Christmas Sermon: Hope is a Child
- standrewcin
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
We are at the holy night where Advent turns to Adventure, where the Lord’s delay turns to a new day.
How perfectly this night prepares us for hope.
On this blessed Christmas Eve, I’m moved to preach to you: Hope is a Child,
where Heaven and Earth meet.
As the prophet Isaiah foretold so many centuries before the birth of Christ, a little child that leads us,
The hopes and fears of all the years met in an unexpected place. The little town of Bethlehem, the house of bread, the place that birthed the tiny savior whose body would become our daily bread.
Like the inn at Bethlehem, the world often has no room for hope, or for joy, for mystery, or for simplicity.
Yet, tonight we find all four in a child.
And, in the children of our church.
For the first time in many years, we got to experience the joy of a Christmas Pageant.
In this, we see not only the hope for the future of this place, but a renewal of the hope for each of our families that in a world that makes kids grow up too fast, there is still a place where mystery and love come together to create joy for the world.
Whatever we bring with us into this night, whatever has not been done, we stop to feel the deep magic of God’s all-encompassing grace,
And we become like children again, daring to believe that anything is possible, if we love enough.
Hope is a child, because it is something that we have to wait for, something that we have to care for and keep safe before it can enter the world in its own time.
Hope is a child, because no one can prepare you for it, or tell you what it will feel like, words cannot contain the joy of its appearing.
Hope is a child, because life insists on it being born into the world no matter if the timing is right, or the circumstances are perfect; a rose can bloom even in the depths of winter, when half gone is the night.
Hope is a child, because when it arrives, everyone wants to gather around it with hushed tones, to bring it their gifts.
Hope is a child, because it reminds us that the simplest things are the most true and that as long as we have it, new generations will repeat the theme, and that humankind can yet flourish.
The beauty of Christmas is that we can sit in a moment, where the only thing that matters is the stillness of the lights that the shadows cannot overcome.
The worries about the Herods of this world are set aside for this night.
So often, keep heaven and earth apart.
We think of them as distinct places that rarely touch and even more rarely overlap.
But tonight we are reminded that in the person of Jesus, heaven and nature sing together in harmony,
A song that 16th century English poet Ben Jonson put like this:
“I sing the birth was born tonight,The Author both of life and light; The angels so did sound it,And like the ravished shepherds said,Who saw the light, and were afraid, Yet searched, and true they found it.The Son of God, the eternal King,That did us all salvation bring, And freed the soul from danger;He whom the whole world could not take,The Word, which heaven and earth did make, Was now laid in a manger.”
The truth is that the birth of Jesus reminds us of our ultimate hope that heaven is not so far from earth, and that earth – if we prepare a place – is able to receive heaven here and now.
God, the king of heaven, and Mary the eternal mother of all the earth conspired to bring hope into the world in the form of a little child.
And in so doing they bridged the divide,
So that nothing in all of creation could separate us from the love of God, and that every person who has ever been a child would have the hope of eternal life.
How perfectly this night prepares us for hope.
I pray that whatever it is that you are hoping for this year that your faith and your creativity will bring forth its nativity.
I pray that you will live abundantly not just by the measures of earth, but in the peace and mercy and grace that surpasses all the limits of human thought.
I pray that you will continue to find in this unassuming space, a place for embrace, where you can come to encounter Christ and bring him your gifts;
That you will find that your life is transformed by letting him enter into your heart again.
This Christ who is by highest heaven adored, this God of Glory and Lord of Love,
Tonight in hope we join the triumph of the skies and with angelic voices proclaim that Christ was born in Bethlehem.
May our hearts receive him still as the sign of God’s indescribable love for us,
And gather near once more.
Hope is a Child that brought heaven and earth together, O come let us adore him.
Merry Christmas!
Comments