December 24, 2024

Christmas Eve C

Luke 2:1-20

Epiphany, Winnipeg

“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus.” That’s how this Christmas story begins. And then? The Emperor completely disappears from the story. Gone.

What are your Christmas stories?

Here’s one of mine…Nothing remarkable, really. Forty-three years ago my mom’s entire extended family gathered together for a Christmas family reunion at a church camp in Alberta. Forest and hills and a frozen lake, a big log and timber lodge with a huge fireplace and a view over the lake. Such a good three days we had. We ran around in the snow, shovelled off a rink on on the lake and played hockey, walked out far onto the lake on a night so foggy that the only thing you could see were the footprints you left behind. My brother and cousin and I ate so much lefse. Older cousins got ourselves reacquainted over long meals and long winter walks, and the younger ones ran around and exhausted us all. Mom and her sister and brothers were glad to be together again, all at the same time, sitting around the same table or the same fire or the same coffee pot…all that didn’t happen so often any more.

On Christmas Eve we gathered by the tree, close but not too close to the fire, and Uncle Ed, who was the oldest of us, read that Christmas story from Luke. He read like it was the greatest, gentlest story he’d ever heard. I always, always, always, hear Uncle Ed’s voice as soon as I hear “In those days, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus.”

We loved each other dearly, and we still do even if we hardly see each other. I didn’t know it then, but I know now that all of these family stories were also complicated stories. Some of the relationships in the family were strained or eventually ended. There would be tragedy and grief in so many of our family stories, and for some of us all the pieces never quite fell into place. Each one of us there was a complicated story of our own.

That’s my story. What are your Christmas stories? Simple, complicated, filled with joy, filled with struggle, filled with just being….people with people kinds of lives.

Whatever those stories are, those stories matter. They’re somehow all tied up with this story of a child who is born for us and for all.

I can’t help but think about other Christmas stories too. You know, the ones we might say have nothing to do with the real meaning of Christmas: A reindeer who looks different than the others, with that unfortunate nose, and everyone makes fun of him and won’t let him belong. There’s a person of snow named Frosty, whose time on earth is brief, but in that short time Frosty gathers people together and gives them so much joy. An elf ends up in New York City and doesn’t fit in and tries so hard to figure out where home is. Or maybe you know some sad Christmas stories, like the Little Matchstick Girl, about one little girl who plays with matchsticks on Christmas Eve because those are the only warmth and light she can find; or a story of a fir tree who dreams of greatness and becomes a Christmas tree, then ends up discarded after Christmas is over.

All these Christmas stories that we know - in our scripture, in folk tradition, in kitschy Christmas TV specials and in your own life – are stories of everyday things; stories of joy and sorrow, of being happy or trying really hard to be; being together or being all alone. These are stories of the kind of world where God chose to set up home…born as a child, a little baby, someone’s child, someone’s little nephew…born to be a part of all of those stories, all of the life of the world. God came into the world, born as someone who would have a complicated life, and who would celebrate and grieve and who would live and die like we all do, and who would be raised so that all creation, with such a complicated life, will be raised up and made new.

That first Christmas story that we heard a moment ago – “In those days Emperor Augustus” - if we continued it now it might sound something like this: In the tenth year of the reign of Prime Minister Justin, when Wab was the premier of Manitoba and Scott the Mayor of Winnipeg, in the last month of the reign of Joe and the second reign of Donald about to begin; the people drew near to Epiphany in Winnipeg and sang songs of Good News and great joy for all the people. They had flown and driven and walked from all over, coming to their ancestral home or coming to a place that was new to them or far away from home, to gather and hear news about a baby who is good news and peace and life for all people.

And the people sang together that the the future of the world is not held in the hands of the elected and the appointed and loudest and richest. The people proclaimed right out loud with great courage and beautiful melody that the love of this child will last longer than any empires or egos ego of the powerful, and that the promised peace and justice and freedom and joy of this child will win out over the curse of war and intimidation and fear and power.

There are two wonders of this night: heaven and earth come together, as God chooses to make earth, with all of its complicated stories, God’s home…. And God comes not as an emperor but as a child, in the world that God so dearly loves.

What’s most on your mind on this night? Maybe it is politics and emperors of all sorts of stripes and that’s OK because all of that matters, but it’s not the whole story.

Maybe what’s most on your mind is that diagnosis of yours or of someone you love. What’s calling for all your attention on this Holy Night is that break that you feel in your heart, or that home that you do not have or that food that just isn’t there.

Or maybe, just maybe, what’s most on your mind is great joy and you just couldn’t be happier. It’s so good to be together. You can’t stop thinking about turkey or meatballs or lefse or cranberries or eggnog or sugar plums, whatever they are. You’re filled with happy anticipation of a cozy treeside scene and presents and all the love and surprise and generosity that goes with those.

So many of our hopes and dreams, our hopes and fears, are gathered here. All of those hopes and fears and dreams and sorrows and joys are welcome in this place. And God is pleased to be born among us, to live with us in this place and in the lives that we know; to walk with us and to meet us wherever we go from here.