A Sermon for Christmas Eve

 December 24, 2024

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 2: 1-20

Finally, the night we’ve waited for:  our Advent watching and staying alert is about to pay off!  Christmas Eve at last!  Soon we will open presents and do lots of cooking followed by lots of eating—all sorts of celebrating, and we can rest.

Well no--our Gospel text reminds us that we can’t just put aside our watching and waiting and take a long winter’s nap.  We’ve heard the text so much that it may feel like a soft Christmas pudding of a reading:  a sweet tale, easy to digest, easy to swallow.  Maybe we let it slip by us as we look at the pretty Christmas sights that won’t be with us much longer.  Maybe our brain is already jumping ahead to tomorrow:  is the turkey going to thaw in the fridge?  Should we have chosen something different?  Is that one unusual eater a vegan or vegetarian?  When does our long winter’s nap start?

Tonight’s text warns us of the dangers of distractions, the dangers of falling fast asleep.  The beginning of tonight’s Gospel roots us in a specific time and place, with rulers who get to decide who is important and who is not.  Everyone will be registered!  Some of us will recognize this world of documenting, counting and accounting, sorting and categorizing.  Some of us will remember that when rulers start to see humans as simply resources that need to report for registration, nothing good usually happens next, at least not for ordinary people.  Maybe it will be higher taxes or maybe military service or maybe deportation or maybe worse.

Then as now, we see a world of weary people on the move.  Maybe they are happy to return to ancestral homes—maybe their heads are full of the hope of family reunions and rich conversation.  Maybe they are exhausted from the trip.  Maybe they are wary of the dangers that lie ahead.  Maybe they have never been to their ancestral home, so they don’t know the customs, don’t have connections.  All these people, full of fear.

The Gospel passage for tonight begins with the the rich and powerful, but by the center of the story, we spend time with an ordinary couple, a young couple, a firstborn son coming into a world where there is no room.  God comes to be with humanity, but in a brand new way, a brand new way that is also an ordinary way, a very messy way.  A new thing is being born, a new phase of a relationship, far away from the corridors of earthly power.  But most people aren’t noticing.  Most people have no idea because they aren’t paying attention.

We move to the third part of the story:  an angel comes to herald the good news, not to the emperor, not to the people who make it onto the “best of” lists, not to the man of the year, not to the ones with the power to disrupt lives in ways pleasant and unpleadant.  No, the angels appear to shepherds, to ones even further away from the power structures than the couple with the newborn.  Are the shepherds so insignificant that they don’t have to go back to ancestral homes to be registered?  Or are they the ones who have occupied the same pastures for generations, so they don’t have to worry about travel?  Maybe we find ourselves in this part of the story, off to the side, on the outside of the insignificant towns, taking solace in our animals or maybe a good friend or two.  Families gather, but we have jobs we need to do.  Rulers of countries bluster and blather, but they have no idea how people are living on the ground, and so we do our work, unnoticed.

Shepherds hear the good news first.  Were other people sleeping, so they missed the angel choir?  Would the bright lights of the little town nearby make it impossible to see the celestial show?  Did no one else hear the angel song?  Was everyone else too busy to notice or too unimaginative to look up and follow the unusual noise?

We live in a much noisier world today, but this story has resonance.  Don’t doze, or you might miss the good news of what God is doing in the world.  Pay attention.  The life changing, creative, restorative work of God in the world is not finished—it is just begun.

Hear again the message of the angel in charge:  Be Not Afraid.  What a different message than what we usually get from the people in charge. Too often those people want us to be very afraid, to see the world as a scary place, so that we will look to them for solutions and salvation. The angels call us to a different reality, a world soaked in wonder, a glimpse of the world that we see on Christmas Eve.

Once again, consider the shepherds.  We’ve heard the news that the angel brings so many times that it’s lost its weirdness.  The Messiah has arrived—and the sign will be—a baby in a manger? That’s your sign?  A baby?  A manger?  Sure, symbolically it works.  A feeding trough, which is an image that will run through the Gospels:  God as food.  But as a sign that the Savior is here?  A vulnerable, dependent infant--not a powerful ruler?  A manger--not a throne?

The curious and observant shepherds decide to go and see this Good News for themselves, leaving their livelihoods behind.  There’s no arguing, no trying to have it both ways, no leaving one shepherd behind to keep watch while the others go ahead to investigate.  I have often envied the shepherds the clear sign that they get, the clear message.  If only I could have an angel choir, one single sign so loud that it cuts through all the other noise of life—yes, an angel choir might be so much easier to make life decisions.  Of course, often when we look back, we’re amazed at the messages we convinced ourselves to ignore, God’s invitations that we’re sure were meant for other people, people in a different phase of life or with different resources and skills.

We began this Gospel with an empire paying attention in an ominous way, and we end with a mother keeping watch, much like the shepherds did.  Mary treasures the words of the shepherd, much like we will treasure the memories of this Christmas, in years to come.  Mary also ponders—a focused watching, a trying to make sense of it all.

It’s good to remember that the story doesn’t end here—and hence the need for observant watching.  The story of God at work in the world doesn’t end with the manger.  It doesn’t end with the Messiah on the cross.  It doesn’t even end with the empty tomb.  God is at work in the world, and God invites us to the party.  I realize that on Sunday, I preached in part about the benefit of rest and retreat, as Mary and Elizabeth withdraw and wait for the next chapter.

It’s the tension we live in, like the Kingdom of God itself, inbreaking but not here yet, underway, but not complete.  There are times when we need retreat and rest and pondering, like Mary and times when we need to be moving in the world, like the shepherds, moving to meet God in the unlikely, unexpected places where God appears.  When we’re observant, we’ll know which way to go.  When we pay attention, we’ll be able to ignore the noise of our society so that we can hear the angel song.  Most important, when we maintain our Advent alertness, our watchful waiting, we’ll be able to turn our lives into a manger that welcomes God.  We’ll be able to, in the words of Biblical scholar Barbara Reid, “have a disposition of hospitality toward God.”  Our Advent and Christmas stories remind us:  opening our lives, our beings, to this hospitality to God is so often how God is able to work in the world.  Let this be the year that we close our ears to the noise and distractions so that we can hear God’s call.