Maybe like
George Bailey in the movie It’s A Wonderful Life we need the angel Clarence to
come show us how the world might be different without it.
Or maybe
like Scrooge in the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, we need spirits to come
show us the impact Christmas is currently having.
Angels play
such a big part in the Christmas story—appearing to Joseph, to Mary, and
announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds—that it’s not surprising that they are
also prevalent in our Christmas movies, too.
If angels
were going to visit us tonight, what would the angels need to say or show us to
help us see that Christmas matters? That
Jesus’ birth matters? That you and I
matter? That how we celebrate matters?
Maybe they
would show us what the world would be like if Jesus had never been born and we
didn’t have anything to celebrate at all.
There are
entire books written about what might have been different about the last 2014
years without Jesus. They’re worth
reading and considering.
But tonight
we’re here to celebrate that Jesus HAS been born! To hear the angels say once again,
“For behold
I bring you good news of great joy! For
tonight in the city of David is born a savior who is Christ the Lord!”
I think one
sign that Christmas still matters today is that church attendance tonight across
the nation is double what it is on any given Sunday.[1] We come to church on Christmas because we still
want to hear the story, sing the carols, and light the candles on Christmas,
and to remember how Christmas began.[2]
It might
surprise you to know that 96% of the population celebrates Christmas.[3] Not everyone is celebrating it as a religious
holiday, but in a world in which we cannot seem to agree on anything anymore,
we agree on Christmas.
Although we don’t
all celebrate in exactly the same way, I still think it’s remarkable that 96%
of us celebrate Christmas.
The one
aspect of celebration that most of us have in common is that we spend time with
friends and family for the holidays, and we give gifts. Spending time with people and giving are acts
of love. You might be thinking, yes, but
I do those things because I have to, not because I want to. Well then, isn’t that an even greater act of
love? That you don’t want to do them but
you do them anyway? That is an act of
sacrifice! For some of us GREAT
sacrifice! And that’s exactly the
example we have in Jesus—sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others.
So one of
the reasons I think Christmas matters is that it’s a sign to us that there is
still good in this world. Back in the
beginning when God finished creating the world, he looked at all he had made
and said, “It is good!” Some days it
seems like the world has fallen apart since then, and it’s hard to see whether
there is much good left, but at Christmas we can see the good at work.
Christmas is
the annual evidence that God is still at work in our world. God is love.
And love abounds at Christmas.
Giving
abounds at Christmas. 30-40% of all
charitable giving happens at Christmas time.
There’s even a new tradition which began two years ago to balance Black
Friday and Cyber Monday. It’s called
Giving Tuesday. Have you heard about this?
It was started by the New York YMCA along with the United Nations
Foundation, and it’s catching on. I got
reminders about it this year from our Presbyterian leaders. It’s not about giving to one specific
organization, it’s just about having a day to focus on giving in the midst of
all the buying.[4]
Sometimes it
might seem like Christmas is all about commercialism and that we could just do
without it, but Christmas still matters.
It’s the one time of the year we almost all celebrate, that many of us
take time to spend with the ones we love, and that we are giving—giving not
just presents to our family and friends, but also to those who don’t have as
much as we do.
Christmas is
a sign that God is still at work in our world.
That God’s goodness is still here.
Jesus came to bring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf. Mark Twain said that kindness is the language
the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Kindness is important all year round, but kindness abounds at Christmas.
Does
Christmas matter? By the very fact that
you are here listening to this, I think that you probably think that it does…or
at least you hope that it does. But you
might think it does for different reasons than the ones that I have given. So I invite you to consider why Christmas
matters to you? And if you aren’t sure
whether it matters, what might you do tonight to MAKE it matter to you?
Does
Christmas matter? Yes. For many reasons,
but maybe the most important one is that Christmas matters because each one of
us matters. Every single one of us is
someone God loved so much that he gave us his one and only son, so that we
might know him. So that we might know
that whatever there is that keeps us from God is forgiven. So that we might know how much he loves
us. So that we might have his love
living in us to share with the world.
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