Providence United Methodist Church

December 24, 2000 ~ Christmas Eve

Scripture ~ Luke 2

Sermon ~

Preacher ~ Mark Ralls

 

            What do you want for Christmas?  When I was a child there was no question more important than this.  Whatever else I got wrong during the year, I made sure I answered this question correctly.  From Thanksgiving on, it demanded my constant attention.  I would spend hours thumbing through the toy section of the Sears catalogue until I finally completed a suitable wish list.  But my idea of an appropriate sized list and that of my parents was rarely the same.  So when I stood in the kitchen with my carefully prepared proposal, my mother would examine it, hand it back to me and ask, “What do you really want for Christmas?”  This was her way of suggesting that my wish list could use a little pruning.  And so I would take up the hard task of separating what I wanted from what I really wanted.

 

            We struggle to make this distinction our whole lives.  Yet, something about Christmas puts us in touch with what we really want, with those deep longings that for most of the year, remain tucked away in the bottom drawer of our hearts.  For instance, I know that someone here tonight wants more than anything else to wake up in her own house and find all the beds full again, with children and grandchildren who have come home for the holidays.  There is also a young couple hoping to have their first child.  Their prayer tonight is that perhaps one day soon they will be blessed with their very own nativity scene.  A college student here has just completed his first semester.  Now he won’t admit this to anyone, but he can hardly wait to wake up Christmas morning in his old room, to find his parents sipping coffee in their bathrobes and to feel, just once more, like a kid again.  And, someone here has attended all the holiday parties but there’s been an empty seat beside her.  This year especially she longs to remember the joys of Christmas past.  But truth be told, she hopes to forget a little too – to not think too much about the stocking that stays folded in its box or how strange it felt to decorate the tree alone this year.  However different our Christmas wishes may be, together they represent the hopes and fears of all our years.  They evoke deep longings for home and family, for love and tenderness, for peace and goodwill.

 

Yet, beneath our Christmas wishes, beneath all these good things we want is that which we really want.  We can bury this desire, this hunger, as deep as a bone, but its still there.  One of the disciples spoke for all of us when he approached Jesus and said, “Show us God, and we will be satisfied.”  That is why you and I are here tonight.  This is what we really want.  However different our wish lists may, we have gathered here to keep watch for a star, to listen for the rustle of an angel’s wing, and to feel once again that old hunger for God. 

 

            And, for those of us who long to find their way back to God, the good news of Christmas is as good as it gets.  According to Luke, the first ones to hear this good news were a group of poor shepherds wandering about the rural district of Bethlehem.  They were viewed as shiftless poachers, little more than vagrants or petty thieves.  They knew what it was like to be hungry and to wake up bone-tired from sleeping on cold ground.  On the night of the first Christmas they gathered around a pitiful little fire, that was more smoke than flame.  And, if we could somehow have asked them that night, “What is it that you really want?” I doubt we would have heard much about God, or angels, or a coming Messiah.  Their wish lists no doubt consisted of more mundane things like a crust of warm bread or a blanket for cold desert nights.  But on this night, God answered prayers too deep for words.

 

The shepherds were so tired and hungry that they didn’t notice when the air grew strangely still and the sky took on an odd glow.  At first, they didn’t know that someone else was with them that night, but then out of the darkness came a clear voice that dropped them to their knees. “Behold I bring you glad tidings of great joy which will come to all people; for unto you is born in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  And with these words, the foundations of heaven cracked open and seraphim filled the skies singing, “Glory to God in the Highest! Peace on earth and goodwill toward all.”

 

As the heavenly host departed, the shepherds scrambled to their feet and followed a star to Bethlehem.  There in a run down stable they found a feeding trough filled with hay and laid in the straw a little lump of flesh and bone, a bundle of utterly helpless humanity.  At the time, they couldn’t have known that they were standing on holy ground.  But, there they were face to face with nothing less than heaven’s response to our deepest longing of all.  For on that night, God became Emmanuel – God-With-Us.  Not God-Up-There in the rafters of heaven, but God-Right-Here making His bed in any old manger we have to offer. 

 

The theologian, Karl Barth, was right to say that, “God is so unassuming in this world.”  For, God Himself was crouching there in the darkness of Bethlehem, in the straw of a lonely manger.  And even though we often wish for more than what this unassuming God offers us, the good news of Christmas is that here in this manger we find all that we will ever need and the one thing that we really want.   

 

            Last summer, I was playing with a friend’s three-year-old nephew.  We were playing a game of hide and go seek.  Christopher was not very good at this game.  He always picked the same half-bare rhododendron bush to hide behind.  And my part of the game was to walk around and around that bush calling out, “Where is Christopher?”  “Where on earth could Christopher be?”  After a while, the bush would start to shake and the sounds of his excited laughter would grow louder and louder.  Finally, when he could stand it no more, a little, blue sneaker would appear from underneath the bush.  And I knew that this was my cue.  I was then to walk right up to that bush and say, “There you are.  Now I’ve found you.”  What did Christopher want?  He wanted to hide, yes.  But what did he really want?  He wanted someone to come along and find him.  And so do we.  Perhaps, there is a longing even deeper than our longing to find God.  Maybe, what we really, really want is for God to come and find us.

 

            Whatever your Christmas wish may be, I bring you glad tidings of great joy.  For right here, on this very night, in the crucible of our own hopes and fears, a Savior is born who is Christ the Lord.  Which is just another way of saying wherever you are tonight, God has come along and found you.  Amen.

 

            On that night, God risked everything, becoming as vulnerable as an infant, just to come and be with us wherever we are.