Christmas Eve/Day C: Keep It Simple
Dear Partner in Preaching,
A word of advice as you prepare your Christmas Eve sermon: keep it simple.
I know, I know, there’s a lot of pressure to pull out all the stops. It is, after all, Christmas Eve, almost everyone’s favorite Christmas service with special music, favorite carols, lighted candles, and more.
And the church will be full. Or at least far more full than usual. With folks you haven’t seen for a while and all kinds of visitors to boot.
And then there is the excitement that accompanies the coming of Christmas. The church has been preparing for it for almost four weeks now, and the culture since just after Halloween.
So for lots of good reasons, I can understand why you feel under a certain amount of pressure to go the extra mile, jazz things up a bit, and maybe, just maybe, preach your best sermon ever.
But don’t. (Actually, feel free to preach your best sermon ever if it comes to you!) What I mean is…don’t feel all that pressure. Keep it simple. Why? Because the Christmas message itself is pretty simple: God came from heaven to take on our human form to show us just how much God loves us. That’s pretty much it.
Well, maybe there’s a little more, but that’s pretty much the core. When God surveyed humanity and realized how dark and difficult our days could be, how confused we get about our identity and place, how many painful things we do to each other out of that confusion and insecurity, God decided to do something about it. And so after giving the law and sending the prophets, God got involved. Personally, intimately involved with God’s fallen creation.
But note: when God decided to get personally involved, God didn’t come to punish, or frighten, or scold, or threaten, or any of the other things that are often attributed to God (sometimes even by people in the church!). Instead, God came to tell us that we are loved, deeply, truly, and forever.
And just to make sure we got the point, God first brought that message embodied in the flesh by Jesus to people the world was pretty sure weren’t particularly important or, for that matter, loved: no account shepherds, an unwed teenage mom, astrologers practicing a whole different religion. All of this to show that God wasn’t going to leave anyone behind. That God’s message of love was for all. As in everyone, whether the world thought you were important or lovable or not.
And that’s still the way it is. God loves all of us, but especially wants those who don’t feel loved or lovable, those who regularly feel like they’re on the outside looking in, those who feel forgotten, and those who wonder what the point of life is, to hear the “good news of great joy” that God loves all of us.
Which is why I want to keep it simple. Because after all the shopping and cleaning and cooking and preparing…. Or, for that matter (and we sometimes we forget this side of things), after all the trying to make ends meet, keeping a distraught family intact, struggling to get a job, or worrying about a loved one serving overseas…. After all the stuff that makes our lives kind of crazy, I think the short, simple, and peaceful word that we are of infinite value and worth to God is perhaps just the simple word we need to hear this Christmas eve.
And so if you really want to keep it simple, you could probably reduce the Christmas message even further, picking up the two words of the angels’ song that capture the heart of the Christian message: “for you.” Notice it’s not just that Jesus is born, but the angels say, “Jesus is born for you.” And it’s not just “good news,” in general, but it’s “good news of great joy for you and all people.” For while the Gospel is never a private word, it is nevertheless a very personal word, reminding each and every one of us that God believes we are worthy of honor and dignity and, above all else, love.
Blessed Christmas, Dear Partner. Thank you for playing the part of the angel this week as you bring glad tidings to people aching to hear of God’s love for them, for us, for all the world.
Yours in Christ,
David
Keeping it simple, I will simply say…thank you David! Merry Christmas 🙂
Blessings on you David, and thank you again for all you say – so very much to the point, so encouraging, so helpful. I’ll certainly take your words on board for this Christmas service! God bless.
Thank you David. Your comments are ‘simply profound.’ The Gospel is simple – yet, profound and transformative.
One could give a gift like Thomas Hardy’s poem: “The Oxen” – print it out an insert to take home…use it as a gift to explore how in the midst of darkness and doubt…we all will still kneel. A family could possibly read it again around the nativity scene at home or at dinner with relatives….just a few suggestions…but the gift of a poem might intrigue parishioners and their families and guests. Their are other Christmas poems, but Hardy’s is simply profound.
The Oxen
BY THOMAS HARDY
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely *barton by yonder **coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
*barton – farmyard
**coomb – small valley or hollow
Blessed Christmas…and thank you for all your insights, David!
Kenn
There’s a marvelous setting of this poem by Ralph Vaughn Williams in Hodie! a cantata for Christmas. It’s on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3WOce23js
Thank you once again David for your open mind to the preacher stuggling & a world waiting.
Thank you David,
Less is always so much more!
Yes, it is simply all about the love. Isn’t it?
Struggling for days with this sermon and up for most of the night, and I finally stumble upon your message here: “for you.” And now I hear it in everything–the angels, and in Jesus words at the table, speaking of the wine and bread. Thank you and bless you.
Thank you David. Perfectly timed and perfectly toned for what I needed to hear. Peace,
Rob
Seeing this post in the rear view mirror. I cannot agree more. I serve two small, frontier congregations. One thing they are teaching me in my first call is “less is more.” So, this Christmas as I have in the past 2 Christmas’, I am letting the scripture speak the story and using few if any of my words. I am learning every day to not go overboard but to pare down so that I have adequate time for what becomes “really important” ministry, like balancing my participation in confirmation, two high school youth groups and sometimes an adult event as well all on Wednesday. It is great.