Here is my Christmas Eve sermon. It’s based on Revelation 12:1-9. Occasionally I do a manuscript for the message, and this was one of those times, so here you go:
I learned on Handy Manny this week that the true meaning of Christmas is that we should help each other, which is a really nice thing to do. I’ve heard other things about Christmas, like the true spirit of Christmas lives in the hearts of children everywhere, but I have to confess to you, I have no idea what that even means. Others will tell you that the meaning of Christmas is to love your family and appreciate those around you. That’s a nice thing too. I am all for loving people, unless they cut me off in traffic when I’m Christmas shopping, but then I repent and ask forgiveness. I have to confess to you, I’m not really concerned with controlling or fighting what the culture thinks about Christmas, although, I does feel at times like it’s a little forced, pre-packaged and like I’m being sold a bill of goods. I mean, it’s weird to hear of the warm love-y stuff that Christmas stands for and then watch people trample each other on Black Friday, but whatever. The whole battle for Christmas thing just isn’t my thing.
But, I am concerned about how the church presents and understands our story this time of year, the story of the Nativity; the story of the birth of Christ. I fear that we have domesticated it. It seems that we’ve taken an incredible story and tamed it. Maybe it’s because we’ve heard the story so often – familiarity breeds contempt and all that. Whatever the reason, we’re left with a rather impotent version of the Nativity, I fear.
It’s a cute story. It could be a made for tv movie or an afterschool special. A girl is going to have a baby, but she’s a virgin, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We have some drama. Will Joseph leave her or does true love win out and he’ll stay with, her? At different points during the story, angels appear. They’re cute chubby little baby angels, with fluffy wings, glowing white, I want to just pinch their cheeks as they squeak out their messages from God. One of the messages they have is to tell the shepherds about baby Jesus. The shepherds are decent, friendly guys, dressed up in bathrobes with a sheet on their heads and the bathrobe belt tied around the sheet to hold it in place. Of course, the sheep don’t stink. So they go visit baby Jesus. And it’s baby Jesus, let’s be sure about that. It’s not uncomfortable Jesus, who when he speaks, awkward moments happen, or who will return to judge the earth. It’s baby Jesus. Baby Jesus is cute, smiling, cooing – nothing like an actual newborn; purplish, lumpy, and screaming. “But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Sometime after this, “we three kings of orient are,” come to visit baby Jesus and bring him wonderful gifts of gold, Frankenstein, and merv, whoever Merv is. Of course, they have to wait in line behind the little drummer boy, who had no gift to bring, pa rum pa pump um. The drummer boy realizes, too late, that his gift of hammering on a drum around a new born baby is slightly overshadowed when the one king actually gives gold, I mean really, gold? But none of these visitors thought of stopping by the Dollar Caesar and picking up a package of diapers. Meanwhile, “we three kings of orient are,” show us the message that Christmas is about giving presents as long as we remember that Jesus is the reason for the season. And then sometime before midnight, Santa Claus comes, kneels at the manger and says a quick prayer. The real danger of this story read that way, isn’t that it’s too cute or that it isn’t religious enough. The issue is that it becomes just another feel-good story that we tame, package up and market. But doing that misses the absolute radical nature of just what it means for God the Son to take on human flesh and be among us. It misses the head spinning and amazing mystery that the one through whom all things were created became, of all things, a baby in the midst of that very creation. It misses telling us of the incredible love of God, that he would give his only Son, into the mess of a very real world for our salvation. This is a rescue story of cosmic proportions.
So, I read to you from the book of Revelation, and we heard the Nativity story apocalyptic style. It’s a little more extreme. It’s a vision; a crazy symbolic vision. And it’s got a dragon, which any little boy will tell you, makes an awesome story. This apocalyptic vision paints a picture for us. Think of it kind of like a comic book story – graphic and loud images jump off the page at us. This does something important for us. It unsettles us. It makes the Nativity story unfamiliar again, so that maybe, just maybe, we can actually hear what Matthew and Luke have been telling us.
Here is the Christmas story, from the beginning. God created a wonderful world and entrusted it to humanity: man and woman, to care for it, but then that ancient serpent, the deceiver, deceived the woman so that humanity chose our own will instead of God’s. We chose our way, not God’s way. It’s called sin. And sin leads to death. When humanity, who had been entrusted with creation sinned, something terrible happened. Creation became fundamentally broken. Humanity was broken. Relationships were broken. Even giving birth to new life would only be through pain and suffering. New life. There was a promise of new life. In Genesis 3 a promise was made in regards to the serpent and the woman. She will bear a child, and that child’s heel will crush the serpent’s skull. It’s on now. It’s skull crushin’ time.
Time moves forward. Brokenness and tragedy mar creation, but still there is hope. There are glimpses of beauty. This creation is God’s creation, and it is worth rescuing. God will not simply leave it to be destroyed by the forces of evil. God won’t leave creation to be ruined by the dragon. This is war. God begins to call people. The people of God are represented by the woman in this part of Revelation. It’s the dragon, that old serpent chasing the woman all over again. And that woman, the people of God, the real and obedient people of God, is then specifically found in the person of Mary. Mary, who said to the angel, let God’s will be done. Mary, who carried within her new life. Mary, who was going to be a part of God’s promise. She will bear a child, and he will strike the serpent’s head.
There is something different about this child, something cosmically important. This child is the enemy of the dragon. In fact, the dragon wants to devour the child as it is born. We read that and remember how Herod slaughtered the infants in and around Bethlehem. This was a truly evil act, inspired by true evil. This was a battle. But the dragon’s attempts to destroy the child did not work – he is born to rule the nations with a rod of iron, he is destined to be the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. It turns out that this child is no ordinary child. This is Son of God. This is the second person of the Trinity. This is the none other than the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the great rider on the white horse, the one who will judge the living and the dead. This is Jesus the Christ, the anointed, the Messiah, and at the mention of his name demons tremble and the foundations of hell shake. This is the one who lived, died, and rose again to live forevermore. This was no ordinary baby, this was the Word made flesh, and as Mary stared into the face of that newborn baby she was staring into eternity, she was staring at the defeat of evil, she was staring at the fulfillment of that ancient prophecy, for she had given birth to this son, and now he was going to grow up and be the one to crush that serpent’s skull, break the gates of hades off their hinges, and set the captives free. This is nothing less than absolute and total war by God on evil – and it’s take no prisoners. For God so loved this broken world that he sent his only Son, to come, live a sinless life, die for our sins, defeat death, offer forgiveness and vanquish evil. The Nativity is the Kingdom of God arriving. That’s why you see angels all over the place, heaven is very close. That’s why the wise men arrive, they are compelled to worship true royalty. That’s why the shepherds are involved, because God is amazingly raising up the humble to include them. There are supernatural things happening on this night. Good was crushing the skull of evil in the form of a baby who was born to save the world. Creation was broken by sin, so God the Son entered into creation, taking humanity upon himself and in doing so repaired the brokenness.
So, I’m dreaming of a cosmic Christmas story – one that shows the battle between good and evil has already been won by Jesus Christ. That’s a story worth telling over and over again. That’s a story worth giving your life for. That is the message the church absolutely cannot lose during this season. Don’t let the trappings of this time of year distract you from what is really going on. Tonight, we celebrate the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Tonight, we revel in the love of God. Tonight, we take joy in the serpent’s skull crushing defeat.