“Merry Christmas”
That traditional greeting, our worship tonight, and your various gatherings throughout this holy season are all expressions of celebration. One hopes, though, that your festive celebrations are not compensatory, as in “It’s been a rough year, so let’s have a good Christmas.” For Christmas needs to be celebrated year-round. No, I don’t mean Macys and Fortunoff should be open 24/365. However, that does raise another point—the one about the secularization of Christmas. Perhaps the complaints about the commercialization of Christmas are misplaced. First of all, a consumer culture driven by a market economy is going to commercialize anything and everything it can; and ours does. Second, the problem is not limited to a society that takes Christ out of Christmas. We also have the phenomenon of a church freezing Christ in Christmas. In other words, this time of year, we are influenced not just by society’s secularization but the church’s specularization. Whereas secular culture has thought time can go on quite nicely without the divine—so that there is no time needed for Christ; a specular church fixing its gaze on Jesus has enshrined the past time of his coming and the future of his return, while tending to discount the present time of the world; now. But what about now?
What about now? What are we doing here? My colleague Bill Stokes, Saint Luke’s organist and choir director, has been excited all Advent waiting and preparing for tonight. He says that this is the one night of the year that the church is not competing with some other option, that this night the world is looking at us. If he is right, then what does the world see?
This night, we, the church, give the world a spectacular vision: music, voices, light, color, good news—all wonderful elements of joyful celebration. In so doing, we need to convey that this is not a compensatory party to brighten the darkness of life. Rather, this is a liberatory event to lighten the path onto a new way of living. That is, Christmas opens up possibilities beyond our imagining. Christmas is not a temporary turning upside down of the world’s usual order—a few days as a break instead of the powerful inbreaking of a new hope. No. Christmas is not a truce called in the midst of war. Rather, Christmas is the ongoing waging of peace, a campaign named compassion, the mobilization of faith. As Isaiah foretold, “The boots of tramping warriors will be burned for fuel… there shall be endless peace…with justice and righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.”

Christmas, if likened to the idea of the exchange of gifts—Christmas comes with a service agreement, a commitment that does not expire.
This night, we the church share Christ with the world.
This night, we the church offer ourselves to the world.
This night we the church invite the world to join in the divine service
of Peace.
We do. Yet, you might ask, “”How do I? How do I take the
spectacular pageantry of Christmas and make it my service of Christ day by day? Here’s a suggestion: Think of a person you do not see anymore; someone with whom you were close. Perhaps, now, they are too far away, or time has changed things. Perhaps, this person is deceased. But here, right now, unwrap a memory of that person—that special one to whom you now would say “You don’t have to get me a present; I just want to see you.”
Then take the power of that feeling, the reality of that intimacy, and give it flesh—incarnation—by deciding to hand the power on to another.
That’s what we are doing here now, in celebration and commitment from this time onward and forevermore. As Paul says, “The grace of God appearing, bringing salvation to all…Christ giving himself for us that he might redeem us, making us just as zealous (just as passionate) in our deeds of self-giving for the good of others.” That’s what we the church need show the world: Heaven and Earth kissing, communion between human and divine; wholeness, Peace.
In Christ, our longing, our hope is fulfilled. The hope and longing of all humanity is God with us, drawing us closer, bringing us home (and not just for the holidays). We are all born with the Christ reality in us. However, the pressures and fractures of life make us forgetful and fearful. We start thinking we have to deserve God or insisting that others must pass a test. But “on Christmas night all Christians sing to hear the news the angels bring.” Do you hear what we are singing? “On Christmas night all Christians sing to hear the news the angels bring.” Our singing is the very song of angels announcing “news of great joy, great mirth, news of our merciful King’s birth.” It’s not about one night some 2000 plus years ago. It is all about now. So actually listen to the songs we sing throughout the season. For this night, we the church are angels singing to the world that asks “What Child is this?”