Sermon Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Merry Christmas everyone. Merry Christmas. Once again, we count ourselves blessed to be able to celebrate, to remember, and to make known this great event that changed everything. Christmas. What is it all about anyway? Well, it depends who you ask. If you ask a child what Christmas is all about, then you’d probably hear about the gifts and the gatherings and more gifts. If you ask an adult, especially a Christian, we probably say that Christmas is about Jesus who is born, who came to us. But I wonder
if we were to ask God, what is Christmas for God? From God’s perspective, what is it? What is it all about? I wonder what answer we will get. Or maybe I don’t wonder. Maybe if we pay close attention to the scripture we read about Christmas, the answer is very plain. Because you see, for God, Christmas is about us. It’s about you and me. Over and over again, we hear in scripture this qualification about the coming of Jesus on Christmas. It says, “For unto you the Savior is born.” For you the Savior comes. For you he dies on the cross for you and me. God’s perspective is so amazing because so often it helps us to recalibrate the way we view reality.
I remember a number of years ago, I think it’s more than I realize now, there was a movie that I really liked, even though it was kind of a I don’t know, maybe not a very good movie, but the movie was called The City of Angels with Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. Good movie. I liked it. Christmas always makes me think about that movie and I’ll tell you why. The movie’s premise is very simple. There’s an angel. There’s actually a whole city of angels. And the movie begins by showing how every person has a guardian angel and every person is accompanied by this angel and when they feel sad, the angel places his hand on the person and comforts them. People can’t see these angels, but they’re there. We can see them as viewers of the movie. And as the movie progresses, one angel falls in love with a woman. And he tries to inquire if this is even
possible. And the answer is yes. The only way you can enter into this romantic love with
this person is by sacrificing being an angel. You have to fall. You have to let go. Sacrifice immortality and everything that goes with being an
angel and become human. Only then are you able to be with your beloved. And so as the movie continues, Nicholas Cage, who plays the angel, actually makes that choice and gives up being an angel. And for the first time after he has done that, wakes up feeling pain and suffering and cold and wind and hunger for the first time because now he’s human. But all of it he embraces all the challenges and pain because now he can be with the one he loves. Cheesy movie perhaps, but doesn’t it reveal something about what we’re celebrating in Christmas? The God of the universe chooses to give up the glory of heaven and to become one of us. To feel pain, to feel hunger, to feel sadness, to feel all that we feel for one reason, because he wants to be with us. And not only that, because he loves us. And not only that, even for an opportunity, for a chance that we would want to love him back. And I say that on purpose because when God comes down and Jesus is born and Jesus dies on the cross, the whole thing, all of it, as great and powerful as it is, does not guarantee that we will be in a loving relationship with God.
You see the incarnation, God becoming one of us, sacrificing the glory of heaven and choosing to live in poverty and pain and suffering was not for anything that was a for sure, but simply for a chance that if we choose, we can be in a loving relationship with him. That if we choose, we can accept the gift of salvation. But it’s up to us. You see,
it takes two to tango. As they say, God has proven beyond beyond a shadow of
a doubt that he loves us. Now, how do we respond? Well, that’s up to us. obviously in our own imperfect ways, but hopefully as we meditate on the sacrifice that God made for us, whether it’s during Christmas or during Good Friday or whatever we think of what Jesus went through only for an opportunity for us to feel his love and to choose his gift of salvation. That is an incredible gift that softens even the hardest of hearts. I don’t know where you’re at in your life, what you’re going through, what challenges you have, what pains and sufferings you’re going through. I’m sure you have your share and I have
mine. But remember this, through all of this, through all of this, God has not abandoned us. God has chosen to be with us and to suffer with us and to feel with us and to be lonely with us, to experience the fullness of humanity only for a chance that we would love him back. And isn’t this what Christianity is all about? Isn’t this what humanity is all about? I often think that if only people knew how great they can be. You know, we can be so hard on ourselves sometimes and on one another, but really we are better than we
realize. And we’re closer to God than we realize. The hope that comes with these celebrations of Christmas is not so that we can just remember with kind of romantic
displays of affection what God did for us back then, but also that we can be reminded that even now, today, and even into the future, God’s love is accessible to us. It’s closer to us than we realize. Our Christian journey is really simpler than we sometimes realize, than I realize. It is a journey of rediscovering what we already have. It is a journey of recognizing the goodness that exists in humanity all around us even beyond the challenges and darkness that’s can sometimes overwhelm us if we watch too much TV too much news channels and so on. But the real good news is that God has come and God will come and God is present. And everything we do when we gather here today, may it be to give glory to God who alone deserves that glory for all that he chose to go through out of love for you and me. Merry Christmas everyone. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.