Christmas Eve 2025

Christmas Eve 2025

Text: Luke 2:1-20

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Beloved, I’d like to begin with a question for all of us to ponder in this evening. The question was posed best by the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly?” It can strike us as rather odd that we should reflect as to how we approach such a familiar holiday. For us that have gone through many Christmas seasons, what is there to ponder beyond the usual customs that make up memories of family gatherings, meals, music, and gifts under the Christmas tree? Pondering this question, could we be open to the notion that perhaps we have misunderstood Christmas? Or that Christmas is perhaps an open question asking to be struggled with every year we celebrate it? I think Bonhoeffer is unto something important with this question. Indeed, it was not long ago that in the culture wars being fought over here in the United States, the meaning or where the emphasis of Christmas should lie, has been debated ad nauseam, with no end in sight. One example I’ve heard is how people have invested precious time in debating whether people should greet others with “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas”. I understand the notion of recognizing Jesus on His birthday, as some people say, but I believe that when we are wrangling over words, literally fighting and wasting precious breath over a gesture that carries no substance behind it but just scoring points on the culture wars, we can diagnose pretty easily that the true meaning of Christmas has been lost at some point. Such wranglings can never be more important than worshipping Christ by feeding the hungry, forgiving your neighbors, and receiving the stranger with hospitality, for example. Of course, there are things we can critique about how

Christmas is celebrated in general. It is true that Christmas is not about Santa Claus. It is certainly not about the machinery of consumerism that overtakes this season. We could acquiesce to the notion that Christmas has become more a holiday of American Capitalism rather than Christianity. Christmas without the radical Gospel story at the center is certainly something different. Indeed, a Christmas celebration that does not redefine where your hope lies, a Christmas that does not shake your heart into new directions, we could say that it misses the mark of it’s true celebration. Now, Beloved, I do not mean to say that we have flunked Christmas due to our parties and gifts. Christmas is a joyful occasion, it should prompt us into togetherness. What I’m inviting us into is to reach for the depths of this event. To not remain on the surface, to not be content with just the rudimentary facts of a religious story, but to ask more of this celebration that seeks to transform your life; Christ is born for you, Beloved.

Bonhoeffer gives a provisional and potent answer to his question, he says: “Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness.” So Christmas is not simply remembering Jesus, it is not simply about parties and gifts. The birth of Christ is an eternal statement from God about His Kingdom, it flips the script to those who believe they are powerful, it is an invitation to an alternative vision of living together. And clearly, Bonhoeffer’s answer to his question confronts the whole breadth of our society. It shuns everything our world values so much for the sake of the true gift, Jesus Christ. Fame, power, titles, careerism, ambition, greed, hatred, ego, competition; they are all thrown away as

rubbish for the sake of receiving Christ and His Gospel. The world that God creates when He comes near to us is so different to that we have created for ourselves. So what is this story that asks such a radical abandonment of every selfish desire? What is this Gospel that has been proclaimed to us, which turns the world upside-down?

The Christmas story is about a family of people who by all metrics of worldly power, are no one special or important. A poor carpenter and his pregnant young wife, who are on the move looking for a place to rest, unable to find a place to give them shelter. Furthermore, the circumstances they found themselves in were complex. The reason they had to be on the move was to fill a census by the Roman Empire. The holy family were being moved about by the whims of the Roman imperial bureaucracy. One might think that there is nothing polemical in this text, but the Gospel writer is actually setting up a subversive story. There are two claims of power: the claim of Ceasar Augustus and the claim of Jesus as the Messiah. The story of Christmas is set in the context of Pax Romana, meaning that the Roman Empire sought to portray itself as the center of gravity for peace and security in the world, and it secured this through the use of force, violence and conquest, the imposition of their ways upon others. That was peace, in the Roman fashion, those were the promises of the “savior” Ceasar Augustus. Ceasar often would promote himself as being of divine origin. But Christmas upends all that. The promises of God for His people is liberation from oppression from powerful people like Ceasar. The gospel shifts our attention from Ceasar Augustus, one who everyone fears, to then look at the Christ child for salvation. The Kingdom of God was unlike the Roman Empire. Instead of demonstrating its glory through the sword, Jesus revealed God’s glory through His

lowliness, in the vulnerability of a poor family, in a manger. Roman Empire is power by possessing others, the Kingdom of God is power by dispossessing oneself of material and violent ways and putting our ultimate trust in God’s ways of Love for the world. The good news is that God is making all things new, peace on earth, but not as the world gives it, but through one such as Jesus and His family. Peace was becoming a reality because this baby, as said by the angel in Joseph’s dream, would save humanity through the forgiveness of sins. He has been born to liberate us from that inclination towards selfishness and violence, towards the system of have and have-nots. He will make humanity anew according to their God-given image.

We can see further that the Gospel writer was being playful with the words used by the Empire by subverting their meaning. Instead of pointing to Ceasar, who used similar words, he used it to point to Christ. Some of these key words are: savior, good news, Bethlehem. In the Ancient world, Ceasar would often be portrayed as “Savior”, of which conquered peoples would receive the “good news”, the “gospel” of Roman ways and customs. You would receive peace, as long as you did not mess with Roman interests and their system. But Jesus subverts all those expectations. The vulnerable and lowly Christ Child is savior, not the conquering Emperor and his legions; the real gospel is not Roman oppression, but liberation of people’s hearts by God Himself. And instead of this savior being born in the metropolis of his time, the city of Rome, in the aristocracy, in the center of the known world, Jesus is born in Palestine, to a low-born working-class family, in the periphery of the Roman Empire. Salvation would come not from the meaning-making system of the Empire, but from the promises and symbols made to this unimportant foreign colony of the Empire. From that suffering periphery,

God will make all things new. So much so that 2,000 years later we still gather to hear this world turning story of Christmas. 2,000 years later, this story of Christmas still confronts the new powers that rise up in humanity.

So how do we celebrate Christmas correctly today? How do we express the joy we have received in knowing that in Christ we have been saved from all oppressive powers of the world and called simply to love one another and be a sign of God’s peaceable presence in our communities? How do we “finally lay down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger” and see in the lowly Christ-child the glory of God? Beloved, perhaps it all begins with love, that deep mystery that binds all human beings towards itself. It begins with the question of how do we love others as ourselves. To see in the other people around you, the same image of God that resides in you, worthy of dignity, recipient of the same mercy you receive for your own shortcomings. All those qualities that the world strives for are self-serving, it is about placing ourselves above others. But the Christ-child upends our ambitions. It reveals to us the folly of human beings when they pursue crowns and thrones. There is only one who reigns, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. We instead are called to minister to one another the new order of love and mercy created by God for each other. We exchange to each other the gifts of mercy, gentleness, kindness, generosity, hospitality. We are one in the name of the Christ that is born among us. To lay aside all violence and control in the manger is to look at the world through Him. And that means that those who are oppressed are meant to be cared for, those who are cast down are to be lifted up, those we reject are meant to be listened and embraced. Much of the world’s violence is born from the fact that

we do not know how to love like God. We don’t see in the Holy Family, in their poverty, in their weakness, in their marginality, the glory of God. Peace begins when our soul is pacified by the presence of Jesus and we begin to break free from our systems of diving people into worthy or unworthy. This is a love that calls us constantly to return to the manger, and to recommit to it again and again, because we know we are not perfect.

Beloved, let us then take Bonhoeffer’s challenge and begin to celebrate Christmas correctly. Let us see this celebration as an opportunity for our spiritual and moral lives to be renewed according to the will of God in Jesus Christ. Let us not be trapped by the false narratives peddled by those that wants to convince you that your neighbor is not worthy of your compassion. There are so many today similar to the Holy Family, many who are refugees, living under the shadow of violence and separation, that need your love and prayer and hospitality. Will you make a space in your heart for the Christ child to be born this year? Will you open the door for your life to be transformed not with the empty treasures of the world, but with the real joy of God’s love and Kingdom growing within your heart? Will you deepen within you the mystery of God’s love and peace for you? Will you recommit to be a minister of the Prince of Peace in your community? Will you visit the peripheries of this world and discover the presence of God right in those places where we would not venture before? Beloved, the Christmas story invites us to cross the borders of our fear into a new life of beloved coexistence, for indeed, Christmas inspires in us the vision of a new world, a world saved from its sins. Christmas changes everything. What a great gift we have received from God, a gift no money, or power, or ability, or status, or reputation can buy. Its

available to all, that like the shepherds, go to Him who is good news of great joy to all people, and seek to be radically transformed by the encounter. Let us then rejoice, sing and praise God, revealed in the face of Jesus Christ born to us this day. Let us joyfully pray: