Christmas Eve/Day, December 24/25, 2024

Christmas Eve is one of the most challenging days for preachers and liturgists. Attendance swells. College students are back home. Families from far away gather for the holidays and Christmas services. The C&E (Christmas and Easter) Christians show up, although nowadays most are simply C (Christmas) Christians as Easter worship is no longer obligatory for those at the margins. Moreover, there are seekers, people needing inspiration, and a spouse or child facing their first Christmas without their beloved companion or living with a life-threatening illness. The preacher can’t be all things to all people, nor can the preacher attempt to address every person in attendance. Moreover, most progressive, open and relational, and process-oriented preachers seldom longer believe in a literal understanding of God coming down among us supernaturally in the incarnation. We don’t want to water down the message, but we don’t see the Word made flesh as a supernatural rescue operation or see Jesus the Christ as somehow a divine being encased in a human body. We want to hit a home run, to touch struggle souls and (at least) be relevant to family members who come grudgingly at their parents’ request. We want to proclaim that the world lives by the incarnation of God, as Whitehead says, and that we can experience the incarnation in our lives, and we want to be honest in our naturalistic understanding of God’s presence in the life of Jesus. Doctrinal statements won’t do, nor will fairy tales. Still, we must preach the story of Jesus’ birth in ways that allow the Holy to be born in the preacher and congregation. As preachers, we are midwives of the incarnation, awakening to God’s birth in our lives, and bringing forth God’s birth in our congregations and communities.

Christmas is no time for demythologizing or iconoclastic debunking of childhood memories. It may be a time to see the truth and beauty of the stories of Jesus’ conception and birth and look for holiness in the humility of the Holy Family and astonished shepherds, and to find the holiness of our own lives.

In Christmas, we experience the Galilean origins of Christianity. The Christmas story is about the power of love, not the love of power. The contrast between Caeser and Jesus is breathtaking in the story of Jesus’ birth. God’s incarnational presence is reflected in persuasion not coercion. In language bounding on poetry, Whitehead notes:

But there can be no doubt as to what elements in the [gospel] record have evoked a response from all that is best in human nature. The Mother, the Child, the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: the whole with the authority of supreme victory. I need not elaborate. Can there be any doubt that the power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that which Plato divined in theory?

In Christmas, we encounter the non-authoritarian Christ, who inspires open-spirited religious practices that embrace mysticism, doubt, and wonder:

When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered…The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly. In the official formation of the religion, it has assumed the trivial form of the mere attribution of to the Jews that they cherished a misconception about their Messiah. But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.

Christmas Eve and Day are times for singing and we may be called to sing our sermons, integrating carols with words of faith. Knowing that most Christmas homilies are meditations rather than full blown sermons, we look for images. Accordingly, I will focus on the embedded story of Jesus’ birth, the shepherds’ encounter with the angels, and the contrasting cosmic vision of John’s Prologue. Together, they join the Infinite and Finite, the Cosmic and the Creaturely, and the Everlasting and Ever Changing.

Luke provides images of pregnant Mary, protective Joseph, the houseless travelers, the simple birthplace, and behind it all, the oppressive and violent power of Empire. Jesus was born and died in an oppressed land: he never spent a moment of political freedom. He was always at the mercy of the often-arbitrary machinations of Roman power. In the background also is Matthew’s description of diabolical Herod, the flight of the Holy Family as asylum seekers to Egypt, and the slaughter of the toddlers in Bethlehem. Nothing in the birth of Jesus calls forth the vitriol we see in today’s MAGA Christians and white Christian nationalists except as they privilege would-be Caesers and self-absorbed Potentates. Yet, the greatest power of the world is Divine Empathy, living in solidarity with humankind and all creation, and willing to suffer to bring healing to our world. God wants, as Titus says, the salvation of all. In a world of darkness, the light comes and the true light enlightens all creation.

Then, there are the shepherds, the menial workers, houseless, with little hope of climbing the economic ladder. Seen as low class, no account, and not to be trusted, the shepherds like the Horrible Herdmans in the Best Christmas Pageant Ever hear and receive the Good News of Jesus’ birth. Imagine shepherds with front row seats to the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Imagine foreign Magi, practitioners of another religious tradition, following a star that the Jewish political and religious leaders didn’t even notice. Imagine God’s incarnation in a peasant family. Surely, the world lives by the incarnation of God and Emmanuel embraces the least, lonely, and lost, the “nuisances and nobodies.” (John Dominic Crossan) Unprotected by privilege, for one moment in time, these outsiders experience the doors of perception being purified and seeing everything as it is – infinite. (William Blake)

We are all in search of the angelic and ecstatic at Christmas. Even if we chuckle at formula Hallmark movies, we want a happy ending, we want the good people to win, we want a happy ending for ourselves and our planet. Mystic-activist Howard Thurman captures the drama of the angelic announcement to the shepherds and invites us to be part of this ever-present of divine call and human response:

There must be always remaining in every man’s life some place for the singing of the angels – someplace for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative throwing all the rest of life into a new and created relatedness. Something that gathers up into itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning – and then passes. The commonplace is shot through now with new glory – old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the harshness of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.

The shepherds returned to their flocks transformed. Life would never be the same for them. Still scorned by polite society and subject to the whims of Rome, they nevertheless experienced a new dignity, they were God’s children, touched by angels, and worthy regardless of the opinions of others. Liberated from other’s diminishment and their own self-limitation, their divinely given self-affirmation may have transformed their behavior, giving them a spirit of agency to replace the passivity and hopelessness of their previous lives. Again, let Howard Thurman express the transformative power of this simple story of love’s power to change our world.

The true meaning of Christmas is expressed in the sharing of one’s graces in a world in which it is so easy to become callous, insensitive, and hard. Once this spirit becomes part of a man’s life, every day is Christmas and every night is freighted with the dawning of fresh, and perhaps holy, adventure.

Let this Christmas be adventurous! Preach with joyful amazement! Look for angels in the congregation and prepare to be blessed as you bless. Merry Christmas!

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Bruce Epperly is Theologian of Residence at Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ, Bethesda, Maryland. A theologian, professor, university chaplain, and seminary professor and administrator, Epperly is the author of over 80 books, including “Homegrown Mystics: Restoring Our Nation through the Healing Wisdom of America’s Visionaries,” “Saving Protestant Theology to Save the World,” “Jesus: Mystic, Healer, and Prophet,” and “The God of Tomorrow: Metaphysics, Mysticism, and Mission in Whitehead and Teilhard.” He is also of six volumes of 12 Days of Christmas meditations, the most recent being “Once Upon a Time: The 12 Days of Christmas in Story and Film.” He may be reached at [email protected].