiah 9:2), and that “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:4) Amen.