“Coming Home for Christmas!”

Christmas Eve                                                                   24 December 2021

(Isaiah  9:2-7   Psalm 96   Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-20)

“Coming Home for Christmas!”

Merry Christmas!

I really struggled with how to write this sermon this evening.  I wondered what it is that we all need to hear at this time.

I found myself hungering to find words that will startle us the same way the angels’ announcement startled the shepherds.  I found myself yearning to find words that will comfort us on our own journeys, even as Mary and Joseph must have found some comfort from the shepherds after that long, almost disastrous journey they traveled from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to the City of David called Bethlehem.

I’ve heard preachers (I’ve probably been one) bash economically powerful celebrations of Christmas. That’s not what we need to hear this evening.

I’ve heard preachers (I’ve probably been one) bash political power structures.  That’s also not what we need to hear this evening.

What I believe we need to hear this evening is the healing of our separated selves and the world through this birth we celebrate this night.  Our division from each other at this time is the sadness and the darkness of the human race.

If we want to experience the newborn Christ, and if we take Luke’s account seriously, the Word of hope we can hear this night is that Jesus is being born wherever people are gathered; and Jesus is being born where people need him most.

The Word I want us to hear this evening is that God has not given up on us.  God hasn’t given up on the families who have lost loved ones this past year, who find a stocking hanging empty because that person is no longer here.  God has not given up on the families still struggling because they haven’t found employment to sustain them through this ongoing difficult time.  God hasn’t given up on those who still labor under physical and mental pain and ongoing feelings of emptiness in their lives.  God hasn’t given up on our world!

I want to speak hope this evening, so I’m going to “cheat” a bit and quote a few of the stories of hope we’ve heard these past four Wednesday evenings of Advent.  We heard some terrific speakers sharing memories of “homecoming!” We heard “coming home” journeys  of four individuals from our congregation. 

The first week we heard from Bill Shoemaker.  He shared six wonderful scenes of ‘homecoming’  from his life.  Certainly one was meeting his wife, Paula, but Bill also shared memories from childhood of living with his grandmother following his own mother’s dying, his longing to be in a place of love and kindness.

The following week when we heard from 14-yr-old Blayne Miller, who has already lived in 7 houses, three school districts and three States, as she shared her amazing story, of the love she met through caring family and friends along the way, as she came to realize how “homecoming means coming full circle, a time to return where you know you belong, even if it is not where you started.”

The third week we heard from ninth-grader Addy Dunlop , and as we listened, were moved to savoring the smell of bread, identifying with the soothing comfort it brought to one girl and one family during some dark COVID times;  Addy also led us to the Breaking of the Bread—Holy Communion—a part of our worship life we desperately missed  for many months at the height of the pandemic.

Finally, we heard from Brent Smith.  His stories describing going from Hero to Zero in a few short hours at a very young age, and how this set the stage for a deeper understanding of church as ‘family’ and how he learned that sometimes “we all hold on to what is ‘mine’ instead of sharing what is ‘ours’—but in the end, pulling together because that is what a family does.”

Isaiah reminds us that even “when we walk in darkness we will see a great light.” This light is what we heard in the messages from Bill, Blayne, Addy and Brent—kindness, love, belonging, pulling together, and the Bread that is broken. 

Christmas touches us deeply because it is at Christmas where we come to know the wonder of God at work in our midst.  Christmas touches us deeply because it is a story challenging us to find light in darkness—to discover the Christ who is truly among us, and to mirror the life of Christ in our own.

The experience of God in and through times of darkness does not rescue us from our lives; but rather, makes our lives more fully our own.  In this way our lives become the possibility of wholeness in a shattered world and a testimony to the ultimate reality of love and life.

The mystery—God born into a broken humanity—stretches our imaginations beyond the breaking point as we try to grasp a God who would go to the lengths God has gone, to gift us with the hope of Life through Jesus.

It is when all walls are broken down; it is when all peoples are lifted up; it is when openness to all that is different becomes most important. . . it is when we open our hearts to this profound Christmas gift, when our souls are empty of all that is not love, it is then when we truly and finally have come home!  Thanks be to God!  Merry Christmas!  Amen.