Merry Christmas! Tonight’s Christmas Eve sermon concludes this year’s Advent series, Grace-Filled Beginnings, from the ELCA’s Western North Dakota Synod, Tonight, we hear the story of God’s grace entering the world in the person of Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger.
Tonight’s Scripture readings are the Christmas story from Luke 2:1-20 as well as Titus 2:11-14. I found the anecdote about Jesus being incidental to Christmas attributed in the Sound Bites Ministry devotion for December 13, 2024, to J. Ellsworth Kalas (1923-2015) in a sermon entitled Matthew: Christ the Man as quoted by William Griffin in Clive Staples Lewis, a Dramatic Life (How’s that for a convoluted credit!?). Here’s the worship livestream from Living Hope.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our newborn king, Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen
As we were putting together our kids’ Christmas lists this year, I was looking at Amazon’s list of the top 100 best sellers in children’s Christmas books, and there are a lot of great books on there. Some of them we have at home.
But I noticed you have to go all the way down into the thirties on the list to find anything about the Christmas story we just read from the Bible. Number 32 is the Little Golden Book The Christmas Story.
Let me be clear: I have nothing against classics like How the Grinch Stole Christmas which has editions at number 6 and 25 plus number 22 Cooking with the Grinch or newer books like number 5, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh or even number 3, Moo Baa Fa La La.
Later on the list there are some creative license interpretations of the nativity, telling the Christmas story from the animals’ point of view or God Gave Us Christmas where a polar bear shares the story with her cubs.
But even counting generously, fewer than 10 of the top 100 children’s Christmas books are about Jesus being born, the story we’re telling here at church.
Again, I have nothing against Santa Claus. I’m not too sure about Elf on the Shelf, but I’m fine with lots of sentimental Christmas traditions of snow and jingle bells and trees and watching Christmas Vacation or Frosty the Snowman or whatever’s on Hallmark.
But I’ve been thinking this year about what I want my kids to know about the Christmas story, what I want them to remember years from now or even in a couple of months, and it’s not images of dancing elves making toys at the North Pole, or the answer to questions about how Santa gets into our house even though we don’t have a chimney.
I want them to know about a baby born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger, because the world didn’t have room for him.
I want them to know about the night when grace was found in a manger, when God decided out of love to enter this broken world.
We drove through the light display in Sheboygan last week, and it was great, but the point of Christmas is not shiny lights synchronized to I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.
I want them to know that Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. We are here tonight because in the birth of this baby boy, we see evidence of God’s love.
We see proof that God has not looked at all the brokenness and junk in this world and given up, but rather God has looked at us with love and chosen to come and live among us. God loves us enough to show up in our world.
For a lot of people, it seems like Jesus is incidental to Christmas. I read a story about someone who overheard a woman on a city bus in England mutter, “O Lord! They bring religion into everything.” She pointed at a [nativity scene] in front of a church. Look — They’re dragging it even into Christmas now.”
Now, there is nothing wrong with other religions celebrating other holidays, or with secular Christmas greetings, especially in public.
The last thing we should want as Americans or as Christians is for the government to start sponsoring a particular religion, even if it’s the one we follow. There is no war on Christmas for us to be afraid of.
I’m fine with people saying happy holidays or season’s greetings. There are a lot of holidays in this season, and we want people to be happy in them.
But for us who seek to live as followers of Jesus, the particular holiday—the particular “holy day”—we are celebrating is about grace. It’s about more than warm fuzzy feelings or sleigh rides or unwrapping gifts. Christmas is about God’s grace being born among us. Grace is found in the manger.
Christmas nostalgia is lovely. I have fond memories of Christmas dinner at my grandparents’ house with lefse and lutefisk. (Fond memories of lefse—lutefisk is disgusting!)
But Christmas is not only about looking back at childhood memories; it’s about looking forward with hope.
Because this baby Jesus born in Bethlehem so long ago does not stay a baby. Titus 2 says that in Jesus Christ, “the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” In the life and ministry of Jesus, God offers us another way to live, a path contrary to the fear and selfishness, the apathy and violence of this world.
Jesus calls us to change the world by loving our neighbors, by living the way God created us to be.
This baby grows up to demonstrate the depths of God’s love for us by laying down his life for our sake, as Titus says, giving “himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”
Jesus is born into this world to experience all this life has to offer, the joys and the sorrows as well, all the way to death, all the way to the cross. But death doesn’t get the last word. Jesus does what no other human can do, and defeats death. And because he is raised, we too shall be raised. Because of this baby, we have hope for the future in this life, and for all eternity.
This is the good news we are celebrating at Christmas. This is the joy the angels proclaim. God enters our world.
And I want my kids to know some of the details of the story too. I want them to know about the shepherds and the manger, because this isn’t some magical fairy tale. There are no elves or flying reindeer. There are some unexpected details with angels appearing to shepherds and a star shining over Bethlehem, but on the whole, this is an ordinary story of a young woman giving birth to a baby.
Not in a palace, not in the halls of power, but in a small town away from home due to a tax increase. When God shows up, it’s among ordinary small-town people, in the midst of daily life.
As we sang, “How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!” God shows up in ordinary life, to be found every week in the gifts of bread and wine. God’s grace is revealed in ordinary acts of love.
The music and the candlelight, the cookies and the presents and the rest are good, but what I want all of you to remember is this: Jesus is born for you. God’s grace is for you.
God comes to you as you are, not once you’ve gotten your life together, or figured out all the answers. Not because you’ve bought the nicest Christmas presents or put up the best lights. Christmas is about God entering the world and offering grace and love, and that grace and love are for you.
Jesus is born for you, for me, for this hurting and broken world.
Tonight on Christmas Eve, we rejoice and are glad because God’s grace is found in a manger. Merry Christmas!