Christmas Eve
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
North Andover, Massachusetts
The Rev. Stephanie Chase Wilson


In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.

Tonight I’d like to tell you a story about four different Christmas Eves. The first one was very much like tonight. It was in 1973 and I was 10 years old. I had become old enough to attend the late service with my Mom. It was great. Candlelight, warmth, Christmas carols, the anticipation of opening presents, and as we left church the bells were ringing and snow had begun to fall. It was magical. It made me feel good and whole and safe and that all was right with the world.

Fast forward 10 years and I had a different outlook on the whole church-thing. I was in college and had learned a thing or two. I had learned how to live on my own away from my parents and church had started to feel like a big ole parent wagging its finger at me, telling me what was right and wrong. I had also met people from other religions and realized Christianity wasn’t the only game in town.

In addition, I had learned about the crusades and many terrible things that had been done in the name of Christianity over the years. I wanted no part of it. I didn’t want to be associated with something so anachronistic, hurtful, and overbearing. I didn’t need the church. The final nail on the coffin was when someone close to me had confessed that he found belief in God to be a crutch for weak people, and that he preferred to be independent and stand on his own two feet. That was appealing. So by the time I entered college, I had stopped going to church and stopped believing in God.

So the second Christmas Eve I want to tell you about is in 1983 when my brother and I stayed home while my parents and two sisters went to the Christmas Eve service. My brother, being equally sophisticated in these matters, and I instead drank spiked eggnog and talked about how mature we were not be suckered into these fairytales. We were free to stay home and enjoy the lights on the tree without the burden of believing in God or church.

Well, a few more years went by and I was in my mid-twenties.  I was living in Portland, ME, still an atheist. No God. No church. That is, of course, until one day God spoke to me. This got my attention.

I don’t mean to sound all kumbaya. I’m not a sacriney person who believes angels find me parking spaces at the mall or see visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the baked-on grease of my roasting pan. God doesn’t just drop by for a hello every day. In fact, never before, but one day God did just that. One day I was minding my own business, reading a book, when suddenly I felt full of the Holy Spirit and I knew God was with me. At first I had a physical reaction. It felt like a punch in the stomach saying “Pay attention!” Then I was given a message. Not in words so much as it was just placed inside me and I knew it to be true. I felt waves of power and grace and joy wash over me and I couldn’t take it all in. But the point of the visit was the message. The implicit part of the message was God saying to me “I do exist.” The explicit message was “who you are, and what you do with your life, matters.” The message wasn’t so much that I, Stephanie, was more important than anyone else, but that by virtue of my humanity how I live my life is of great importance. And the same is true for the rest of humanity. The resulting implications are enormous.

You see, if you don’t believe in God, then what you do or don’t do ultimately doesn’t matter. It will all disappear in the end. The universe will move forward with or without us and there is nothing we can do about it and there is nothing that can be done for us. There are no repercussions.
Dictators can feel free to oppress their people, corrupt companies happily steal billions from investors, wars and disease and poverty can go unchecked. If there’s no God, it doesn’t matter. Out of compassion you might try to help others, but in the end, it’s not going to make a difference. The earth and all that is on it will one day come to an end.

So now we come to the third Christmas Eve I want to talk about, which is the first one. Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus in the manger. It’s such a beloved and well known story that most of us can’t hear the message in it. Yes. Yes. God’s son is here, and he’s cute as a bug’s ear, but so what? Why get worked up about a baby? But after my holy encounter I found myself drawn back to Bethlehem, not because Jesus is sweet and meek and mild, but because he’s powerful and world-changing. The cosmos quivers with realignment now that the divine has entered the creation.

You see, God created us and the universe as an outpouring of love. God loves us and wants only the best for us. But we are imperfect and sometimes do the wrong thing. We hurt ourselves. We hurt others. In love God entered into the creation through Jesus to begin to put things right. With the birth of Jesus things are changing.

After my God encounter I ended up going back to church and no one was more surprised about this than me. What I came to realize was that church is simply humanity’s imperfect attempt to worship a God that loves us, and for us to respond in good and holy ways, fully realizing we don’t always succeed. But that’s the beauty of church. There is forgiveness for our stupidity. There is forgiveness for everyone else’s stupidity too, both in and outside the church. And at our best we hang together as a community and love each other, love God, and love the world. We are preparing for what Jesus called the Kingdom of God, the end times when the earth will be made right. Christianity is not a crutch, Christianity is a call to responsibility, while surrounded by supporters.

So, back to Jesus in the manger. His mere existence assures us that God loves us. God loves you. So the first message to take away from the incarnation, the birth of Jesus, is:

1)    No matter how unloved you may feel, there is a Creator who loves you deeply. Deeply enough to enter into a world of sin and death for you. Whether you accept God or not, you are never on your own.
Secondly, Jesus was born to begin the breaking-in of the Kingdom of God into this life. His birth, life teachings, death, and resurrection are all actions on this path to the Reign of God. He is calling us to join him.

2)    So the second message to take away from the incarnation is: No matter how useless our actions seem, our good works have repercussions in the universe. What you do matters.

I’m going to quote from one of my favorite theologians, N.T. Wright, “The point of the [incarnation and the] resurrection… is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die. God will raise it to new life. What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it... What you do in the present -- by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself -- will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether [because we don’t]… they are part of what we may call ‘building for God’s Kingdom’.”

Scripture tells us that over and over again God reaches down to humanity with love and guidance to show us the path. To save us from ourselves. To save us from powers and principalities. To save us from sin and death. That baby in Bethlehem is the culmination. But the story doesn’t end there. God continues to reach out in love to me, to us, to you, and will do so until the end of time.

We’ve talked about the Christmas Eves of 1973, 1983, and the year of Jesus’ birth. Now to the fourth Christmas Eve I want to talk about, which is tonight. We are here in this beautiful church, surrounded by candlelight, singing carols, anticipating presents. Tonight you are part of this story. So the question becomes, “Where do you fit in?” Who you are and what you do matters in this life. You are loved. What is your response?

Now that I’ve found my way back to God and the church I’ve discovered that my child’s understanding of God in 1973, understandably, was shallow. My young adult understanding of God in 1983 was critical of that earlier vision, understandably, without having fleshed out a fuller adult vision. Now I come to church on a night like tonight with a more nuanced understanding. I know that the world is imperfect and that the church is imperfect, but am reassured that there are wheels in motion in the universe to put things to right. I can be part of the solution. I can be forgiven when I fail. I can be comforted when I hurt. I can again leave church tonight like I did at 10 feeling good and whole and safe knowing that all will be right with the world.
Amen.