Christmas Eve 2025
A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to teach children’s Sunday School. I decided I’d take the opportunity to…crowdsource…my Christmas Eve sermon. Kids will every so often just throw out something that is really profound. So I asked the kids what I should talk about on Christmas Eve. Their suggestion? Dinosaurs. There was a part of me that wanted to try and take their advice. But the amount of mental and theological gymnastics I would have to do to come up with a Christmas message on Dinosaurs would result in something no one would want to hear. So my apologies to the Sunday School from the Second Sunday in Advent, even though the Flintstones and Dino the dinosaur do celebrate Christmas (which makes no sense because they predate Jesus), this will not be a dinosaur homily. Just plain old God incarnate.
We start with Mary and Joseph traveling the 90 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. This would have been about a four-day journey on foot. I’ve wondered why Mary was travelling with Joseph when she was still only engaged to him. I read a lot of books that take place in the 1800s, and if there’s one thing those stories drive home it is that ladies, particularly unmarried ladies, do not go anywhere alone with a man outside her family who is not her husband. A chaperone was essential until you were officially married. But first century betrothal was different than what we think of as an engagement period today or even in recent Western history. First century Jewish betrothal involved the giving of a bride-price to the family of the bride and a formal declaration before witnesses. It typically lasted about a year, during which the groom prepared a home and the bride demonstrated fidelity. Breaking a betrothal required a writ of divorce, underscoring its seriousness. Infidelity during this period was treated as adultery under Jewish Law. So at this point in the story, Mary was already considered part of Joseph’s household, even though they weren’t technically “married” yet, as we would think of being married today.
And then we reach the Christmas Pageant, Charlie Brown story. There are shepherds - like King David - and Angels praising God the way in which it would have been customary to praise an Emperor, but with a twist: peace as a benefit that the Roman emperor claimed to deliver, but is now juxtaposed to God’s glory, which is emblematic of God’s salvation. Starting from the beginning in Chapter 1, Luke sets up Israel’s Messiah as a radical change of the political system from Mary’s song while Jesus is still in the womb - “he has cast down the mighty from their seats / and lifted up the humble and meek”. That same Mary, who knew what the birth of the Messiah would mean for her people, now in Chapter 2 takes in all that is around her, hears the story of what brought these shepherds - strangers - to visit her newborn, and ponders these things in her heart.
The word translated as “ponder”, συμβάλλω, is a really complex Greek word. It means different things based on how many people are doing the action and on whether it’s external or internal - vocalized or within oneself. The word comes from σύν, meaning “with” or “together”, and βάλλω, meaning “to throw”. So Mary took all of these things that had been happening to her and threw them together to treasure, or συντηρέω, which comes from that same σύν, meaning “with”, and τηρέω, or “keep”. It’s almost redundant - “with” and “keep” - which is how we get “treasure”: to keep them safe, close in her postpartum heart.
One of the commentaries I read this week suggested that, since verses six and seven simply read, “the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth”, the birth itself is not miraculous. Another commentary gets closer to getting it right, with the note that there is no “unusual incident”. But childbirth is miraculous. It is dangerous still today, but was even more dangerous for a first century peasant away from home. And it is life changing to the parents. It is somehow simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. Around 10,000 babies are born every day in the United States, averaging out to about one every 10 seconds. Something so ordinary and yet so extraordinary; something so simple and yet so dangerous is how God chose to come amongst us as one of us. And, with both babies and God, our convenience or our timelines aren’t of the highest concern. God, like babies, doesn’t check our schedule. He calls us out of our ordinary lives to be the extraordinary people He has made us to be. Which can be confusing, frustrating, and extremely inconvenient.
Have you ever felt like your life was going like Mary’s is here? By that I mean that everything seems disjointed and nothing makes sense when put together. I’ve been in situations where I’ve thought, “if this was in a novel I was reading, I’d think, ‘ok, that’s a bit much’”. And we have all of these feelings associated with the happenings that we’re trying to sort out as they’re seemingly thrown together in our hearts as well. But they aren’t thrown together to God.
My grandfather used to do giant jigsaw puzzles. I remember one that was of hot air balloons and it seemed that there were about a million pieces of blue sky. It can feel like it doesn’t matter how all of those blue sky pieces fit together, but in the bigger scheme of the puzzle it matters a lot. Nothing is thrown together to God. It all comes together to make the picture of who God is calling us to be. We just have to be sure we are willing to turn a piece to fit it together with the other pieces, even when it is frustrating. Even when it seems like it’s just one more piece of blue sky amid a thousand other pieces of blue sky. God sees the balloons when all we see is more dang blue sky.
The other night at dinner, I asked my kids what they were most excited about for Christmas. My six-year-old is excited for Elsa and Anna dolls. My two-year-old is excited for Mickey and Minnie. I told them what I was most excited about for Christmas is Jesus. They were unimpressed. Which is fair. Those PKs can only take so much. But I do my best to deeply and truly ponder what this night means, to keep that core sentiment true, and one of the ways to do so is to say it! Even when it’s hard or feels a bit silly. When we’re angry or heartbroken. When we’re exhausted and don’t know what we’re going to do with tomorrow. We live in the joy of the knowledge that, with His incarnation, God entered into every part of what it is to be human in the person of Jesus. God loves and understands every part of us, the parts where life is going smoothly and the parts where everything seems like an irredeemable mess. What we look at with pride and what we hide from with shame. God loves all of it so much that He became us to redeem every part of being human from the inside out. As the hymn says, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul! / What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss / to lay aside his crown, for my soul”. Merry Christmas. Amen.
And then we reach the Christmas Pageant, Charlie Brown story. There are shepherds - like King David - and Angels praising God the way in which it would have been customary to praise an Emperor, but with a twist: peace as a benefit that the Roman emperor claimed to deliver, but is now juxtaposed to God’s glory, which is emblematic of God’s salvation. Starting from the beginning in Chapter 1, Luke sets up Israel’s Messiah as a radical change of the political system from Mary’s song while Jesus is still in the womb - “he has cast down the mighty from their seats / and lifted up the humble and meek”. That same Mary, who knew what the birth of the Messiah would mean for her people, now in Chapter 2 takes in all that is around her, hears the story of what brought these shepherds - strangers - to visit her newborn, and ponders these things in her heart.
The word translated as “ponder”, συμβάλλω, is a really complex Greek word. It means different things based on how many people are doing the action and on whether it’s external or internal - vocalized or within oneself. The word comes from σύν, meaning “with” or “together”, and βάλλω, meaning “to throw”. So Mary took all of these things that had been happening to her and threw them together to treasure, or συντηρέω, which comes from that same σύν, meaning “with”, and τηρέω, or “keep”. It’s almost redundant - “with” and “keep” - which is how we get “treasure”: to keep them safe, close in her postpartum heart.
One of the commentaries I read this week suggested that, since verses six and seven simply read, “the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth”, the birth itself is not miraculous. Another commentary gets closer to getting it right, with the note that there is no “unusual incident”. But childbirth is miraculous. It is dangerous still today, but was even more dangerous for a first century peasant away from home. And it is life changing to the parents. It is somehow simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. Around 10,000 babies are born every day in the United States, averaging out to about one every 10 seconds. Something so ordinary and yet so extraordinary; something so simple and yet so dangerous is how God chose to come amongst us as one of us. And, with both babies and God, our convenience or our timelines aren’t of the highest concern. God, like babies, doesn’t check our schedule. He calls us out of our ordinary lives to be the extraordinary people He has made us to be. Which can be confusing, frustrating, and extremely inconvenient.
Have you ever felt like your life was going like Mary’s is here? By that I mean that everything seems disjointed and nothing makes sense when put together. I’ve been in situations where I’ve thought, “if this was in a novel I was reading, I’d think, ‘ok, that’s a bit much’”. And we have all of these feelings associated with the happenings that we’re trying to sort out as they’re seemingly thrown together in our hearts as well. But they aren’t thrown together to God.
My grandfather used to do giant jigsaw puzzles. I remember one that was of hot air balloons and it seemed that there were about a million pieces of blue sky. It can feel like it doesn’t matter how all of those blue sky pieces fit together, but in the bigger scheme of the puzzle it matters a lot. Nothing is thrown together to God. It all comes together to make the picture of who God is calling us to be. We just have to be sure we are willing to turn a piece to fit it together with the other pieces, even when it is frustrating. Even when it seems like it’s just one more piece of blue sky amid a thousand other pieces of blue sky. God sees the balloons when all we see is more dang blue sky.
The other night at dinner, I asked my kids what they were most excited about for Christmas. My six-year-old is excited for Elsa and Anna dolls. My two-year-old is excited for Mickey and Minnie. I told them what I was most excited about for Christmas is Jesus. They were unimpressed. Which is fair. Those PKs can only take so much. But I do my best to deeply and truly ponder what this night means, to keep that core sentiment true, and one of the ways to do so is to say it! Even when it’s hard or feels a bit silly. When we’re angry or heartbroken. When we’re exhausted and don’t know what we’re going to do with tomorrow. We live in the joy of the knowledge that, with His incarnation, God entered into every part of what it is to be human in the person of Jesus. God loves and understands every part of us, the parts where life is going smoothly and the parts where everything seems like an irredeemable mess. What we look at with pride and what we hide from with shame. God loves all of it so much that He became us to redeem every part of being human from the inside out. As the hymn says, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul! / What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss / to lay aside his crown, for my soul”. Merry Christmas. Amen.
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