The sermon for December 24 was based on Luke 2:1-14.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

What do you want for Christmas this year? I ask you that in all seriousness and I want you to answer the question as honestly as you can. What do you want? What will satisfy you? More than anything else, if your honest, you probably want a sensation, a particular feeling.

And what is it you want to feel? To some extent you want to feel the way you did when you were a child and your parents took care of all the work and you simply reveled in the excitement and anticipation of the season. You want that feeling that "God's in His heaven and all's right with the world." There is a name for that sensation, contentment.

I'll bet that everyone of you here tonight would trade your yet unopened packages, your already opened packages and goodly quantity of the stuff you've bought for yourself over the years for an evening, for an hour even, in which you were genuinely content. That's what all this holiday business is really about when you get right down to it. At Christmas time we try to live the way we wished we lived all year long. Our homes are bright with lights and decorations (we delight in our home?!?) We cook and bake for one another. We are hospitable and generous.

Or at least we try to be. Even if we're confused about our motives or our desires, we all seem to agree that if ever we were going to try to live the way we really wanted to, Christmas would be the season for it. So we hope that by mixing a healthy dose of tradition, a huge amount of effort, as much sugar and as many beautiful objects as we can lay our hands on with a fervent, if unspoken, prayer for some kind of divine intervention that we'll discover the long lost recipe for contentment. It's the holy grail of so many who are struggling to keep Christmas.

In a lot of ways, we can tell, by looking at what we do during the holidays, where we are least satisfied with our daily lives. The grandness of our Christmas schemes indicates how small our lives feel. The extent to which we open our homes reveals how isolated we are throughout the year. The lights and the decorations speak to the bleak and un-beautiful quality of so many of our days. Our gifts and deeds of kindness at Christmas are a kind of counterpoint to the selfishness and belligerent interest in our personal rights that usual drive our behavior.

But every year Christmas offers us the promise of a kind of reprieve from ourselves. We stay up late, until all of the spiritual riff-raff have gone to bed or at least gotten off the streets. Then we slip into Church and wait for the Pastor to read to us from St. Luke. The comes this beautiful account of a moment frozen in time that seems to radiate peace and tranquility. Every things is just as we left it last year at this hour. Caesar is collecting revenue, just like every Caesar ever. The shepherds are out in their fields, just where shepherds should be. There still no room at the inn, good... good. God's in His heaven. All's right with the world... almost.

The only trouble with this picture perfect image of the first Christmas is that it's completely false. Mary and Joseph weren't gliding through the countryside with the tamest donkey ever. They were trudging to Bethlehem to be taxed by a wicked tyrant. Mary, although remarkably faithful and undoubtedly eager to see God's Son, was leaving a town were the worst kind of rumors were flying around about her. Joseph was likewise scorned in Nazareth. They wouldn't return to Nazareth for years. And you know full well those shepherds weren't busy singing vespers out there in the fields. These were real people with heartaches and sorrows.

Jesus was not born in a painting. He was born during a night when everything was going wrong for two people that had had almost everything go wrong for the last 9 months. But from the moment of His birth, things begin to square up for them and for us. First of all for them. The rumors that been circulating about the Blessed Virgin were that she was neither. And Joseph most certainly had a reputation for being weak and for having been made a fool of. But with Jesus' birth the angels announce the baby's identity to the shepherds who then tell everyone else, adding much desired and new credence to the explanation Mary and Joseph had given all along.

From the moment He's born, Jesus begins to lift the burdens from those He loves and take them on Himself. He lifts His mother's shame and He takes up Joseph's scorn. He adds bright new meaning and importance to the lives of the lowliest shepherds and comforts with His presence even the rude beasts. But He doesn't stop with the miracles and blessings of that first Christmas. He plows right through to the first Good Friday and the First Easter. Then He continues even beyond that, adding blessing upon blessing to the lives of those who love Him.

He comes today with the same consolation as of old. Jesus comes among us right in the midst of our heartaches and worries and embarrassments and He comes with the very same Body and Blood that His mother wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in the manger. He lifts your shame, He shoulders you burdens, He does your duty. The Body and Blood we receive tonight is the flesh and blood, laid so gently in the manger, nailed so brutally to the cross, laid so timidly in the grave and risen so gloriously on Easter morning. Jesus will never set that flesh aside.

Neither will we. By grace through faith and for Christ's sake All is right with the world. Not because God's in His heaven but rather because God's in the world and present in the flesh as well. Jesus' incarnation means everything to us. It means we share the flesh and blood of God. It means He knows what we suffer when we're sick or tired or red-faced from our foolishness. It means that we have something in common with all other men. It means that we will live forever. It means that God loves in ways we can't even understand yet. Jesus is born and that's all that matters. Everything else will work itself out in the end.

Those of you who know me know that I walk around with a list of things to do each day. The number of things on that list hovers at just a little less that 100. It used to frustrate me that the list never shrank, that it actually grew slowly and steadily. It was a source of discontent.

But here's what I got one Christmas. Crossing off all the things on my list would make the world any more or less right than it is at this instant. I wouldn't any more right with either God or the world if I suddenly accomplished all the task before me. God has given me work to do and His Holy Spirit to do it through me. I'm content to do the work. Doing the work is what I was made for. Christ has put me in my place and made me satisfied, even, sometimes, delighted with it. The world is right, I'm right, your right, because Christ is right... here. Amen.

The Peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008