Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols

December 24, 2024

Luke 2:1-16

Dig into the popular Christmas songs and you’ll find plenty of unfulfilled longing. The subtitle of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” is “If Only in My Dreams.”

Nostalgia itself is sorrowful – literally. It’s a mashup of two Greek words, νόστος and ἄλγος; the first means “homecoming,” and the second “pain.” It was originally a medical term for “homesickness.”

We can only go back home for Christmas in our dreams. Our nostalgia involves the pain of what cannot be recreated, recaptured, achieved again.

As a younger pastor, I tried to recreate the Christmas services of my youth. It never worked. You can’t go back.

But the real magic of Christmas is that it isn’t about recapturing our own childhoods. It’s about recapturing the original human childhood.

Some fathers of the church, such as Ireneaus, saw Adam and Eve as little children, not the 20-somethings they’re usually depicted as.

They fell, already as children. God says in Is. 43, “Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against Me” [v27]. Every child after the first father failed. The mediators—the priests, the prophets, even Moses—all sinned. All fell short. There was no one to lead us back home. Homesickness is embedded in the human condition. We want to go back, but we cannot. The only way forward is death.

Being alone at Christmas—bereft of those who have gone before us, separated by distance, or by broken relationships—being lonely at Christmas is normal. Being disappointed at Christmas is common.

Taking refuge in a stable, probably a cave—definitely a sub-optimal maternity ward—Joseph and Mary spent their first Christmas together in conditions that would drive most marriages to a rocky place.

The shepherds in the field were cold, and definitely lower class. The Magi, still on their way, must have wondered if the whole crazy trip would be worth it.

The angelic hymn “Glory to God in the highest” shows us God’s power. But the real impact is in the good news coming to a scorned young couple, pregnant out of wedlock; and stinky shepherds who need a shower; and overtaxed Jews under the Roman thumb.

Chesterton captures this in his Christmas poem [Gloria in Profundis] with the startling phrase “Glory to God in the Lowest.” At first hearing blasphemous, “Glory to God in the Lowest” reveals a God who has come down, to earth, to the down to earth.

There has fallen on earth for a token

A god too great for the sky.

He has burst out of all things and broken

The bounds of eternity.

All achievement in our world is about an ascent: a mountain-top experience, climbing the charts, climbing the standings, climbing the polls. Think Rocky running up the steps. The hero mounts and surmounts all obstacles.

But the great Hero of the universe runs a different path. He runs down.

Outrushing the fall of man

Is the height of the fall of God.

Glory to God in the Lowest, for God deliberately falls into the low places. Jesus is God, in the flesh. But in entering the world, He sets aside the rights of divinity. He must learn the alphabet. He cannot walk, He cannot crawl. He must be nursed. And swaddled. He has become the lowest. And He goes down, into ditches, into loneliness, into hunger. He knows betrayal. A feeding trough is His crib.

Glory to God in the Lowest, and glory to God to the lowest. For lo! There is born to you a Savior. There’s nothing dainty or refined here. Surrounded by dung, and cows licking with the tongue, your Jesus knows you: your low feelings, your sighing breath. He knows your double dealings, He feels your death.

He comes to our home, just in time for Christmas. His arrival in your home needs no special treats, no festive wrapping. It doesn’t matter if to you your sister is mean, or if the house is clean.

He comes for you, He comes to you. “Glory to God in the Lowest,” Glory to God to the lowest. He has come to raise you up. He will bring you home. He is bringing humanity back home. “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” “Glory to God in the highest,” and glory to God in the lowest, for to you lowly ones He brings peace; in you He is well pleased. +INJ+