Message Delivered at Christ Church
Christmas Eve 2007
Delivered by Paul A. Johnson
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Merry Christmas, Everybody! What a great day! It’s good to be here on Christmas Eve to worship the Lord; to give God thanks for coming to us at Christmas.
It’s a good time to be together, and my hunch is that we have some guests at worship this evening. If you’re visiting friends or family from out of town, raise your hands. We want to give you a round of applause. We’re glad you’re here. You have traveled, and made it. Welcome to Richmond, and welcome to Christ Church, and a Merry Christmas to you.
In our household, we did our family Christmas visit a few days ago. My wife’s family all lives in Maryland, between DC and Baltimore, so we took a little time this past Friday for a quick, overnight Christmas visit…
Did some shopping with some of my wife’s family on Friday, and then went to her parents where we were having dinner and spending the night, and then a bunch of us drove into Baltimore on Friday night to see some Christmas lights that someone said were really, really good.
Now, I’ve been to Baltimore a few times, but I don’t really know the streets of Baltimore very well. Baltimore is not my turf. But that was okay because I’m with some folks who’ve lived around Baltimore most of their lives; and we each had mapquest directions for where we’re going; and one of the cars in the caravan even has a GPS system. So when we got in our vehicles on Friday night to go see these lights, I was pretty confident we were going to end up where we were supposed to be, when we were supposed to be there. We had all the tools you need to get from one place to the other. In fact, if you were watching us get started on this journey, you’d say “…now there’s a bunch of people who know exactly where they’re going…”
Now, I’m not sure when, exactly, we made that wrong turn. And considering all the technology at our disposal, I still don’t quite know why we made that wrong turn. But make a wrong turn we did. And have you ever noticed the exponential impact one wrong turn can have—especially when it’s dark? Once we made that first wrong turn, we just couldn’t stop. The wrong turns kept coming, and coming. We couldn’t get enough of them. We stopped to ask a police officer for directions, and ninety seconds later, there he was, waving at us as we drove by him—again.
And I’ll tell you…we were really trying. We were doing our best. The cell phones were buzzing between the cars; and buttons were being pushed on the GPS; and there were “yes dears” flying back and forth. We did everything we could to get it right, but still, it was a titanic epidemic of directional confusion so that a journey that was to take us thirty minutes took us almost an hour-and-a-half.
But before the rosy fingers of dawn appeared in the east, we did get to where we were going. Found some parking spots, and we looked at the lights…it was a block of Baltimore row houses all decorated. Lights all over the place, and more versions of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” pumping out of their sound systems than I thought existed. The first house must have had sixty stuffed Santas, and elves, and reindeer in its windows. The next had a toy train set suspended from the porch ceiling. One house had one of those gyrating Santa mannequins; another had an inflatable merry-go-round; another had an art show going on inside; and another had a Christmas tree made from hubcaps. It was, in other words, the finest exhibition of community organized exterior Christmas illumination I had ever seen.
And if you made your way all the way around the block, just about at the end, there was one last house that had all the lights like everybody else; that was all lit up. But when you got close, you saw it was different. Their music was the classic Christmas music from ancient times; and in their front yard were Mary, Joseph, and a baby. And granted, this holy family was made of plastic. But plastic or not, it was clear this was the place we were intended to finish. And sure, we’d gotten lost, and maybe said or thought some things we shouldn’t have said or thought, and we had to go through all the superficialities that are common to the secular Christmas before we got to what mattered. But this group of well-intentioned pilgrims, in spite of all these things, ended where we are all supposed to be…with the baby. That one more time, God showed up.
And isn’t it true, that sometimes this is exactly what life is like…
We do our best; we marshal our resources; we even know where we want to get to and how we want to get there. And then for all sorts of reasons we make a wrong turn, and maybe another one, and maybe even another one. We discover that the journey that appears to be easy really isn’t so easy after all. We come across one way streets or traffic congestion, and end up stuck. It takes us longer than we thought it would take us; it takes us to places we’d never think we’d see; it asks of us virtues we’re not quite sure we can produce; there are diversions along the way that feel good, but ask nothing of us. And sometimes, all this stuff happens in the dark. It’s easy to get lost in the dark.
Well, let me tell you…some 2500 years ago, a faithful man had a vision of God’s promises, and he said this: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Elsewhere he said that the crooked is made straight, and the rough places plain. That to us, a child is born. And I’m here to tell you that no matter what—no matter where we are on the path; no matter whether we’re the lost or the found—this child, this baby, always shows up.
Life can be complex. That’s just the way life is, and the God we worship knows that.
And because God knows this about life, and because God is merciful—that is why God came at Christmas. That we would never have to make this journey of life alone—that is why God came at Christmas. That we would know and experience that no matter what, God loves us—that is why God came at Christmas. That we might be inspired to heroic acts of service and love—that is why God came at Christmas. That we could look at that place in our life that scares us, and then hear “fear not”—because it isn’t that just angels are with us; the God of all the Universe is with us, too—that is why God came at Christmas.
All these things are what we celebrate today. The angels give it witness to the shepherds, and the shepherds give it witness to the world. We can’t go anywhere; we can’t do anything; we can’t be so good that we don’t need God’s love, or so bad that we won’t be offered it. Because it’s one of those things that is just an “is.” Which is why all the time, this baby shows up, and gets in our way. The gulf that separates God from humanity has been bridged by a loving God who comes, and never stops coming; who seeks us even when we’re off the track, or maybe not looking for him at all.
We’re all taking our journey…and maybe a few of us have gotten it right all the time. For most of us, we’ve probably come across a few wrong turns, traffic jams, and bad directions. But we do not get to the end of the journey without this baby finding us. Not because of anything we’ve accomplished; not because we’ve earned it; not because we’ve figured it out or are ready or prepared enough. The baby finds us because that is the nature of our God.
So one more time, it’s Christmas. May it be for each of us a Christmas of immense blessing; one not just of giving, but of receiving. May we find some joy today in God’s promise. And may it be that tonight the Gospel truth settles in our souls—that in the birth of this little baby, in whom the hopes and fears of all the years are met, the human face of God is revealed. And it has a smile on it. The light is shining in the darkness, and there is nothing to fear: Not death; not loss; not failure; not darkness; not something outside of us; not something inside of us…none of those things claim us. The one who claims us is Jesus, God the Son; Emmanuel, God with us.
And while it might be that we all get lost from time to time—this Lord Jesus, he never loses us.
Merry Christmas, friends…
