Christmas Eve
Dec. 24, 2025
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
On this night, we remember and celebrate the Incarnation of God. God coming to be with us in the form of a baby. Over the centuries, this humble birth story has become buried in a massive global billion dollar industry. Yet it’s the one time of the year when glitter is cool and is everywhere, on presents and clothes and trees. There are concerts and special musical performances, there are ballets and pageants. Parties and fireworks, rewatched movies and bright lights all around. You often hear Christmas referred to as “magical.” It’s as if we spend our money and extra time and energy on trying to make the hardness of the world and failures of the past year, all the heartaches and suffering and helplessness we’ve carried, and put it down for a minute to create a time of such frenzy, noise, distraction, lights, smells, and tastes that for one brief time we think we can make it all go away. Or at least we try.
But what’s behind all this is a faint memory that a baby was born in a far away land to parents of no real significance, but who were subject to an oppressive government who had taken over their land. And the mother of this little baby was actually a young girl who was having to travel to another place when she was nine months pregnant in order for them to be registered in the mandated census. And Mary, the young girl, is now in labor after walking for miles. Today we would call this a high risk pregnancy.
Joseph and Mary were at the mercy of strangers, looking for a safe place to rest. This is not the way they would have chosen to start their new little family and the promises of dreams and angels were barely keeping them hopeful. They would later have to flee their country as refugees to seek asylum in Egypt to save the life of their child. But on this night, taken in by strangers, as other places were already booked up since many people were on the road at this time of census taking, they received mercy from a stranger who gave them sanctuary.
Yet this is how the Creator of the universe, the stars, the earth, the creator of all humankind and all living things decided to come to us in the form of a baby boy. No grand entry. The only ones that gathered for this out of the world, beyond the imagination, cosmic event were simple folk that had the practice of paying attention, always looking out for danger, and watching the skies for signs. Who did the heavenly beings make this announcement to? An angel, the messenger of the Lord, and all the glory of the One who created all that is, did not go to the big city, did not appear at the big fancy new Temple that was being built in Jerusalem, did not appear to the wealthy, the powerful, the rulers, or even the religious leaders. The angel and all the hosts of heaven appeared to…shepherds.
Luke makes the point at the very beginning of his Gospel that Christ comes to all of us, but those who notice are primarily to the poor, the lowly, the folks on the outside, like shepherds who make their homes outside in the hills and tend to the sheep. This is who the Angel of God and the glory of the Lord and of all the heavenly hosts launch into an other-worldly cosmic concert and light show. It would do us well to pay attention to the message of the poor from the moment Jesus was birthed into the world and the message they tell us today.
For just a moment let’s imagine we are going about our business this evening, absorbed with tasks that need to be done, our jobs, the needs of our family, or even our own loneliness, and bam! There is a being that appears with the voice of something we’ve never heard before and the skies change to a bright light and we sense that we are in the presence of holy beings from a different realm, right here, right now. Think just for a second what that might feel like.
“to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
In our shock, being taken off guard, the angel says, “Do not be afraid, Steve, do not be afraid Renee, do not be afraid Matthew, do not be afraid, Monica, do not be afraid, all here tonight, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people. The Lord is with you.”
We can imagine this scene putting Mary, Joseph, the innkeeper, people of the town, and the shepherds into the narrative from 2000 years ago, but also the placing of Emmanuel, God with us, into the arms of this vulnerable family, shunned, almost stoned, and soon chased into a foreign country, we can also remember how the coming of Emmanuel unfolds in our own lives. We all have our own story of God with us, maybe it was a profound moment in our lives that instantly changed us or maybe it was while hanging laundry out to dry or maybe a slow evolution over time.
How was Christ born in you? When did you first experience Emmanuel, God with you? Was there a whisper asking that the door of your heart be open? How did God crack open a space in you?
When Christ dwells in us, we are not the same. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus, we must be born from above, born of water and spirit. Nicodemus, not quite sure what that meant, asked, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus replied, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
When Christ appears, we become a new creation, no longer living for the world, or for ourselves even, but for God. We are transformed, and of course this transformation is ongoing, continuing in our lives. Emmanuel, God with us, continually working within us, converting us from who we were, even who we were yesterday, to who are and who we will be, a constant metamorphosis, always becoming.
And as we, too, give birth to Christ in us, we follow in the footsteps of the participants who for 2000 thousand years have believed the impossible, and we bring Christ into the world–the incarnations, God is with us–Emmanual.
A young pregnant girl pondered these things in her heart throughout her life. A man trusted a dream and cared for her and adopted the baby as his own. Shepherds risked losing their jobs and flocks, but trusted what they believed to be an appearance of an angel, were able to pay attention that something cosmic was taking place one dark night. Something stirred in the hearts of the shepherds and they did the unthinkable thing and left their sheep. The message of the angels had to be pretty powerful to risk doing that. Yet they found what they were looking for and they were given a new job of telling the story to bring hope and healing to a hurting world.
They overcame their fear and went searching for God, only guided by the promise of an angel. They took the risk, they set out and made known to those who would listen, that the savior, the healer of a wounded world, was here to dry the tears of those who mourned, bind up their injured souls and bodies, and restore the hope and love in their hearts. Their fear turned to glory and praise that God walked with them in a war-torn world. We now take the risk of the shepherds and carry that message into our war-torn, fearful, and hurting world, remembering that Bethlehem is still here, and her people tonight need a message of love and hope. We are to carry that Christ in us to a world that needs to hear the angel’s song. “Do not fear, there is hope, God is with us.”
We are now the ones to carry the message of angels and shepherds into our world. Howard Thurman says it most eloquently:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
Magdalena's Musings 