Luke 2:1-20
Christmas Eve Message
December 24, 2022
Listen…can you hear it?
Yes, it’s the breathing of the ones seated on either side of you in a magical harmony with your own breath.
Yes, it’s the sound of the heating system here in this 170-year-old church.
Yes, it was the bell that was rung right before the Service began and will ring again at 6:00 p.m. along with bells throughout our community.
Yes, it’s the sound of the one rifling through their purse in search of a tissue.
Yes, it’s the buzzing of a pocketed cell phone that at least isn’t ringing with some catchy tune.
Yes, it’s the child whispering to the parent, “How much longer?” or the sound of a growling stomach anticipating the dinner to come.
We came tonight to hear the story we know by heart and to sing the songs that help us tell that story.
What we’re not hearing but all experiencing together right now is the balancing act each of us is a part of tonight, here, in this place.
We, on this Christmas Eve, are at the transition point.
Whatever happened before tonight is before Christ and everything after tonight is after Christ.
We are at the moment of Emmanuel – God with us.
This is the night when a baby will be born in the usual way, just like each of us.
And it will be a night when that same baby will be God as only God can be.
We are all waiting for the sound that lets us know a baby has been born, the same sound that 385,000 babies will make who will be born today around the world – that first cry announcing – ‘I am here.”
And so, we wait.
Some of us are waiting for a loved one to arrive.
Others of us are waiting to see what might be under the tree or in a stocking tomorrow morning.
Some of us are waiting for the return of Christmas as it once was while others are waiting for the hubbub to be over and some measure of normalcy to return.
Home is where we’re told we should be for Christmas but what is home and where exactly is it?
The answer is here.
Right here – this is home.
We are all safe and warm here in this space, each in our own skin but also all part of the same family.
This is Bethlehem for every one of us, the place we bring both our hopes and fears, and they are met in this space where God with us – Emmanuel – dwells.
This is that liminal space in the story we tell every year, the one that brings a couple away from the familiar place they know as home so that the empire gets to count them and gets the taxes owed.
They go looking for shelter and are directed toward the only available space in the crowded city, beside the cows and goats and chickens.
Just after the birth, total strangers, shepherds who have listened to the words of an angel will arrive, and their witness will add to the awe of this birth event.
They will be forever changed by what they’ve heard and heeded.
What will change in us because of this birth?
These past four weeks of Advent, we’ve gone searching for hope, peace, joy, and love with the culmination being a baby who will grow into his message but for now he is vulnerable and reliant on others for his survival.
Home is wherever he is surrounded by love.
For many working with those with no permanent address, those living in shelters or campsites or in cars or on the street, there has been a rethinking of the concept of homelessness.
Often you will now hear those compassionate and dedicated souls referring to those they care about as unhoused rather than homeless.
Unhoused or unsheltered does not carry the baggage that the term homeless does.
The late Bennington County writer and theologian Frederick Buechner pointed out that every one of us can experience a different type of homelessness, the one where we have a home, but we are not really at home there.
He explains that “to be really at home is to be really at peace, and there can be no real peace for any of us until there is some measure of real peace for all of us.” (Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, 46)
Home is at the heart of who we are as beloved children of God.
Just as the children imagined the importance of making a cardboard box an appropriate place for Jesus to sleep, so too, we all have a chance to make a home of the space we occupy, not just for ourselves, but for those around us.
The recognition that in God we find home allows us to offer a sense of home for a hurting world, one relationship at a time.
The baby born this night next to mooing cows and baaing sheep speaks to the belonging we have to God, our home.
And so we listen for the in-dwelling God which means sometimes we have to just pause in silence.
Like the words we just sang:
How silently, how silently
The wondrous Gift is given!
so God imparts to human hearts
the blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming
but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive Him still
the dear Christ enters in.
Let us prepare space within us for this gift. Amen.