The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2024
In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.
Are you ready for Christmas?
That’s a phrase I’ve heard so much over the past few days. Are you ready for Christmas? the nurse at my doctor’s office for my annual visit asked me.
Are you ready for Christmas? Friends asked in text messages and phone calls.
Are you ready?
After all, the entire season of Advent we’ve been preparing, we’ve been proclaiming, be alert! Watch! Wait! Get ready!
How about you? Are you ready for Christmas?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel ready at all!
There was so much to get ready—the last minute bills to pay, the people to visit, the cards to send, the errands to run, the tree to decorate, the house to clean (that did NOT get done), the groceries bought, food prepped, and of course the gifts to buy! All the gifts!
Are you ready?
Or are you feeling overwhelmed with the sheer volume of it all? Was it a mad rush to get your family together and get in the car and get to church tonight? Will it be a rush to get to the next place?
Mary and Joseph must have felt something of that same unease, that same anxiety, that perhaps we may be feeling tonight. After all, they weren’t traveling for pleasure or to see family—they were traveling because they’d been told to, by an emperor far away, to register to be taxed.
These taxes were not the sort that were for the public good—the kinds of taxes we pay, for roads, infrastructure, transportation, governance. These taxes were to fill the coffers of the empire, the same force that was oppressing them. They weren’t levied according to a progressive, planned payment structure. There was no Internal Revenue Service—there were tax collectors, citizens of the Herodian government, that took what they could get—that extorted money from local people—and then paid what they owed to the Emperor—and kept the rest to line their own pockets.
And there was the matter of Mary’s pregnancy. Not an ideal time to be travelling. And how was Joseph feeling about this child to be born—a child that was not his?! So much anxiety. Maybe even so much fear.
Not unlike our world today. We worry about money, we worry about safety, we worry about our families and friends and loved ones. We worry about what the neighbors will think. We worry about our government and those of the nations of the world.
Just like Mary and Joseph.
I love that line in the Christmas proclamation—that in the 42nd year of the reign of Octavius Augustus, the whole world is at peace! It wasn’t of course in Jerusalem—the peace was uneasy, oppressive, and even violent; Josephus tells us that blood ran in the streets!
Not unlike the violence and conflict in our own world.
Just like Mary and Joseph, we might be anxious, and even with good cause. And Christmas preparations may have added to your joy—or they may have added to your anxiety! It’s an anxious time.
It is precisely into that anxious moment that God breaks in. That Jesus is born. That the very Word of God is made flesh. And what do the angels say?
Be not afraid! Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people!
It is precisely into that place of fear, that world of uncertainty, that human existence plagued by violence and death, that Jesus enters.
Be not afraid.
And to whom are the angels speaking? It’s to the shepherds, right? The lowliest, the most vulnerable, the ones on the edge of society, sleeping rough, outside the town, in the field, in the quiet, where God breaks in.
Be not afraid.
That’s a good word for us today, too, isn’t it. In the rush of our holiday preparations—or in our more weighty anxieties about the state of the economay, the state of the nation, the state of the world. Be not afraid.
Because whether or not you are ready for Christmas, whether or not your preparations are done, whether or not you are at peace or anxious or worried or even fearful, God is giving God’s own self to you. To us. To all of creation.
Freely. To all of us.
That’s something we’ve gotten wrong about giving. Santa keeps a list and checks it twice and knows who’s been naughty or nice, right? The elf on the shelf is a surveillance agent, that snitch that’s telling Santa what we’re up to! Children, tell your parents that no matter what the song says, Santa is not a Calvinist. He’s not a judge.
In fact, did you know that the earliest gifts that Saint Nicholas gave out were sacks of gold coins that he tossed in the windows of a home with three unmarried girls—so that they’d have enough money for a dowry? So that they could get married? So that they could participate in the economic systems of their day?
Saint Nicholas, that Bishop of Myra who now shows up in his suit of red with white trimmed fur, is a generous giver—reflecting the way that God gives to us.
Giving. It’s something we don’t really get right, isn’t it? We tie ourselves in knots to get the perfect gift. To gift the perfect thing. That’s the neologism, right? Gifting! Brands gift couture to influencers in order to get featured in Tik Toks and Instagram reels. Retailers have curated gifting catalogues—Amazon wants to put together a list of things I can buy for my family and friends. Make it a gerund, and suddenly we are all gifting things to one another.
I realize that language changes, but I wonder what subtle shift is under the new use of the word “gifting.” It seems transactional. Like I expect something in return, or you expect something of me, when you “gift” me something.
Giving, however, involves myself, involves a relationship. Giving something to someone else is a part of participating in one another’s very existence. Giving part of myself away. Like caritas, agape—the giver pours out part of their own self in the act of giving.
Gift away, friends; do it for the gram, all the things.
But also practice receiving. For God’s giving is different.
Into this world of fear, of anxiety, of existential dread, God is breaking in—Jesus is born—just because God desires to be with you. Just because God loves you. Just so that God can give God’s own self to you. To me. To all of creation.
That’s what God wants. To be with you. To love you. To fold you into God’s sacred heart.
In and amongst all the anxiety of the world, all the hustle and bustle of the season, can we get quiet and still like the shepherds? Can we hear the rustle of the angels’ wings? Can we for just a moment put down our fear? Our worry?
BE NOT AFRAID! The angels call out.
Let God give God’s own self to you—in the infant in the manger. In the teacher who heals. In the savior who dies. In the Christ who rises and eats with us.
Let God draw you into God’s sacred embrace. Let God love you.
Merry Christmas. Come, let us adore Him.