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Happy
Birthday Jesus! Ok that was my sermon, now we can continue with the rest of the
service… Just kidding! Christmas Eve
& Christmas Day, what a blessed time of the year, in more ways than
one. A time when we gather with family
and friends to celebrate the real reason for the season—Jesus. I’m sure for
many of us, here, there are quite a few stories, quite a few moments
encompassing a range of emotions. These
are both of memories we have come to cherish, those we have reconciled to learn
from and those we have come to grieve.
They
say that the Christmas season is often statistically riddled with depression,
death and debt; where the greatest thing is often overlooked—LOVE. Each and
every week we have sung a line from O Come, O Come Immanuel; what we were
asking through our singing, was already here and that is that God IS with us
and John’s epistle finishes that thought by saying God IS love. God is Love, He instills that within us to
reap as that incarnate New Life within us.
Celebrating His birthday into our world is realizing His incarnation was
the beginning of Grace to be released upon us.
His Grace would be released upon us through His living Words, ministry
and His eventual Cross and Resurrection.
From
the womb of the morning, Jesus was born into our world to save us in more ways
than one. We realize His saving Grace
when we reap that love, those feelings, that divine spark to opening the doors
of our hearts to our resurrected lives—our spiritually flourishing selves. Just like we celebrate the coming of the new
year, we also acknowledge the passing, death of the former year. This encompasses everything we have triumphed
through, or been in trial from. Our
world is constantly in balance between the good and the bad, the beautiful and
the ugly, the blessings and the tragic.
Finding that middle road needs God’s love to see us through.
Everyday
when I have visited people and I pray for them; I always think in the back of
my mind—my compassion finds its strength from God, alone. Compassion is not a professional
portfolio-based skill; it is living into being a whole person, a complete
person through the Grace and love that Christ gave us from His beginning gift
of enfleshing Himself in our humanity, and living to His end in the Cross and
the Resurrection. Like the seasons,
there are always reasons to why we are where we are and what we must come to
renew within ourselves to live beyond ourselves through Loving God and our
neighbor.
Christmases
from long ago still cause me to feel grief, especially when I remember how much
has been lost. I can barely muster the
strength to hold back the flow of tears when I hear Ramsey Lewis’ ‘The Sound of
Christmas.’ A few years back, my mother
had all of her Christmas albums stolen which included all of my favorite
childhood memories. Memories to a family
that has not gathered that way for several years, now. In the corner of my bedroom I nearly have a
shrine to my grandmother’s memory including a segment of her furniture, some
pictures and some trinkets. This year in
our very new home, very new everything spiritually; I told God that I wouldn’t
be sad this Christmas—I wanted to celebrate and be joyous. I could only do this by forgiving some
members of my family and moving forward, moving on. This could only happen by allowing God’s love
to regenerate an old broken heart into New.
This
is a tall order to still grapple with each and every Christmas, but I do and so
should you. We all have those people,
places and faces that challenge us to find the true joy of Christmas, but now
more than ever, we need to let go and let God love us fully through His spirit
reshaping and renewing our hope for the coming year! The beloved disciple of
Jesus, John, gives us a wonderful vision of God to keep us encouraged, he says:
“16 So we have known and believe the love
that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and
God abides in them.” The Prophet Isaiah
and Matthew end this sentence from John by talking about the Messiah: 23“Look,
the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name Him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.”
God
IS with us, even in times when it feels like he’s not. Even in times where your own relatives won’t
even respond to your Christmas cards, posts or emails. Even in times you feel the most alone, just
like that footprints in the sand poem about Jesus—He IS with you and His, is a
love that carries us into New life. He
helps us begin our journey into a New year when we remember with joy, His
coming down to us, into our humanity to start His journey for our sake. There is no going back into the past to
change things. Life doesn’t work that way.
I
remember many Christmases ago when I still lived with my parents and my dad
would buy lots of presents for both my mother and me. This one year, in particular, my mother just
couldn’t wait for Christmas Day… so while my dad was working downtown, she
opened all of her Christmas presents and was really mad about several of the
things he bought. She either didn’t like
half of the things he got her or thought/ worried that he spent too much money
on them. The funny hoo hoo was that she re-wrapped all of them putting them
back under the tree and my dad couldn’t figure out what she was upset about
Christmas Day. I was just as bad, for
that same year there was a giant box for me under the tree… I didn’t open it up, but my mind was on
overload wondering what on earth was in there!
It turned out to be a Tabereaux for art supplies.
Tuesday
onward this coming week, I’m sure there will be a lot of people returning
gifts, mad at some people or just disappointed…
Welcome to human nature to completely miss the point about Christmas and
the coming New year. There’s so much
more to life than eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die… Why can’t we love, forgive, accept and live? Let’s
hear that again—love, forgive, accept and live.
Can we love those who have hurt us?
Can we forgive and move on from what they have done to us? Can we accept the past with all it has tried
to teach us? Most importantly can we
fully live with where we are on the road God has led us to this point, and find
true joy in the glory of God’s Grace overflowing!
So,
while we’re working our way through the season, let us give ourselves reason to
grow into New life—LOVE. The Beatles
were right—love is all you need. Love is
all we need to live into the lifestyle of Grace, God revealed to us through
Jesus coming in our world. Again, we
say—Happy Birthday Jesus! Your wayward children are gathered here this morning
to celebrate Your incarnation, Your birth, for it is the light to our world, an
endless, unrepayable gift!
Whether
you get a really ugly sweater, jacket or dress that intentionally makes you
look bad or a useless vegetable cutter with dull blades… The thought that counts is the love that
someone put into giving those things to you.
You can’t just wrap it back up and deny someone the joy of giving… Just
like, you shouldn’t deny witnessing to the true reason for the season, as disciples
of Jesus. Let your light shine in the
darkness of our world. Let the Joy of Christ, what His life, death and
resurrection has meant for you shine out as that New Life within you for all to
see, hear and experience!
The
same goes for God, for whether you want it or not, God IS here and all He has
ever tried to do is to love and guide us.
All He has ever wanted from us is to abide in loving Him and
neighbor. The sign of the times and the
writings on the wall can be changed but what has to change first, lies within
us to be born, to be reaped. In Jesus,
we see our hope as the New Creation in motion—true goodness and
faithfulness. Jesus came down to us to
tell us the truth about God and the truth about ourselves. These are priceless gifts of wisdom and so
much more. Be a gift to others, this is
the greatest gift of love you can give yourself and give to God.
Let
us Pray,
Gracious
and Loving God,
Love
has come down to us
And
it is Your Son, Jesus—our Immanuel
A
God who has always been with us
A
God who has always loved us
He
is the living promise of the Kingdom to come
He
has blessed us with His gracious entry into our world
And
gave us the most priceless gift of all—Grace
May
this joy shape us, now and always—AMEN
Christmas Eve/ Nativity of Our
Lord; December 24th, 2017; Year B; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon By: Reverend Nicole A.M.
Collins, OSST
Psalm 110; Isaiah 7:10-14; 1
John 4:7-16 & Matthew 1:18-25
The link below is to this sermon's delivery at First Congregational Church @ 9:30am
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