Christmas Eve

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% accurate.

[Maggie] A reading from Luke chapter 2 verses 8-20:

That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”

Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in highest heaven,
    and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”

When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.

[Debbie] Well, Merry Christmas everyone. My name is Debbie Manning. I'm one of the pastors here on the table team and it's really good to be together on this Christmas Eve. And gosh, I had to start by saying I love Christmas. And as I say that, I'm thinking my husband right now is going, what? Because wasn't it just yesterday I was on the phone with you and you were almost in tears and said, I just need a minute. I just need a minute. We can do this.

But those aren't the pieces of Christmas that I love so much. The the gift getting and the wrapping and the food and all those things. I do love some of those traditions. But over the years we have as a family, I'm not kidding, over the last five years, every year at the end we go, “how do we do this better next year?” Because what makes Christmas meaningful and what I really love about Christmas is I love this night. I love this moment where we all gather together this community that most of us know each other so well and friends and family are here and we gather and we sing and we hear this Christmas story. We hear from the children. I love this moment because it's a moment where we pause and I love the remembering and the telling and the retelling of the story. God with us, the child has been born and you guys can do this with me.

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, take a deep breath, breathe the truth of the birth. The child has been born. That's what I love about Christmas, all that that means life and love and joy and hope. And I think we'd all agree whether it's something going on in our personal lives, maybe even in our families, but certainly in this country, we need this right now. We need the reminder. We need to retell the story. We need to remember over and over again, God with us.

You know, for me with Christmas, there's so many memories and moments that include my sister Leslie, because for decades she and her husband Troy, pre their son Riley, and then when Ri was a baby and growing up, every year they'd make the trek to Minnesota for Christmas and every year we would meet with them at the 11:00 PM service. It was back in the CPC days back when Upper Room was there and then it transferred to The Table.

But every year we would meet them there and every year we would close the place down. We were the last ones to leave church. I'm not gonna name any names Troy, but um, we were the last to leave. And by the time we got home it it'd be, we'd be getting the kids to bed about one o'clock. And then as my kids grew up, they joined in with us and we would stay up until three o'clock. We would catch up and we would get slap happy and we would tell stories and we would laugh and we were getting ready for Santa Claus to come. It was such a happy and holy moment. I still remember my sister with her little head Bob, getting ready for Santa. It was so much joy.

But the real tie to Christmas. Now for me, the thing that makes this moment, this moment that we celebrate this baby that's gonna be born that makes it so real to me is sort of our own Christmas story. And it's the one where seven and a half years ago, while my sister was dying, when things felt really, really dark, when there was a moment that we could really use some light, we got some. Because in the the midst of our grieving and her dying, a baby was to be born. Our first grandchild, Soren was born. That is my sister with her arms around my daughter-in-law, Jennie pregnant with Soren. That was a couple months before my sister died, before she stepped into heaven.

And a couple months before Soren stepped onto this earth, it was a holy moment, a hard moment, a beautiful moment because on the way to my sister's memorial service where we celebrated her life, we stopped at the hospital to meet our first grandchild, Soren. There he is, seven plus years ago. And there was something so beautiful and so crazy. But what we all knew in that hard and holy moment, what we all experienced, which was what was so clear, was that God was with us. That we had experienced God in a way. Maybe we couldn't even name it at the time, but we knew that in the midst of all this hard and holy and beautiful, that God was with us.

And that is the Christmas story. That's our story. That's every one of your stories. 'cause we all have those stories. We all have those stories. A season, a moment where we've been uncertain or maybe a little bit afraid, not knowing what's next, or maybe it's those moments of so much joy, but we experience God in a way that changes everything, that changes us. What I love about this Christmas story, the one that Maggie just read to us, was the moment that Mary paused, and as everyone had experienced God, the shepherds and their singing and praising Mary pauses.

And in Luke 2:19 we hear, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them. Often the child is born, take a deep breath, breathe in the beauty of the moment. She's treasuring the child and pondering all that that might mean. And for us at Christmas, what we do is we come alongside that child that's lying in the manger and we come alongside that child so that we can treasure, that we can ponder.

Because the reality is God will come alongside us the rest of our lives. God will come alongside us in our best days, our worst days, everything in between Will come with us in our joys and in our sorrows. Come with us in our living and our dying. The child is born. Take a deep breath. Breathe in the goodness of his with the child has been born. And on this Christmas, I am pausing And I'm gonna trust that the with of God is what Mary was treasuring and pondering with her heart. I'm gonna trust that the silence of Joseph was him making room so that he could experience the ness of God. I'm gonna trust that the shepherds experience the ness of God. And that's why they returned to the fields and they were singing and they were praising God. And I'm gonna trust the ness of God in your life and mine, and I hope you will too. I think ness might even be a really good Christmas word.

And John 1:14, John says this, so the word became human and he made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the father's one and only son. Here's the thing about witness. And I can look out here, and I know all a lot of the moments, those witness moments when those babies are born or our children come home for Christmas or a huge community of people a week ago, come together and celebrate the life of George Morsch or the community that surrounded the Giovannellis for three years as Lynn walked and navigated a ALS.

I can see the withness of God when all these kids of you and Lilja and Meadow and Grace, you guys stand up here. I'm thinking, I knew you when you were just babies. That is the withness of God. You guys standing up there with your beautiful voices and singing for us. These are the moments I think about. Troy and Simi, your wedding last fall, God with us like that was this holy moment where people gathered and remembered and celebrated something new and beautiful God with us.

But the really, really, really beautiful thing about God with us is it changes us. It changes us from the inside out. It changes us in the way that we see, in the way that we love, in the way that we act, not just with the people we love, not just with our neighbors, but with the world. And so this celebration of Christmas, while it's joyful and happy and hopeful, it's also just the beginning of what Christmas means.

There's a theologian and our uh author, a philosopher, a civil rights activist, Howard Thurman, and he says this in his poem, entitled The Work of Christmas. When the Song of Angels is stilled, when the star is in the sky is gone. When the kings and the princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flock, the work of Christmas begins to find the lost, to heal, the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among people, to make music in the heart. Howard Thurman calls that the work of Christmas, John calls it the word becoming flesh. I think what it is, is God with us, Jesus continuing to do the work that he started and continuing to do it through each and every one of us in those unique and creative ways. I think that is what we celebrate today. Merry Christmas.