Are You Really Excited for Christmas?

Below are my thoughts for my Christmas Eve sermon. The text that I am using is Psalm 96 - enjoy!

MAIN IDEA – Christmas Eve is one of those services when one is supposed to bring out the “big gun,” have the multi-brass choir, the live animals, the angelic children’s choir, and every other gimmick that you can put your hand on. On the one hand I see this as a gimmick and have a deal of disdain towards such an approach, on the other hand, there is a level of truth to the praise. Yet why do we praise? I don’t think I’m just being cynical when I say that we offer the upbeat, powerful service because people expect us to do so, and we want people to be pleased. We do it because we hope that maybe one of those C and E Christians will be inspired to start to attend our church on a regular basis – we do it because we are desperate.

So I have always had a certain amount of skepticism towards such manufactured joy on high holy days (Easter is included in this). Yet on the other hand, this is an amazing part of the Christian story, the salvation story that I embrace. There is a level of necessary praise that calls to be embraced when I am authentic and honest not only about what Christ’s birth means for Christianity but what Christ’s birth means to me.

The Psalm offers a form to follow in praise. It almost authentic the praise that I want to embrace without becoming fake. I hope I can embrace the steadfast trust and faith that the Psalm proclaims (v. 10 – “Say among the nations, ‘The Lord is King! The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.’”). I also hope that I can embrace the promise that the Psalm proclaims (v. 13 “…he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.”).

Free me, Lord, from the expectations of others and allow me to embrace my own joy, to incarnate my celebration in my life as this Psalm is driving me to do. May my worship be honest and true to you.
Amen

THEOLOGICAL IDEA – There seems to be a couple of things going on here. One, we are called to praise with all creation. This speaks to a kind of theological anthropology and natural theology – perhaps suggest that all are drawn towards to goodness and grace of God, even creation itself.

We are given the idea that God is in control, but not in a predestination kind of way. It seems that God’s control is in how God reacts to and is involved with the people. God will judge with righteousness and equity. When we are moved to distrust of the powers, principalities, and systems, we are drawn to trust in God.

Finally the idea of salvation as a now and a not yet. God is coming even as God has come into the world through the birth of Christ. The celebration of Christmas is never fully over until Christ returns.