Christmas Eve - December 24, 2008

Kingswood UMC - Buffalo Grove IL

Text: Luke 2:1-20

Joy is one of those familiar words and often used at Christmas. We sing it, write it on Christmas cards and then are confused when Christmas is more complicated that we had hoped. Sometimes Christmas doesn’t feel as much like joy as about hurt and disappointment. At a Christmas party last weekend I heard one women talking about her year ... she’d been in the hospital for surgery and then in bed for several weeks. Her mother and dad have had to move to a nearby nursing home, and the day before Thanksgiving her husband lost his job with a company where he’s been a loyal employee for 29 years. "I hate Christmas this year," she said. "I can’t wait for it to be over. I just don’t feel any of the joy at all."

So, not everyone feels joy at Christmas. In fact, the joy around them seems to aggravate their pain. What is this thing called joy? Is it a mood or a feeling? Or is it something more or different than that? What does it mean to talk of Christmas joy?

First, we need to notice that part of the joy of the Christmas season is its sameness, its familiarity. Whether it is favorite carols or hymns, the Messiah or the Nutcracker ... you never tire of the familiar music of the season. You put out many of the same decorations from year to year ... and love the sights of the lights and color of the season. You go to the children’s holiday programs at school ... and the Christmas pageant at church. You do many of the same things ... eat the same foods, take the same excursions, plan the same events. Maybe your family goes caroling or spends a day together making a meal to take to a shelter or shut-in. Or maybe it is a shopping excursion to Marshall Field’s .. oops, Macy’s ... and lunch at the Oak Room. And you come here on Christmas Eve ... to hear the familiar story and to light candles to ward off the cold and the darkness.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting here listening to the choir during one of our services and I realized that I was really looking forward to Christmas Eve. You need to know that that is an unusual impulse for me. Most often I’m too distracted about it all to let myself be aware of many "looking forward to" feelings. But what I remembered in that moment, was the other Christmas Eves that I’ve been here .. or in some other gathering of the faithful on Christmas Eve ... and felt the joy in singing and doing the familiar things. To come together, year after year, and enter into the colors, movement, rhythm, smells, and sounds of the season ... to hear the story read again ... and experience the hope and warmth of so many gathered up into the same story and symbols ... is about connecting with something deep and holy ... connecting with love. And that always brings joy.

And yet . . . juxtaposed with the sameness every year is a reality of unsettling and consistent change. Just that we are here on a Wednesday night ... instead of on a Sunday ... or instead of being at home doing homework, or still stuck in traffic, or heading out to a meeting, signals a disruption in the order of our lives. And visitors may have recently arrived at your house .. or perhaps you are the visitor, and you’ve been traveling to get here ... home from school, or from across the country, or just from the other side of town. And though this may be your routine for Christmas .. it is not your daily routine.

And of course ... even our Christmas routines and traditions change over the years. Families change. Kids grow up and spend Christmas break back-packing in Europe. They find partners and spend Christmas with the other parents some years ... or maybe they bring home their new significant other and celebrate with you!!! And then there are babies ... and the routine changes again ... and they soon become toddlers or teenagers. And there are more changes. And grandma gets sick, or your favorite uncle dies. Or maybe there is a divorce ... and the normal family life cycle changes are adjusted in yet other ways. And times change. The economy takes a plunge, the country engages in war, there is new leadership and direction on the national and local level. Your team makes it to the play-offs, or into one of the bowl games. Or it doesn’t. Your kid’s band gets invited to the inauguration, or it doesn’t. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. And Christmas isn’t a time out from these things. These changes impact how we experience the season, year after year.

This tension of the familiar with ongoing adjustments and change at Christmas, is part of what makes Christmas such a joyful and amazing experience. It is a living thing ... that you can recognize from year to year, but that over time changes and deepens and reveals more of its true meaning. That is part of what we are talking about when we talk of Christmas joy ... the aliveness and the deepening.

But I think there is more. If we look at the scriptures we discover something else ... that the story we tell of Jesus’ birth has a different core than the story of the cultural celebrations in which we engage during what might also be called a mid-winter festival. The ways we celebrate Christmas have developed over many years ... and basically follow the pattern of ancient mid-winter festivals in other darker and colder climates. Long before the story of Jesus reached Rome or northern Europe, there were festivals that attempted to push back the darkness with lots of lights and decorations using various kinds of evergreens. These celebrations .. Saturnalia in Rome, or Yule, farther north ... also featured music and food, the chance to get together with family and friends, and sometimes a pattern of giving small gifts. Usually these festivals arose out of the agricultural reality that the crops were in ... and there was food enough ... and drink .. and time ... for a party!!!

But then came the story of Jesus ... and these patterns and practices were baptized into the Christian faith. It isn’t that there is something inherent in the Christmas story about the lights and evergreens and partying – even gift-giving, so much as that Christians came into an area and adopted what had been pagan or cultural activities, and interpreted them in the light of Christ.

The story of Jesus ... even just the story of his birth ... changes the other stories of our lives. Even when the current story of your life may be sad or painful, the story of Jesus offers joy for the journey. Yes, there is joy in the tension of familiarity and newness ... but the greater joy of Christmas is in the surprise!!! In fact, the Christmas story is so familiar to many of us that we fail to notice the amazing surprise that it is. And the surprise is all about God. In the Hebrew tradition, God’s self-presentations had become kind of predictable. Sometimes there were angels, or a booming voice, or maybe a still small voice that followed thunder and lighting and wind! There had been a burning bush and the parting of the sea. When God was made known to the people, there was usually high drama ... at least in the telling.

But this time God has left God’s comfort zone and usual dramatic impulses, and entered into human experience. God comes as a baby. And this baby isn’t born in the palace of a king, or even into the home of a middle class business woman in a big city. God comes as a baby ... vulnerable, small, needy ... and this baby is born in an out of the way backwater to a peasant family on the move in response to a government order. The birthing room is a cattle stall ... and the baby is placed in a feeding trough. On that holy night the only visitors were shepherds. And they are the ones who brought the word of the angels – that this baby, born in the city of David, is Savior, is Messiah, is Lord.

You have to remember that God’s people had been looking for a Savior for a long, long time. The Jews had been pushed around and down for generations by the powers of empire that had swept over that region. They were often at odds with their neighbors and had to struggle with their relationship to the current governing powers. But there had always been the promise that they would not be destroyed. In fact, they had been assured that there would be a savior who would change everything for them and for the world. This savior would turn the world upside-down ... scattering the proud, bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly. They imagined a great and powerful military leader who would be on their side this time.

But God knows where that would lead them .... another military leader, even one on their side, wouldn’t really change the story that much. Victory by violence doesn’t bring peace or joy. Only a pause in the action until next time. And so, instead of sending a military leader, God comes .... Emmanuel, we say. God comes as a baby ... among us ... amazing and surprising the world, winning this time, and for all time, with the weapons of love and joy, with Christmas joy!!!

Emmanuel .... Emmanuel ... (Singing)

And so, as you celebrate Christmas this year ... in familiar and in new ways, and even in the midst of sadness and pain ... I pray that you will let this story of God-with-us, Emmanuel, transform your story and bring you Christmas joy. May you find God in the smallest, most vulnerable, most needy parts of yourselves and this world ... and with Mary, ponder in your hearts God’s amazing love and grace.