Return to Sermon Index	CHRISTMAS EVE SERMON

Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-10

I've been to Bethlehem. It's a busy little town, south of the city of Jerusalem. Certainly, it doesn't look much as it did when Jesus was born there. Actually, it looks more like Frankenmouth, Michigan, than anything else, except that Bethlehem is a little dirtier. I say that it looks like Frankenmouth because of all the little souvenir shops up and down main street. You can go into those souvenir shops and buy everything from nativity scenes to postcards. And then there are the many small and large restaurants and the churches and the hotels and the traffic and the tourists and the hustlers trying to sell their wares, all of this combining to make Bethlehem what it is, today.

You've got to get away from all of that to find the place where it is most likely that Jesus was born. Oh, to be sure, there is the traditional place of Jesus' birth to where people over the years have made pilgrimages. It's located in a cavern under a large church. To enter the church you have to stoop down through a narrow door, built that way in the 1200's to prevent the horses of raiding Moslems from entering the church. But the symbolism was good. Many people used that as an opportunity to enter the place of Jesus' birth upon their knees. Something that many of us should try in the figurative sense.

Once inside the church, you go to a narrow stairway and down several flights until you reach the place where tradition says the Lord was born. The place is marked in the floor by a large golden star, surrounded by wrought iron railings.

But, if you really want to get a feeling of what Jesus' birthplace must have actually been like, you have to leave the city of Bethlehem and go out into the countryside surrounding the city. For here and there, nestled among the rolling hills, are small caves that have been used for centuries by the shepherds as stables, as shelters, as places to keep their sheep on a cold winter's night.

Indeed, it was a place like that wherein Jesus was born. It was a place like that which had shepherds living around it in the nearby fields.

Our scriptures glorify shepherds, for the most part. They make it sound as though the shepherds of Palestine were heroes of some kind. Yet, the opposite is more often the truth. Even today in modern Israel, shepherds are looked upon with some distaste. For they are nomadic people who live in tents. When I was visiting in Palestine two years ago a tour guide told me that the government of Israel was trying to get the shepherds to settle down in one place and to use modern sheep raising techniques. But, the government of Israel was meeting much resistance.

In the time of Christ many people considered the shepherds to be dirty, unclean people because they couldn't wash regularly, nor could they take the time they needed to spend in the Temple or synagogues doing the things that would make them acceptable, according to Jewish Law.

So, the shepherds were the scum of Israel, looked down upon. So, it is certainly a lesson for us that these were the people to whom God sent angels concerning the birth of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

The other night I was over at K-Mart doing a little bit of last minute Christmas shopping. And I noticed the man at the entrance of K-mart, ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. Have you ever noticed how many of the people respond to that man with the bell? Some people seem to purposely go out of their way to use the doors that are farthest away from that bell ringer so that they don't have to be confronted by the pot with the grates in it for the money. Sometimes people look at the bell ringer with a look of disgust on their face, as though they're thinking that the fellow must be a bum, or something. But, the other night, as I was walking out the door, I recognized the bell-ringer. He was one of the funeral directors for the Jennings-Lyons Funeral Chapel, one of the friendliest guys I know, and hardly a bum.

When I saw him standing there ringing that bell, it made me think. Here people were running in and out of that store, desperately trying to deal with the "gimmies" and "I wannas" of myriads of different people, supposedly as part of a ritual associated with the birth of our Savior. At the same time many of them were going out of their way to bypass something that is even more basic to Christmas: God's concern for the poor, the lowly, the least deserving, those whom society has called "scum." But, truly, truly, my friends, if God was concerned for shepherds, if God wanted shepherds to know the good news, if God wanted shepherds to be at the manger with Mary and Joseph, God is concerned with the same sort of people, today. And, so must we be concerned, as well. And not just at Christmas time, either.

Tonight we are going to be lighting candles to remember Jesus' birth. As we look back at the first Christmas, we might wonder what sort of lights were lit. First, of all, we are told that it was night when the angels came to the Shepherds. So, there were stars in the sky. And then the passages concerning the wisemen tell us that one of those stars was very bright. Nevertheless, those stars, even the brightest one, couldn't have lit up the sky to make it appear as though it was day. It was, still, pretty dim.

And, then, we can assume that the shepherds had campfires going. Some historians have suggested that Jesus' birth may have taken place on the longest night of the year, a night in which the shepherds customarily lit many bonfires, so that one could have looked out over the countryside and seen many lights twinkling, not only in the sky, but on the hillsides, as well. Yet, even these lights could not have made it as bright as day.

But, perhaps the most important light that was lit that night is the light that you can not see with your eyes, but only with your heart. It was an inner light that may even be seen a little better when the exterior lights are turned off.

Christmas Eve is always a tumult and uproar in our house. Take tonight, for example. First, there's the 7:00 service and then there's the 11:00 service. We get the double whammy because Linda and I are both ministers with churches that have their respective services on Christmas Eve.

Last night, at about 9:30 p.m., I was sitting with Linda in our living room. All the lights were off, except for the twinkling lights on our Christmas tree. We were pretty comfortable. Everything was quiet. And suddenly the thought struck me: "Wouldn't this be the best time for our family to open our Christmas presents?" Voicing this idea, Linda agreed. So, we gathered our kids around the tree and the presents were opened. And it was done without the usual hurry of having to squeeze it in between worship services. It just felt right, last night, for a change.

Have you ever noticed how much of a tumult Christmas can be? Somehow, we need to seize those moments that come between the tumults; those quiet moments during which we are able to see the most important Christmas light of all. Sometimes we need to celebrate Christmas with the exterior lights turned off so that we may see that most spectacular Light of the World.

I was talking with a fellow minister the other day. We were both commenting upon how shallow we have become in our Christmas celebration of the Christ event. And then he said to me, "Well, you know, in spite of it all, if you look hard enough, you can still see Christ hidden in there in the mix of it all."

With that comment I was reminded of that old church in Bethlehem with the low door that in order to go through you had to kneel. Once inside, though, I was impressed to see how big the place was. But the floors and walls were made of rough stone. People were walking about the place, looking at pictures on the wall, talking to each other, lining up to go into the basement of the church. It was quite a tumult. Only a few of those tourists, including myself, took the time to notice something odd about the place. Going over to a corner of the sanctuary, I noticed a hole in the floor, about a yard square, surrounded by a railing. Looking into the hole, I could see that there was a beautiful mosaic tile that had been covered up by the existing floor. On that mosaic tile, I could see, delecately laid out, the face of Jesus.

Certainly, as we continue through this season of Christmas and experience and even join in on the behavior of society which is only a shadow of the celebration of Christ's birth, we may, yet. be able to see, somewhere in the middle of it all, the face of Jesus, and, falling upon spiritual knees, be awed once again at the experience of Jesus' birth. Amen.