Christmas Eve

 

December 24, 2022

 + Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a bit of…well…a curmudgeon regarding Christmas.

 I am kind of a Scrooge about it all.

 I am not a big fan of the commercial aspects of Christmas.

 I certainly understand the tendency we all have of getting caught up in society’s celebration of Christmas.

 It’s easy to find ourselves getting a bit hypnotized by the glitz and glamour we see about us.

 I admit I even kind of enjoy some of those sparkly Christmas displays.

 I understand how easy it is to fall to the temptations of what the world tells us is Christmas.

 But what I think happens to most of us who enjoy those light and airy aspects of Christmas is that we often get so caught up in them, we start finding ourselves led astray into a kind of frivolousness about Christmas.

 We find ourselves led off into a place where Christmas becomes fluffy and saccharine and cartoonish.

 That, I think, is what we experience in the secular understanding of Christmas time.

 The glitz and the glamour of the consumer-driven Christmas can be visually stunning.

 It can capture our imagination with its blinking lights and its bright wrapping,

 But ultimately it promises something that it can’t deliver.

 It promises a joy and a happiness it really doesn’t have.

 It has gloss.

 It has glitter.

 It has a soft, fuzzy glow.

 But it doesn’t have real joy.

 But, as much of a curmudgeon as I am about it, I do find myself joyful during this season.

 I am, after all, a church geek.

 I love church and doing churchy things.

 That’s why I’m a priest, I guess.

 And for me, the Christmas we celebrate here tonight, in this warm church, up here in northeast Fargo, is a Christmas of real joy.

 I feel real joy being with all of you tonight.

 I feel real joy celebrating the mystery of this event, this moment in which God gives us this special event in which we realize that God has reached out to us and shown us true love.

 But it is a joy of great seriousness as well.

 It is a joy that humbles us and quiets us.

 It is a joy filled with a Light that makes all the glittery, splashy images around us pale in comparison.

 The Christmas we celebrate here is not a frivolous one.

 It is not a light, airy Christmas.

 Yes, it has a baby.

 Yes, it has angels and a bright shining star.

 But these are not bubblegum images.

 A birth of a baby in that time and in that place was a scary and uncertain event.

 Angels were not chubby little cherubs rolling about in mad abandon in some cloud-filled other-place.

 They were terrifying creatures—messengers of a God of Might and Wonder.

 And stars were often seen as omens—as something that could either bring great hope or great terror to the world.

 The event we celebrate tonight is THE event in which God breaks through to us.

 And whenever God beaks through, it is not some gentle nudge.

 It is an event that jars us, provokes us and changes us.

 For people sitting in deep darkness, that glaring Light that breaks through into their lives is not the most pleasant thing in the world.

 It is blinding and painful.

 And what it exposes is sobering.

 That is what God does to us.

 That is what we are commemorating tonight.

 We are commemorating a “break through” from God—an experience with God that leaves us different people than we were before that encounter.

 What we experience is a Christmas that promises us something tangible.

 It promises us, and delivers, a real joy.

 The joy we feel today, the joy we feel at this Child’s birth, as the appearance of these angels, of that bright star, of that Light that breaks through into the darkness of our lives, is a joy that promises us something.

 What Jesus came to show us that what happens in him can happen in us too.

 Jesus, the beloved Son of God, shows us that we too are all beloved children of loving God.

 And that, in God’s eyes, each and every of our own birth stories is special to God.

 God also worked in those events.

 God also has a plan from our very beginning.

 Christmas, we need to realize, is a teaser of what awaits us.

 It is a glimpse into the life we will have one day.

 It is a perfect joy that promises a perfect life.

 But just because it is a joyful event, does not mean that it isn’t a serious event.

 What we celebrate is serious.

 It is an event that causes us to rise up in a joyful happiness, while, at the same time, driving us to our knees in adoration.

 It is an event that should cause us not just to return home to our brightly wrapped presents, but it should also send us out into the world to make it, in some small way, a reflection of this life-changing joy that has come into our lives.

 Tonight, is one of those moments in which true joy and gladness have come upon us.

 That’s what makes this a holy time.

 So, let us cling to this holy moment.

 Let us savor it.

 Let us hold it close.

Let us pray that it will not end.

And let this joy you feel tonight be the strength that holds you up when you need to be held.

Tonight, God has reached out to us.

God has touched us.

God has grasped our hands.

Our hands have been laid on God’s heart.

This is what Christmas is all about.

God is here, among us.

This feeling we are feeling right now is the true joy that descends upon us when we realize God has come to us in our collective darkness.

And this joy that we are feeling is because the Light that has come to us will never, ever darken.