I’m considering this holiday season to be a success. It’s Christmas Eve and I haven’t watched, or felt any pressure to watch, any Hallmark holiday movies; or anything similar. You know exactly what I’m talking about – those sappy Christmas spirit movies where there is some righteous cause that is in a crisis and in solving that crisis the main characters – a man and a woman, somehow both innocently but tragically single, fall in love and live happily ever after. It is always a triumph of good values and right priorities. As a result of those good values and right priorities they discover the truth and peace and love of the holidays. And of course the man and woman are played by actors who have perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect bodies, and stylish wardrobes.
All is calm. All is bright. Sleep in heavenly peace.
Bleh!
If that’s the way your Christmas is going, or if you have ever had a Christmas go that way… well, you have my congratulations. You’re a better person than me!
Almost certainly you are experiencing some version of stress right now. You’ve been cooking and cleaning and shopping and decorating for weeks. Not everything has gone smoothly and not everything has gotten done. Maybe in getting to this worship service everything went perfectly smoothly. Or more likely something went wrong: Someone was late or not ready. The thing you were going to wear got a mess on in just as you were about to leave. Someone grumbled who you had to force to come – or maybe you are one who felt forced to come. You figure the pastor better say something worth listening to or this whole affair is a complete waste of time.
Tensions are high. Tempers are short.
And while family Christmas traditions vary a lot, you probably have some version of these things going on too. There is all sorts of food to cook. Will it all be done well and at the right time? Christmas dinner will not be a calm peaceful time with everyone eager and ready and perfectly sitting down with quiet reverent joy in their hearts. At the Christmas dinner table you’ll have Uncle Fred spouting his conservative political views. And you’ll have Uncle George arguing from his liberal political views. Kids will be noisy and spill things. You’ll have Aunt Bertha show up with that horrible casserole that she makes each and every year. It’s disgusting but she wants everyone to praise her for how wonderful it is. When it is passed to you at the dinner table you stare down at the pan and you are making a careful quick calculation in your mind. You figure you have to take enough to show that you like it, but you don’t want to take too much because you know you’re going to have to choke it down while keeping a smile on your face.
Grown-ups will politely unwrap presents. Some of the stuff you get will be perfect, but some may not be what you want or you can use. You’ll put a brave face on. Someone may give you something quite expensive and suddenly the gift you’ve bought for them seems shamefully inadequate.
Kids will unwrap presents. They’ll probably be less polite about it than the grown-ups. It’ll all happen way too fast. Maybe the kids will be happy. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll get into fights.
The place will be a mess. There will be piles of dishes. There’s still tons of work to do. Not everyone is having fun. You’ll end the day feeling tired, broke, and unfulfilled.
Take that Hallmark! That’s the best we normal people can do.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. I hope your Christmas isn’t that bad. But I think you get the point. Silent night, holy night… not happening.
Or perhaps the opposite is true. If this is your first Christmas after the death of a loved one, or after a divorce, or if you’re filled with anxiety about work or something in your family, or if you’re depressed, or if you’re lonely… and all the world seems happy and bright, what are you to do? You may find yourself in a room full of happy people but you just want to cry inside. Nevertheless, you put on a happy face because you’re expected to. Or perhaps you find yourself all alone because for one reason or another you can’t travel to family, or family can’t travel to you. Maybe you didn’t get invited to anything. This is a dark and depressing season for many people. Suicide rates go up during the holiday season.
Here's good news. Hallmark’s got Christmas wrong. Way wrong!
Let’s look at the actual Christmas story. Joseph and Mary are on the move because of a census ordered by powerful people living far away. Mary is several months pregnant but she has to travel some 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem on dirty rough trails and roads. It is several day’s journey.
When they arrive there is no room for them. Biblical scholars point out that almost all Bible translations and cultures get the Christmas story wrong. The gospel does not actually say there was no room for them in the inn. It literally says there was no room for them in the guest room. Bethlehem was too small to have a commercial lodging establishment. Think about it for a minute. This census is requiring all sorts of people to travel. Joseph, along with his entire extended family is traveling back to their home in Bethlehem. The house is crowded. It is packed with people.
Peasant homes were often two stories. People lived on the upper floor. Animals were housed in the lower floor. And so when Joseph shows up with a woman ready to give birth, and then she goes into labor, what do they do? The guest room is already full. They send her downstairs with the animals.
And then there’s the birth itself. Joseph Mohr wrote the hymn Silent Night in the early 1800s. Apparently Joseph Mohr was never around when a woman gave birth. There is no silent night!
Pain, probably yelling, mess, confusion, blood, gore. All is not calm. All is not bright. All is not silent. This is a mess!
I’d like Hallmark to make a real Christmas story sometime. They won’t because people won’t like it and they won’t watch it.
But that is actually getting to the truth of Christmas!
Do not try to have everything perfect at Christmas. Do not think that if you plan far enough ahead and organize properly that you might, you just might, get it all right enough to have a sweet gentle fulfilling experience this season. …that you might actually accomplish the real meaning of Christmas.
The Bible doesn’t ask that. God doesn’t expect it.
Here’s the truth. Jesus was born into a mess. That’s all there is to it. Tired, haggard parents; an animal stable; noise, pain, confusion, fear, instability… the list could go on and on.
We humans did not roll out the red carpet for the arrival of our Savior. God came into the messiness of regular human life. And with no fanfare or dramatic pause, God revealed a new world order.
There is hope for the hopeless. There is value for the rejected. There is justice for the suffering. There is healing for the shamed. There is hope for the vast majority of people who have messed up this Christmas and who do not have their lives perfectly together.
Later in the service we will read the opening lines of John’s gospel by candlelight. You know the words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…. And the Word became flesh and lived among us…”
“All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being…” Are you a “being”? Are you here? Yes you are. You have come into being through Jesus. He knows you. He cares about you. He has saved you so that you can live a life of wholeness. That’s true even if you don’t have: perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect body, and a stylish wardrobe.
God doesn’t care one bit how your holiday plans are coming together. God doesn’t care if tomorrow is a wonderful perfect day for you, or if tomorrow is a day of chaos and pain and heartache and anger and dashed hopes and everything else. Jesus was not born into a Hallmark movie. Jesus was born into a noisy gory mess. In other words, Jesus was born into reality.
I made fun of Silent Night a few minutes ago. I probably ought to redeem it before I wrap up here. Silent Night written in haste in a bit of a crisis on Christmas Eve 1818. The organ at St. Nikolaus Church in Obendorf, Germany was suddenly not playable. Assistant pastor Joseph Mohr and organist Franz Gruber hastily threw the song together in the afternoon for the choir to sing that evening accompanied by guitar.
I roll my eyes at the first two verses of Silent Night. It’s sweet but it isn’t real. But those first two verses have a purpose. They set up the last verse. The third verse is where the truth and the power is to be found. We’ll sing its truth soon.
God does bring about a new world order. It is a world order of redeeming grace. It is a world order of peace, humility, honesty, and radical love.
Whether you feel it or not, whether your holiday looks more like a Hallmark movie or more like a horror film, God has made your being and God has come to be with you.
If that gives your heart a sense of peace and wellbeing for this Christmas season, that’s great. Maybe I’ve said something worth listening to. And if it doesn’t, that does not mean that you are lacking or that you have done anything wrong at all. You are still in God’s grace forever.
That’s the message of Christmas. Wholeness, fullness, wellbeing, and even joy are God’s promises and God’s gifts to you always.
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