"Home for the Holidays" - Christmas Eve Service Meditation

Many of us have idealistic pictures in our minds of what Christmas should be like. It influences how we prepare - making dozens upon dozens of the perfect cookies, picking up the best present for each person and wrapping it in such a way that the paper glistens under the twinkling of tree lights. It influences how we spend our time and money during the holiday season - what plans we make and where we are going or who is coming to us. And we line up Christmas cards on the mantle that tell the perfect version of the Christmas story - neat and clean. 

But the truth is the reality of Christmas rarely turns out like the picture in our minds eye - there are bickering children, wrapping paper thrown everywhere, burnt cookies, long lines, and relatives that ask for receipts to return that gift you picked out. And the reality is that the first Christmas wasn’t perfect as well - in fact it was messy and marked with scandal. We like to ignore that fact when we look at the pictures of the Christ child glowing from the manger, but there is a story behind that baby, a story that can change our lives if we let it.

The truth is that God came down at Christmas to enter into the story of humanity, because humans had strayed from God. Long ago, God created Adam and Eve, the first people, to dwell in the garden with God. However, they screwed up. They broke the only rule that God gave them and the rest of the story is about God trying to redeem us, trying to reconcile us to God and each other. God formed covenants with people, making promises, but it never seemed like humans could hold up their end of the covenant - constantly straying into sin. God sent prophets to tell the people to repent, but they were so strangled by sin that they could not even see their need. So God took a different approach, sending God’s very self in the person of Jesus Christ - fully human and fully God - to reconcile people to God for God through his teachings, example as he walked on this earth, death on the cross for our sins, and resurrection.

But this is not what many people will respond saying when you ask them what Christmas is about - instead we hear responses such as ‘getting together with friends’, ‘seeing family’, ‘peace on earth’, and even some blatantly honest children will answer ‘presents’. I think we answer that way because Christmas has become so tied to childhood memories and our expectations, that we forget how the Christmas story began - with an angel coming to a woman who is engaged and telling her that she would bear her first child not with her husband to be, but by the Holy Spirit. A girl who was probably no older than 14. While Mary received a beautiful, albeit overwhelming message from God, we can also assume some of the apprehension she was feeling as well. What would her family think? Would Joseph still marry her? How would she explain this in such a way to not bring shame on her household? 

So in the midst of Mary’s mixed joy and apprehension, God provided what she needed in the person of Elizabeth, her elderly cousin who God also impregnanted by the gift of the Holy Spirit, with a son who would announce the coming of Jesus to the nations. If anyone could understand some of the questions Mary was struggling with, it would be Elizabeth. 

The scandal is mounting - two women, decades apart, both found to be with child at the most inopportune time. But perhaps even more notable is the fact that these women were hardly known - women from unknown towns, simply going about their daily lives. Yes, we know that they were devout because they were chosen by God, but the truth is that God brought this ultimate Christmas miracle about through common people, and women - who were powerless at that particular time - at that. 

But the saga continues. Mary and Joseph were not home for the birth of Jesus on that first Christmas. They had prepared to be home - Mary surrounded by her mother and aunts to help with the birth. They had prepared to move into the room Joseph had built onto his parents house after that, but instead they were miles away, in an unfamiliar place, where they were turned away from the only place they could find to stay, because the town was so crowded.

I don’t know if any of you have had the experience of being turned away from a hotel - but it is not pleasant. A few years ago, a colleague and I were traveling back from taking college students to visit another student ministry out of state. It had been a difficult day of travel, including countless delays. While we had originally planned on driving two and a half hours back from the airport after our flight arrived, our sheer exhaustion made that no longer possible. So we went to seek out a hotel. The first one we came to we couldn’t get a room at - there had been a major thunderstorm that had taken out the power grid in that part of the city - and with newer hotels no power means your key cards don’t work. So we drove about thirty miles to the nearest hotel not effected by the power outage, only to find that ever room was booked by a wedding party. By this point it was well past one in the morning and we were becoming grumpy. Finally thirty minutes past that hotel, we found one that could allow us to stay.

Mary and Joseph knew such frustration. Tired. Heavy with a child, perhaps even starting to experience some contractions, Mary and Joseph were in need of a place to stay, but there wasn’t any to be found. Finally one inn keeper allowed them to stay in the barn. As beautiful as it may look on those Christmas cards, let us not forget that it was still a barn. Matted hay. Surrounded by animals. Not the ideal place to deliver a child.

And yet the child came. The child came even in the place where they had been told there was no room. And the child still comes to us today - even those of us who may not want to accept him. Because the truth is while many of us would never outright say that we don’t have room for the Christ child, our hearts and lives reflect that, especially during this season. Our lives are simply filled with so many other things that draw away our attention that we shut out the meaning of Christmas. 

For many of us Christmas has become about the cute pictures in our heads, and we forget that Christmas is about the ultimate gift - being reconciled to God. For the Christmas story tells us that no one is beyond God’s love and grace. And the truth is that this gift is available to all, even those who don’t have room for it in their hearts. My hope and prayer for you this Christmas is that you make room for Christ - setting aside what you expect Christmas to be like to accept the scandalous story. May you come home to the heart of Christ this Christmas, where no one will ever be turned away. Amen.