December 24, 2023 Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve Year B
Epiphany, Winnipeg
Luke 2:1-20
Merry Christmas.
It’s a strange sort of Christmas this year. Christmas celebrations are cancelled in Bethlehem and all of Palestine this year. It wasn’t the powerful ones, or the politicians or the wealthy and strong who moved in and made this decision. It’s just a decision that the Palestinian Christian churches have made. They have simply said that they cannot celebrate and have a festival while a catastrophe is taking place for their sisters and brothers in Gaza. The nativity scene in front of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem is simply a pile of randomly stacked broken concrete and paving stones. A little Christ child – that little Jewish baby who calls us together right here tonight - is lying in the rubble, and his mom and dad the shepherds and wise men and the friendly beasts are all standing nearby or far away, searching through broken stone and dust.
Bethlehem is quiet; the markets have no buyers; there are no pilgrims and travellers. Maybe for the first time in living memory, maybe for the first time ever, the night in Bethlehem is silent, and we do see the little town lie still.
Close by and around the corner from Bethlehem there are Israelis who are traumatized by what happened to their own people on October 7th, and who still shudder and seek shelter when another round of Hamas artillery is sent their way. Police in our very own nice city of Winnipeg report a sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents here, and Jews who are our neighbours live with their own kind of fear of what might happen next in this place we all call home.
It’s a strange kind of Christmas this year. Maybe this year more than most.
Another news item you might have heard is that most of the churches in Ukraine are celebrating Christmas on December 25th this year rather than January 7th. If I’ve got my history right, Christmas in Ukraine has been celebrated on January 7th since a new calendar was adopted in 1582. But after all those years, this year the date is changed, because January 7th is Christmas Day in Russia too, and Ukraine doesn’t want to be on the same page as the country that is invading and trying to occupy it. It’s another way that Christmas this year is tied up with political conflict and weapons and armies and tragedy.
I said it’s a different kind of Christmas this year, but maybe Christmas this year is as traditional as Christmas gets. The characters are different but so much seems the same. Then, and now, there are occupying armies and foreign influence from all kinds of sides, and there are rebels and resisters who could be their own kind of brutal and cruel. Then, and now, there are people like Mary and Joseph who have to travel and look for a roof over their head because their rulers said so….and there’s a little Jewish baby who would be named Jesus who is born in the middle of all that.
Whether you find it depressing and demoralizing and it feels like your spirit is crushed just by seeing what happens, or whether it’s just another news item and you kind of move on to something else, whether you incline this way or that way, I invite you to hear and remember what Pastor Munther Isaac, from the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem said last week: “Christmas celebrations are cancelled this year. But Christmas itself is not cancelled. Our prayers are not cancelled. Our prayers are our hope in these days. And Christmas hope is not cancelled.” So please pray, and hope. Then pray some more.
Christmas is always kind of a strange time. We’ve all heard and I’m pretty sure we all know that it’s true, that it’s not a big happy party for everyone. For some it is the most wonderful time of the year, and for some it’s the most painful time of year. You know where you fit in all of that. We all love it or hate it or it’s a little bit of both.
For me, to be honest, and I hope it’s not too superficial, Christmas is about seventy percent the most wonderful time. The other thirty percent isn’t painful, it’s just too busy and there’s just a lot of stuff to do. But in my house we start counting down the weeks to Advent some time in the middle of August and I’m not even exaggerating, and as I get older and my most curmudgeonly edges get softened I even like what I used to think was horrible and tacky. So yesterday I went to a mall. Just because I felt like it.
And I celebrate. I love Christmas Eve. It’s the best thing ever. But I’ll cry a little during Silent Night because my friend John and my Grandma died too close to Christmas, and my family are all so far away, and like any of us whatever hurt inside before this most wonderful time began still hurts, and the world is so broken. And the best celebration isn’t going to fix that.
But Christmas doesn’t stop anyway. This child born in the rubble still keeps showing up. In the rubble, in a creche at the front of the church, on the street, at a party, in your feast or in your quiet corner in the living room. This child will even show up on a cross and outside an empty tomb, in all the dying times with a promise of new life.
We started out the evening in Bethlehem – “O Come, all ye faithful…to Bethlehem.” So I’d like us to go back there now, and give the last word to Bishop Sani Ibrahim Azar, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. Here are the last few paragraphs from his Christmas letter, and from now on it’s his voice and not mine:
“Here in the Holy Land, we will mark this Christmas season without peace. And in times without peace, it is easy to feel like we are without hope, without faith, maybe even without God. This is when we must remember that God did not send his only son Jesus into a peaceful world. God’s people suffered in this land at the time of Jesus’s birth. God’s people cried out in lament in this land, and God’s people struggled to find hope, to find faith.
“In John 16:33 Jesus reminds us: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
“Through God alone, we have peace…. God is larger than our human understanding, and our hope must lie in him. The violence and suffering we see today comes at the hands of humans, for reasons belonging to a human timeline and human understanding. But even if we cannot fully understand God, through the birth of Jesus we know we are loved by a God who fully understands us. And so, may we have faith that true peace and justice will come at God’s hand, and may we not give up hope.
“Despite everything, we believe that God holds the future; and we know this because on that night in Bethlehem, God sent Jesus to be born and live among God’s people, to suffer and die, and to rise again to defeat the powers of sin and death. Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves. He taught us to pray. So we will love; and we will pray; in the name of Jesus who has overcome the world.
“As we sing in the Arabic Christmas carol “Laylet Al Milad”,
When we offer a glass of water to a thirsty person, we are in Christmas.
When we clothe a naked person with a gown of love, we are in Christmas.
When we wipe the tears from weeping eyes, we are in Christmas.
When we cushion a hopeless heart with love, we are in Christmas.”
And with Bishop Azar we say, “Amen.”