Christmas Eve; December 25, 2007; Bethel Lutheran Church, Rochester.
Luke 2:1-20.

Dear Friends in Christ, Grace to you and Peace, from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. AMEN.


The childhood Christmases of Louise Rousseau never featured the peace of the angels of which they sang at church. She would watch as the porcelain baby Jesus beamed a saintly smile from the manger in the church. But her mother’s breath at church already told her what kind of Christmas it would be. The alcohol turned her mother and her mother’s family into raging warriors who battled each other with insult, coconuts, and even knives.

Eventually Louise was able to move away from home and from the wretched Christmas Eves of her past. She was always determined that she would have the perfect Christmas that she wasn’t given by her family as a child. But she got busy like everyone else and found it necessary to rush the gift buying at the mall and even writing Christmas cards bought on post-holiday sales after Christmas.

One year Louise was pregnant and due to deliver in December. “Good,” she thought. “That will give me an excuse to skip Christmas preparations this year as I will have a new baby.” Right on schedule, her son was born December 13th. But that little boy did not deter Christmas. He thrust his mother into the very heart of Christmas.

It was on Christmas Eve when Louise and her family went to see the children’s musical at their church. There was the usual cast of characters: Mary, Joseph, the innkeeper and shepherds. Angels were bopping around Mary and Joseph on stage, Mary cuddling a swaddled plastic doll. “I should have let her borrow my baby,” Louise thought. And then it dawned on her. Mary’s son, Jesus, had been a baby boy just like the little guy in her arms. Suddenly, baby Jesus came alive for her. Gone was the plastic doll. Gone was the porcelain Jesus of her tortured childhood Christmases. There were no halos or a frozen smile on an artificial child. Jesus was a real baby—soft, and with wrinkled skin—a baby who needed nursing, diapering, and kissing.

Louise began to better appreciate the truth of the story. God had become human. He left the wonder of heaven for a makeshift bed in a stable full of animals and manure. He made himself vulnerable so that all people would know God as human—know God as a baby. Her baby’s name born on December 13? Gabriel. An angel’s name—one who would announce a Savior to the world, and one who certainly announced a Savior to his mother.

The wonder of the Christmas story causes us to connect with it. In the Bethel Advent/Christmas devotional booklet this year, a Bethel member named Tonya Sanner writes this, “Never have I felt so connected with Mary as I did several Christmas Eves ago. My second son had just been born four weeks prior and that evening my husband, my son and I were to `play’ the Holy Family in the Christmas Eve service. I remember walking up front and feeling a little nervous and strange with everyone watching my family. I felt proud, as all new mothers do. But, as I sat and listened to the story something amazing happened in my heart and for that moment I WAS Mary and my child, Jesus. I could see a mere glimpse into the heart of Mary and all that she had been through and still had to encounter in her journey as Jesus’ mother. How strong Mary must have been in her faith to trust in the Lord’s plan! And to know that her tiny son, this tiny innocent baby, was the Savior must have been awesome and heartbreaking at the same time.”

It is that wonder of the holy birth that churches around the world bring to a billion people this day and night, maybe as many as two billion people. Some people track Santa Claus on his journey. It would be even easier to track the worship of Christians as the sun makes its way from east to west. Every hour, on the hour, new houses of worship by the millions begin their worship. Imagine that—you join your hearts with billions this day—because of a baby boy.

And you listen to the angels’ song. Maybe you haven’t been so fortunate as to have had a baby Gabriel in your family. Maybe you haven’t had the opportunity to be the Holy Family at a worship service. But the angel song is for you.

In early December one of our Bethel members died, and the request was that we do the funeral service at the graveside rather than in the church. It is not an uncommon request, though wintertime outdoor services can be challenging. And it was in the single digits that Saturday morning as family members and I gathered to remember the life of Verleen and recall God’s promises to her and to us.

Prior in visiting with the family, one of them said to me that her mom had been hearing a choir the last weeks of her life. In fact, not long before she died, Verleen said, “I hear the choir again.” What choir? Of course, we will never know. Some will try to explain it away as a delusion or a function of medications. Some will say it was God coming to her in a special way. At the least we can say it was Verleen’s faith reflecting on the holy story. Maybe it was her idea of a heavenly chorus of angels.

Gathered in the cold that morning, we didn’t have the benefit of an organ or piano, but we had our voices. Recalling our conversation about the choir, I had us sing a verse of “Hark the Herald, Angels Sing” during the sermon. This little band of bundled up mourners turned carolers did well. One woman, however, struggled through the song.

After the funeral, she came to me and asked, “Did my sister tell you to sing that song?” “No,” I responded, “why do you ask?” “With tears streaming from her eyes she said, “That was the last song that Mom and I sang together before she died.”

Was that just some kind of holy coincidence? Or was it the Spirit moving us together in worship of the newborn king? Was it the angels who sang once again on earth, albeit a very mortal choir?

I don’t think the angels are done singing—not by a long shot. Those angels still sing through little babies who remind us of the birth. The angels still sing as the story touches our hearts in the recitation of the important story in the second chapter of Luke. The angels still sing as we find our bodies slipping from this world into the next—a heavenly chorus. The angels sing as we gather to remember God’s promises. And the angels certainly sing as we gather by the hundreds and thousands this holy night. Maybe you are wondering if the angels have ever sung to you. They have not come to you in the middle of the night, or in the midst of a Christmas pageant.

Listen this holy night. They sing. They sing, “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” They sing “Christ, the Savior is born. Christ, the Savior is born.”

Jesus is born for you. No less than the angels proclaim it. Merry Christmas! Amen.