Preaching on Christmas Day reminds me of that cliché we use so frequently: “It’s like preaching to the choir”. And truthfully, in most places, the service on Christmas Day is a lot like that. Only the faithful – it’s an old-fashioned word – but only the most devout, come out on Christmas morning. The folks that are home came last night and that was enough church for them beyond Sunday. In all charity, many of them have children, and opening presents on Christmas morning is much more attractive than sitting in church with some idiot yammering away at you about a story you already know.
At the risk of getting nostalgic, let me tell you about the Middle Ages. The church at that time would celebrate three masses on Christmas Day. The first service was in the dark of night to celebrate the birth of creation. The second service came at sun-up to celebrate the birth of its savior Jesus. And the third was celebrated in the full light of day to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the hearts of the believers in the congregation that day.
So congratulations! Here you are – even if you didn’t quite know it – to celebrate the birth of Jesus in your heart.
I think one of the reasons you might be here is a kind of protest. It’s saying “no” to all the ways in which society celebrates Christmas. It’s saying “no” to the kind of thing I read some years ago, as a matter of fact, when I also was in the advertising business. The little article was entitled “Tell it like it is”. It was a holiday greeting from the advertising firm Barkley and Evergreen. The holiday card they mailed to all their clients read: “Some say the holidays have had all the meaning sucked out of them by crass commercialization…Season’s greetings from the people who helped make that possible”. I guess there’s nothing like being up front about what you’re doing!
But I also think that might be one of the reasons you’re here. Like the people in the Middle Ages, on Christmas morning, you’ve made room in your heart to celebrate the birth of Jesus. You’ve checked out from “commercial Christmas”, and you’ve made room in your heart for Jesus.
In this morning’s gospel, there is nothing about the manger or any of the stories with which we are familiar. Instead what we get is a creation story, a story that tells us Jesus was there from the beginning. But I think this story is like the story of the birth of Jesus, a story about making room, making room for God to fill us. So suppose for a moment we rethink the actions of the innkeeper in hat light.
Inns in Jesus’ time were crowded places where everyone slept in areas in a common space, unless people were wealthy. Maybe the innkeeper saw Mary was about to deliver a baby, and offered the place with the only privacy and comfort available: a stall with the beasts from the field.
The innkeeper may have started from the positive. What would happen if we did that also? Perhaps we could say, I get to make room, rather than I have to make room. Perhaps if we started from this premise each time, we would find the room just as the innkeeper did. Because it is when we think we are full that we have no room.
I encourage you this Christmas morning to continue making room in your heart for Jesus to be born each day. To say to yourself each day, “I get to make room for Christ to be born in me this day”. How ever, and in whatever way you do this, you will keep Christmas all the year. AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2015
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