I don’t know if you’re the kind of person who wants everything at Christmas to be perfect. You know what I mean: everything perfectly decorated, the perfect gift chosen for everyone, and above all that everyone close to you is where they should be. If you are like that, my guess is that for the second year in a row, you haven’t gotten your Christmas wish. I know I haven’t. We’re here tonight well aware that as humans we’re just not as in charge as we would like to be. For all of us it’s a source of frustration, for other it’s a source of real loss. The world turns out always to be more vulnerable than we think it is.
And yet, on Christmas, we gather to hear a story that we have all heard before, and it’s one that is so intense and important that it’s often hard to believe. And it’s this: This imperfect world with all its mess is a holy and beloved place. Jesus wasn’t born to make a brief visit to this world. He came to stay. He came so that we could see God as someone who lives with us, not a distant father or some kind of an anonymous spirit off somewhere, but someone who understands everything about this world and about us as individuals.
And the miracle of that Christmas story isn’t the star and the angelic voices. it’s the message of those angels that is what matters. You don’t even have to believe in angels with wings, but on Christmas you do have to believe one thing: that you are loved as you are, you are loved much more than most of us love ourselves. No matter what darkness there is in your life, the light is there for you to turn towards. It is not always easy to be open to that light. But if you’ve experienced love in your life, ever, you have experienced just a hint of what God is trying to tell us about what is at the heart of his desire to be here with us.
We know that everything in this world on Christmas Eve is not the way it should be. Among the good things this Christmas story does, it points out for us the contrasts in this world between the people who have it good and the forgotten people whose lives are one trial after another. We all have work to do, and we have people to help and speak up for, and the work might be hard. That means we’re constantly asked to say yes to new directions for ourselves, we are asked to keep moving, the way Mary and Joseph and almost everyone else in the gospel, especially Jesus, all of them get asked over and over to stretch towards giving their life for others. That gets asked of us, too.
But we say yes to that work, not to earn God’s love or to prove our worth, we do it out of love, we do it because it’s what you do when you know you have God’s love already, nothing can take it away, no matter what happens to us. With the birth of Jesus God has joined together heaven and earth now, and no one can ever tear them apart. We can see God now in what is right next to us, where he has been all along.
This Christmas story began in Advent when Mary said yes to a visitor from God, but maybe it really began before that, when she heard from that same visitor that she had found favor with God. I hope that this Christmas you will realize in some moment that you also have found favor with God, somehow we all have, because that is who God is. That is the message of the angels. Merry Christmas.