My heart is with yours this day, friends. Though we’re not together in person, we are most certainly together in spirit.
It was such a joy to collaborate with several other area congregations to offer an online Christmas Eve worship service. If you’d like to watch it in its entirety, you may do so here:
If you’d prefer to listen to just the audio of the sermon, you may do so here:
The sermon is based on Luke 2:8-14.
8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
Beloved of God, grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus.
Where were you when you heard the news?
Earlier this year, one of our sons interviewed me and my husband, Doug, as part of a school project on 9/11. Both Doug and I were able to say exactly where we were when we heard the news. I was at a conference in Medora, North Dakota, in my room getting ready for the day ahead. Doug was working the morning shift at Red Lobster in Bismark.
Most often this question seems to be asked with regard to tragic news—the assassination of JFK, the space shuttle Challenger explosion, the death of a loved one. Maybe in future years we will even ask, “Where were you when you first heard about Covid-19?”
There’s something about tragedy that sticks with us, that cements its place in the landscape of our memory.
But there’s something about good news too. If we remember fewer details, it’s because good news is like a song that sings in the night, a poem that lifts us up and puts us down in a new place. Good news surrounds and fills us—its borders are permeable, it’s nebulous and translucent and has a life of its own. It’s less a cement bench in that landscape of our memory and more a flowing river.
So, I wonder. Where were you when you heard the news?
The shepherds were in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. The shepherds were living in those fields. Their home and their work was the exact same place, as it has been for so many in 2020. They were in the fields. They were home. They were working. They were surrounded by obligations—those sheep were their responsibility and their livelihood. They were surrounded by stressors—threats to their flock and threats to their well-being.
The good news arrived right there in the fields—in the middle of their daily lives. It came on the wings of an angel whose words changed everything: I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior.
The river of God flows from heaven to earth. Light grows in the sheltering dark of the womb until it is birthed into a laboring world. Salvation comes through a child lying in a manger, the baby born for the world, the son given to us, God’s life-giving Word of steadfast love made flesh for you.
Where were you when you heard the news that a child is born for us who changes everything?
I heard the good news anew this year. Maybe you did too.
I heard it in this empty sanctuary, recording a sermon for Easter morning, and remembering, again, that the women—the first witnesses of the resurrection—left the tomb quickly with fear AND great joy. They ran to tell the disciples the good news they’d been given to share. And while they were on their way, suddenly Jesus met them there. He refused to leave them alone with their fear AND great joy. He met them on their way to a promised future.
He meets us in the weeping and the singing, the waiting and the rejoicing, the deep grief and the great joy. Jesus meets you where you are.
And then, months later in this seemingly never-ending year, I heard the good news anew in a clearing blanketed in frost. It was dusk on an Advent day, and the glistening ice transformed what I knew to be summer’s leftover green grass into an aquamarine ocean. That night, I wrote about the experience,
I’m a shipwreck survivor washed ashore, standing at the convergence of heaven and earth. And there are no words here. There is only a vast landscape opening up inside of me–some strange portal of gratitude and grace–framed by tears and sighs and the undeniable awareness of God’s presence there. The undeniable awareness of God’s presence here with me. I wrote a song in this clearing once. I trudged through deep snow, heavy with winter’s weight. God spoke in song: “You are loved. You are healed. You are whole.”
Now the song returns to me, sings in my ear: “You are known.”
Wherever you are tonight, the good news comes to you anew. It meets you where you are. It sings to you of joy for all people—the joy of death-defeating love, the joy of through-the-night hope, a joy that grows in the womb of our grief until God delivers us…with the birth of a son born for us…and heaven and earth sing.
No matter where you are as you hear the good news of this Christmas night, who you are is unchanging: you are beloved of God; you are one for whom this baby was born; you are a bearer of light and life in a world heavy with the grief of other news.
You are known.
You are loved.
You are love, created in the image of a God who moves heaven and earth to meet you where you are this night and every hour of every day to come.
The baby’s name is Immanuel. God With Us. Good News. Amen.