Good morning, Friends! How many days is it until Christmas? You say four? Well, it depends what part of the Christian church you belong to!
You know there are Protestant Christians, and Catholic Christians. But there are also Christians in the Orthodox branch of our family. Many Orthodox Christians don’t celebrate until January 7th, because they don’t agree with a big calendar reform that happened way back in the 1500’s.
The way they used to calculate leap year in the old days wasn’t completely accurate. So, in 1582, the pope announced that we were going to calculate leap years a different way. And to make up for centuries of mistakes, the pope said everyone had to adjust the calendar and take away 13 days.
The Orthodox church didn’t go along. So, if you’re an Orthodox Christian, you have to wait an extra 13 days after December 25th, or 19 days from now, before you can open your stocking.
For the last month, we’ve been lighting one more candle each week. A lot of families do this at home. Our family did, when our kids were little.
Lighting the candles was a nice way to help everyone in the family slow down a little from all of the Christmas excitement. As a family, it meant turning off the TV, sitting together in the living room with the candles, and just quietly spending some time together.
We had a little booklet of Bible readings, and we would sing a Christmas carol, and spend a couple of minutes with the children snuggled in our laps. Then we’d say a bedtime prayer and carry them upstairs to their rooms for the night. Often they would be asleep before we blew the candles out.
One year, when our kids were very little – our daughter Elizabeth was about five years old – old enough to remember Christmas from the year before – she had a brand-new idea. She wanted to help get ready for Christmas. She loved to work on craft projects, and she had a big box full of fabric scraps, ribbons, sequins, and glue, which she normally used to make costumes to dress up her stuffed toys.
Anyway, Elizabeth wanted it to be a surprise, and she spent several afternoons cutting up pieces of fabric in her room. One afternoon she went out to the back yard and brought in a big arm load of twigs and branches. She had recently learned how to use a glue gun, and we let her use it by herself as long as she was careful.
After 3 or 4 days of secret labor, she called us in to the living room one evening and unveiled her surprise – something which the world had probably never seen before or since.
She had remembered the creche and the Nativity figures from years before, and somehow put them together in her 5-year-old mind with memories of Easter and she came up with – CHRISTMAS EGGS!
There they were, the whole Holy Family, made out of hard-boiled eggs which she had taken out of the refrigerator. They were all dressed up in felt and fabric, with robes and head scarves just like the ones the kids wore at the church Christmas pageant.
The angels had halos and the wise men had crowns. Mary wore a blue felt coat. All of the egg figures had little circles of construction paper glued to them to hold them upright and keep them from rolling around. The sheep had cotton balls glued all over them for fleece, and the cows had felt tails and pipe-cleaner horns.
It was truly impressive, and my wife and I were speechless.
To shelter the Holy Family, Elizabeth built a stable out of sticks, stuck together with hot-melt glue. It was the first stable she’d ever made, and it was a little wobbly. It looked kind of like a lean-to garage or a primitive camping shelter, but she was proud of it. There were blobs and globs of hot-melt glue everywhere, but that was OK.
She took markers from her art box and made faces on all the figures – the men eggs all had beards and mustaches, the Mary egg had bright blue eyes, and all the angel eggs had great big smiles. It was SOMETHING!
So, that year we had Christmas eggs. Every Christmas is different. That year was just a little more different than all the others.
This year, we’ve talked about Advent as the season of hope. We’ve talked about Advent as the season of joy. Last week, we talked about Advent as the season of peace, and about what it means for Jesus to be the Prince of Peace.
This morning, I want to talk about Advent as the season of love. I’m going to read a Scripture that is very familiar to all of us.
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
- John 3:16-17
You all know the story of Christmas in Luke, where Jesus is born in Bethlehem. There was no room at the inn, so they laid him in a manger. And in Luke, the angels come to the shepherds out in the fields, and sing the Hallelujah chorus.
And you all know the story of Christmas in Matthew, where the wise men come from the East to see the newborn king. And Herod decided that one king was enough, and Joseph and his family had to flee for their lives to Egypt.
But John has a different version of the Christmas story. John says that Christ has been here since before everything was created. John says that Christ is the Light, the Word, the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.
John says that the reason Jesus came, was not to condemn the world, or destroy the world, but to save everyone. John says that everyone who believes won’t perish, but live forever. And John says the reason for this, is love.
We think about love a lot at Christmas. We love each other, and God loves us. But we need to remember that God loves everyone. God loves good people, and God loves people who are mixed up and hurt and do bad things. We all fall short at times, every one of us. And God loves us, just the same.
But Jesus didn’t come, just for the good people. Jesus came to call us all back to the good way. He came for the lost sheep, and the good sheep.
And Jesus came to tell everyone that God forgives us. Forgiveness and mercy, no matter who we are, or what we’ve done. All we have to do is accept it, and forgive each other.
That’s not the holly-jolly, ho-ho-ho message of Christmas. But it’s the real message of Christmas, too.
“God so loved the world that he sent his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. God didn’t send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. . .”
It’s really simple. And all the rest of the year, we try to take those simple words, and put them into action.
Understanding Jesus is not that hard. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. . . Forgive as you have been forgiven. . .Go home and tell everyone what God has done for you. . . Go into all the world and tell everyone the good news. . .Peace I give you! My peace I leave with you. Do not let your hearts be anxious, neither let them be afraid. . .Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you also do to Me. . .”
These are Jesus’ own words. We’ve all heard them. We come here each week to let those words fill us, and encourage us, and to let go of our fear, and ask God to help us to try again.
As we look around us, in the year of our Lord 2025, we can’t help but notice how much of the world is unchanged, unhealed, unjust, not at peace, not saved.
Nations are still making war against nations. And people are still tearing each other to pieces.
But God still wants to world to be saved. God always has. If you ever get discouraged, looking out at the whole human race, just remember that. God wants the world to be saved.
And so do a lot of people. If there weren’t more people trying to create order, build justice, and love their neighbor, than there are people trying to tear things apart, and cheat and lie and spread violence, this world would have fallen to pieces a long time ago.
Remember that! The good people in this world greatly outnumber the bad people. And God is always working on our minds and hearts, to try and turn us all into better people.
Christ didn’t come into the world in order to condemn it, or destroy it. Jesus didn’t come to grab just a few of his favorite folks and take them home to Heaven, and leave the rest.
God sent his Son to save the world, and to show us how we can take part in the work of salvation.
Christmas is a lot of things. It’s the season of hope. It’s the season of joy. It’s the season of peace. It’s the season of love.
We believe that this is why Jesus came: to bring good news to people who have nothing. To tell people who are in chains that they can be free. To open people’s eyes. To put an end to oppression. To say that God’s word is fulfilled. And to say that this year is when God wants all these things to happen.