Christmas Eve 2011

The Nativity of Our Lord

Welcome to everyone, I’m so glad that you came to share such an exciting and magical night with us here. I try, when I prepare a message for Christmas Eve, to capture some of the wonder of the Holiday, the wonder we feel now, whoever and wherever we are, the wonder our parents felt when we were very small at home with them, the wonder we felt ourselves as tiny children dazzled by the lights and gifts, the hustle and the bustle and the wonder of it all. All this because I think if we can capture a little bit of that as we focus on the bible story for tonight, the story of Christ’s birth, then I think we understand it just a little better. Maybe if we capture our own sense of wonder we’ll understand theirs and maybe if we understand theirs we’ll understand what God was doing...

So tonight I want to tell you about a little girl’s first Christmas, last year. Well it wasn’t really her first Christmas. But it was the first one she really understood, and participated in. She was three at the time.

She has two older brothers and lives with her mom and dad in a normal Castleton sized house, so the living room is...close quarters with a Christmas tree in it, especially on Christmas morning once Santa has come and there are presents all around from aunts and uncles, grandma and grandpa on both sides, mom and dad, all the kids and of course the jolly man himself.

So in this context the group of adults watched as the kids came down the stairs (after being told they absolutely HAD to stay in bed until 7). They were all excited but for the littlest one, the girl Santa had left something very showy. On the coffee table, the whole coffee table, set up, unwrapped, a big, perfect, shiny, pink, plastic, complete with a garage and a car, a mom, dad and baby doll, a kitchen table and a washer and dryer!...DOLL HOUSE!!!!

It was like a magnet. Immediately she saw it and she knew, it was just for her, her very own, not for her brothers but she could use it too. Not clothes that let’s be honest are more a gift for the parents anyway, not something she even knew to ask for. Not something she ever could have gotten or put together for herself but completely hers.

She sat on the other side of the coffee table, away from the tree, at her doll house. She stared at it, she touched it, gently. She told people about it and dragged them over so they could see it too. She took parts of it to show to people who wouldn’t come to her. It was magic and she couldn’t even understand by what good fortune this great gift had come to her.

As the morning went on we tried to get her to open her other gifts, Santa had brought a few other things too. We tried to get her to watch while other people opened theirs. She really couldn’t though. The one gift was too perfect too complete for her to need anything else. So she stayed with it and admired it and gave it all of herself.

That is the magic of a little child on Christmas morning, that wonder and complete awe and joy in something that is at least a little bit, of a mystery.

Maybe that is how the people felt on the first Christmas day. Nothing mattered to them anymore but what was going on right then and right there, they were completely caught up in it and they knew it was just for them. Not something they were invited to look at but not touch, not something that was mostly for the important people, the rulers and the kings, but just for them and it was a little bit of mystery.

Maybe children enter into that wonder so well because for a brief time everything is about them, from the people who love them the most, those who protect and care for them, they are getting absolute, undivided attention and affection. Maybe that is what was going on on the first Christmas, for the shepherds and the wisemen, the innkeepers and the travelers, Mary and Joseph and all the people of God.

They were getting the undivided love and affection and attention of their god. Despite what they had done in the past, what they would do in the future, who they were, where they came from, even how they understood what was happening, a great gift was given to them. Just for them.

But our gospel lesson tells us more than that. Our gospel lesson tells of a god who loved the people in the story so much, a god who watched and wondered at creation for so long that he couldn’t help but enter into it so he did, completely. He looked at all the world with such love and wonder that he had to tell people, he sent angels to share the good news. He brought the shepherds to see it when they didn’t know what to think.

He even had the wisemen take it with them for a time into Egypt so others could know the wonder and it could be safe.

Maybe the true miracle, the true wonder the true meaning of Christmas that pulls us back here every year, that drives us to give wonder and joy to others is that God did that for us.

Even with all the other stuff going on, all the other possible presents around the Christmas tree so to speak, and all the bad stuff too, debts and worries, hurts and regrets God looks at us with that little child wonder and joy, like we are the gift instead of the ones receiving the gift.

God, God who knows all and does all, who creates and sustains, who made a covenant with his people to care for them always, came, himself, to live among us small and vulnerable. So that all the world might know that they were his very own even as he is our very own, God and King, Child and Brother, Prince and savior. Thanks be to God. Amen.