Sermon — December 24, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy, which will come
to all the people; for unto you is born this day in the city o
David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10, 11)
Christmas really is the strangest holiday.
I don’t say this just because on Christmas Eve, we await with joyful anticipation the arrival of a bearded man in Coca-Cola red whose greatest aspiration in life is to fit down the chimney of every home in the world. Santa’s not strange, he’s just part of the magic of Christmas. And I don’t say that it’s strange because the ways in which we celebrates the season have become so detached from the original story of Jesus’ birth. That’s normal for a holiday; just ask Saint Valentine. It’s not strange because you won’t find reindeer or snowmen in Bethlehem this time of year. I have nothing against reindeer or snowmen; I like Frozen as much as the next guy. (Maybe more, now that I say that out loud.)
No, I say that Christmas is the strangest holiday because on Christmas Eve, we gather here in church to proclaim, in story and in song, that Christmas changes everything; and then we return into a world where nothing has really changed.
For a holiday that commemorates a great day in history, that’s kind of weird.
Compare it, for example, to the Fourth of July. On Independence Day, we commemorate the birth of a nation in a grand hall in what was at the time the second-greatest city in America. The great leaders of the age declared their independence from the British Crown, and while the years ahead were hard, they won their Revolutionary War. When they looked back a decade later, it made sense to say that on that first Fourth of July, everything had changed.
On Christmas we commemorate another birth; not of a nation, but of a child; not in a grand hall in a great city, but in a stable full of straw in a small, provincial town. An angel of the Lord declares that things have changed: that while Augustus may be emperor, and Quirinius may be governor, “to you is born in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)
And it was an even more dramatic scene than Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, because suddenly the heavens were ablaze with a multitude of angels, singing a celestial song. And the shepherds were amazed, and they went and found the child—and then they went home, and that was that.
There was no revolutionary war to put the little lord Jesus on his King David’s ancient throne. There was no encore to the angels’ song. Mary treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart, but that’s about it. If you looked back on Christmas Day, a decade later, you would have no idea that anything at all had happened. Christmas came and went and in the eyes of the world, nothing had changed.
For Mary and Joseph, of course, everything had changed. But on Christmas, we claim that everything changed for us, as well, and for our world—not only in Judea and Galilee two thousand years ago but here and now:
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)
But what has really changed? The Prince of Peace has been born, and war still covers the earth. Authority rests on his shoulders. But the authorities rarely seem to follow his “wonderful counsel.” The angels have sung their “Glory to God in the highest,” but it seems that we weren’t listening when they sang, “and on earth peace, good will toward men.” This world is not quite what was promised when the shepherds watched their flocks by night.
And neither are our lives. The message of Christmas, after all, isn’t just about the big issues the world; it’s for you. But peace and joy, in our lives and in our world, are often hard to find.
This December, more than any other year, I’ve noticed a common thread in the conversations I have with people around town. “How are you,” your earnest young pastor says, “in this Advent season of quiet expectation, as we approach the joy of Christmas Day?” To which almost everyone’s answer goes something like this: “Aaaaahhhhhhhh!” Perhaps it’s the timing of a late Thanksgiving, perhaps it’s the fact that every year since 2021 we’ve piled more and more back onto our calendars, perhaps it’s the anxiety and fear that have been rising all around the nation and all around the world in recent times, but this December for many people it has seemed especially hard to summon up the Christmas spirit of peace and joy—for many people, it just doesn’t quite feel like “All is calm, all is bright.”
The angels claim that Christmas changes everything; but year after year, nothing seems to change. And so it seems to me that Christmas really is the strangest holiday.
And yet.
No change worth making ever happens on one day. Not even on the Fourth of July. Nothing really changed, after all, from the 3rd to the 4th to the 5th. The struggle for independence was already underway. and the struggle would go on for nearly a decade more. In fact, the struggle to make the ideals that inspired the Founders a reality has continued ever since. On the Fourth of July, we commemorate the events of one day not because the work was finished on that day, but because we need the reminder every year that the work is still going on.
That’s true for Christmas, too.
When God works in the world, when God works in our lives, it isn’t like the lighting of a Christmas tree, an on-off switch from darkness into light. It isn’t like the signing of a declaration, a bold and public claim that something has changed. It’s more like the birth of a child. Everything does change for a couple people all at once, but the rest of the world goes on, more or less the same. And yet as all of us grow up, our lives touch more and more people. And the lives of the people whose lives we’ve touched touch more and more people. And the love and the light that a single child brings into the world continues to spread, long after that child is gone, in ways that aren’t obvious at all unless you take the time to try to trace them back, and then you see.
On Christmas, a new light came into the world. That light shines in the darkness, still; and the darkness has not overcome it. That light shines in your life, still, even if you cannot always see it, even if you don’t always believe it.
And our Christmas traditions, both serious or strange, exist to keep that light alive, maybe even to help it grow. When we sit here, in a world ravaged by war, and we proclaim a Prince of Peace, that’s not naivete; it’s a pledge to follow a different way of being in the world. When we sit here and we sing, “all is calm, all is bright,” silently stressing about the holiday preparations ahead, that isn’t hypocrisy or insincerity; it’s a prayer. The reindeer and the snowmen and the cookies are a claim that in the darkest days, we can choose to rejoice. We can choose to light a candle, and sing a song, and drive away the darkness and the cold. And when we do we are transformed, bit by bit, into the thing we seek, into that holy light that God has kindled in our hearts. And our lives shine a bit more brightly with the gentleness and the love of Christ.
And that’s the good news of Christmas: that we still “walk in darkness,” it’s true; but “we have seen a great light,” and that in a world that often breeds despair, we can choose to practice joy instead. “For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Amen.