God was born for us, in a world such as this

Christmas Eve Sermon, The Rev. Paige Blair-Hubert

• Audio Transcript

  [00:00:00] I pray that God's word is spoken and that God's word is heard. Amen.

  
  Preaching, after all those lessons but more, all those carols feels a bit redundant. Because every single one of those carols and anthems is itself a sermon. Interpreting the meaning of these sacred texts, telling us the story of God's salvation promise. A promise God keeps.

  
  So I'll keep it brief. Despite what might have been alarming to some, my starting by saying evermore.

  Um,[00:01:00] I've heard from a lot of you this fall. And as the fall has progressed into the holidays, deeper and deeper into Advent as this week approached, how hard it is to feel the celebration this year. And especially and even in Bethlehem, they are toning it down this year. We can understand why.
  

  But beloved, all the agony this world holds, whether it be that which we experience personally, that which we read [00:02:00] in the headlines, places like Kibbutz on October 7th, or in Gaza since, or a maternity ward in Mariupol, or, or, or...

  
  This is why Christmas matters. And we make it really pretty. We do, and it sounds exquisite. But the world in which Jesus was born for us was a frightening and dangerous world. And God came anyway. Not just anyway, God came because. God came because.

  
  One of my favorite scholars said it was like a divine intervention, quite literally. Calling [00:03:00] all of us on the carpet in an intervention kind of way. "Come on, my people. Let me show you how this love is done."

  
  I have hope because of the exquisite line in John's Gospel that we heard. And I wonder if the English majors among us wondered if it was a typo. Because the tense sounds a little funny, but it's there in the Greek, beloved. The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness did not overcome it.

  
  The light shines. Ongoing. Present tense. "Still," dear ones. But the darkness did not overcome it. [00:04:00] As challenging as these times are, for all the reasons that they are, this is why we need to come together and sing songs and hymns of praise and carols and remind ourselves that it's into this world that God came to be one of us.

  
  As we heard in the amazing, uh, gospel, according to Luke, stretched out over multiple voices, Jesus came into a world of oppression. That registration was not a kindness, and certainly not a kindness to a woman nine months pregnant. She had to hightail it to Bethlehem.

  
  Now Luke had reasons to put her in Bethlehem. Bethlehem, the house of bread. The babe, [00:05:00] put where? In the manger. French majors out there? Anyone? Anyone? Yep. Yeah, that's not an accident, friends. The bread of life. Would be snuggled into the manger and a town called the house of bread. The one comes to be among us, to be one of us, and to feed and nourish us.

  
  And then John's gospel. Which is, it's shot through with wonder, and I'm so glad we followed it with Of the Father's Love Begotten, because they are such a beautiful, beautiful pair. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things came into being through Him, and without Him, without Him, [00:06:00] not one thing came to being.

  
  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines, shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. And then all of a sudden we have, "There was a man sent from God." All that beautiful, ethereal, just as we heard the choir singing, there was a man sent from God whose name was John.

  
  Well, we get to Jesus soon. But the man sent from God, whose name was John, who came to testify to the light. He himself wasn't the light, but he came to testify to the light. That beautiful intersection of the divine and human in that passage, it's startling, it's sudden, but yes, this is God [00:07:00] and flesh. coming together. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The light shines in the darkness. And the darkness still has not overcome it.

  
  Beloved, this is our hope. And this is the grace we're all called, when Deacon Bob sends us out at the end of the service with his beautiful dismissal, to carry into the world.
  A world desperate for this love, desperate for this grace, so ready to hear, so ready to hear of God's ongoing love for us.

  That into this world God would be born. Evermore and evermore.