Tomorrow night is Christmas Eve, and I have been spending much of my time this week reflecting upon what to say about an event that occurred over two thousand years ago. It’s a crazy story with audacious claims about a God that loves so deeply, so broadly, so recklessly as to enter the world as a frail human baby.  It’s a story of God’s use of human scandal (a pregnant fiancée and a fleeing immigrant family) to facilitate a plan of salvation for the entire world.  It’s a story about an angel announcing the good news of the baby’s birth to the least powerful and most vulnerable of human society, the shepherds, and commissioning those same shepherds to be the first evangelists. 

I have preached on the same story every year (except two… one when I had the flu and the other when our services were canceled due to a covid scare) for over thirty years.  One would think that I would have a pretty good idea of what to say.  The story, however, is so paradoxically simple yet profound that preaching about it is not as easy as one might think.

As I was recounting my struggle to a friend, he said, “Just tell them about Jesus.”  And he followed up that statement with, “because you know, Art, it really is just all about Jesus.”

And so, that’s what I will do on Christmas Eve: tell folks about Jesus.  And that’s what I will do on Christmas Day: tell folks about Jesus.  The day after Christmas, I’ll be doing the same thing: telling folks about Jesus.  And the day after that, and the day after that.  And I hope that’s what you will be doing with your days too because, as simple and as profound as the story may be, it really is all about Jesus.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us

Our Lord Emmanuel!

(words by Phillips Brooks, 1835-1893)

~Father Art