Test Driving Theology

Every year, as Christmas approaches, I’m convinced that there is an unspoken competition that happens all around us. It is the annual contest to see who can be the nicest version of themselves, at least for a few days. 

You see it everywhere. Suddenly, people start letting each other merge in traffic. Someone actually returns the shopping cart instead of ditching it halfway across the parking lot. Even normally impatient people start holding doors and saying, “No really, you go ahead.”

A few years ago, I witnessed what I still consider a small Christmas miracle at the grocery store. It was the Saturday before Christmas. The store was packed, the checkout line stretched forever, and everyone looked tired, impatient and just a little on edge.

A few people ahead of me in line was a man with a cart full with groceries. When it was finally his turn, and he tried to pay, we could hear the cashier gently say, “I’m sorry sir, your card didn’t go through.” She tried to run it again. Same thing. Then she asked if he had another form of payment.  The answer was “no.”

The embarrassment the man felt was real.  He apologized. And then he started to try and maneuver his cart backwards…back through the line.  Before he could get very far, the woman behind him stepped forward and said, “It’s Christmas. I’ve got it.” She handed her card to the cashier and despite the man’s protests, paid for his groceries, wished him a Merry Christmas, and waved off his thanks like it was nothing. In that instant, the mood of the entire line changed. People smiled. Someone cracked a joke. The wait felt lighter.

Now, that moment did not fix the world. But I think it revealed something important. Christmas has this way of softening us. It draws out generosity and grace that might otherwise stay hidden. There is, as we have been saying all Advent, a thrill of hope in the air.

Tonight, we gather at the heart of that hope. We hear again the familiar story from Luke:

• A decree from Caesar. 
• A long journey. 
• No room in the inn. 
• A child born and laid in a manger. 

This is a story that refuses to lose its power.

In telling the story, Luke overturns all our expectations. There is no palace. No royal welcome. No crowd of important dignitaries to greet the Messiah. No, the Savior of the world enters quietly, almost unnoticed. God arrives not with force, but with vulnerability. Not with spectacle, but with humility. A baby wrapped in cloths and placed in a feeding trough.

That alone tells us something essential about God. God does not wait for perfect conditions. God comes into real life. Into the messiness and uncertainty of the world as it actually is. God comes into a world shaped by political tension and deep divisions. God comes into a world where people are tired, anxious, and longing for something more. In other words, God comes into our world.

The theologian Karl Barth once put it simply and beautifully.  He wrote: “The Word became flesh. That is the miracle of Christmas.” Not that God sent an idea. Not that God offered advice from a distance. But that God showed up. God took on skin and bone and breath. God entered the story. God enters our story.

Tonight is the moment when hope becomes flesh. Tonight, Isaiah’s ancient promise is fulfilled. A child is born. A son is given. He is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Those titles sound grand. And yet they are given to an infant…a baby who can’t even lift his own head. The contrast here is intentional. God’s identity is revealed not through power, but through love. God’s strength is shown not through control, but through presence. God chooses to enter our lives in a way that invites trust rather than fear.

Our world could use a whole lot more trust…and whole lot less fear. Let’s pause here for just a moment…a moment of honesty.  Many of us come tonight carrying mixed emotions. Yes, of course, there’s joy and gratitude…it’s Christmas! But for many of us, there is also, grief, weariness, questions, and disappointments. 

The world we live in is hard.  And you all carry so much weight on your shoulders.  I know.  I’ve heard so many of your stories:

• For some of you it’s stress and tension at work, or at school.  
• For others it’s broken relationships.  
• Some of you have lost loved ones and the grief you carry is real.  
• For some, the social and political division we experience is wearing you down.  
• Some of you are living with a difficult diagnosis…for yourself…or for someone you love.  

Christmas Eve does not erase those things. But it reminds us that God meets us right there. Hope does not require us to have everything figured out. Hope is something God brings to us.

If the story of Jesus’ birth shows us nothing else, it shows us that hope doesn’t always arrive with fireworks. Sometimes it shows up quietly and changes us from the inside out. It gives us courage we didn’t know we had. It nudges us toward compassion and generosity.

Author Mark Yaconelli once wrote about something he witnessed while Christmas shopping. After a long morning at the mall, he sat in the food court and noticed a group that stood out in the crowd. Ten adults with developmental and physical disabilities.  They were accompanied by two staff members wearing sweatshirts that said, “Redwood Group Home.” The staff members helped each person individually order their food.  All except for one man.  This man insisted that he would do his ordering himself. He walked away from the group, and he got in line at McDonald’s, produced a coupon, and successfully ordered a ginormous cup of coffee. He returned to his group beaming with pride.

Later, when Mark left the mall, he stepped outside into a pouring rainstorm.  He noticed that also standing outside, huddled together under an overhang near the door, was that same group from the home.  Their van had been pulled up and the two staff members were helping people, one-by-one, make their way through the rain to the vehicle. 

But the man with the coffee? The one who liked his independence? He chose not to wait for help.  He stepped out on his own to run to the van, all the while trying to protect his giant coffee from the rain. Halfway to the van, he suddenly stopped…and froze.  He’d realized that the staff members?  They were both behind him, and there was no one at the van to help him get in.  Mark wrote that he kind of panicked.  He wasn’t sure what to do. As he spun back toward the overhang, his coffee cup slipped out of his hand. It spilled across the pavement and his coffee washed away in the rain.

The man looked down at his empty cup, now floating in a puddle, and he began to cry. And cry. And cry. Then he just collapsed down on the ground, sobbing, soaked by the rain and sitting in the standing water. Without hesitation, one of the staff members left the group, ran over to him and just sat down beside him on the wet concrete.  She wrapped her arm around him and let him rest his head on her shoulder. She sat there with him in the rain, simply holding him while he sobbed. When he calmed down, when he was ready, she helped him up, led him to the van, fastened his seatbelt, and kissed him on the forehead before climbing into the back seat herself.

For that young man, she was more than a caregiver. She was the hands…and the presence of God. 

What Mark witnessed that night was the incarnation…a holy moment…a quiet miracle. A miracle because she chose compassion over convenience. Love over efficiency.

The real Christmas miracles are not found in decorations or presents, wonderful as those are. The real miracle of Christmas is this: God loves you so much that God steps into the storm of your world. When you are overwhelmed or afraid, God comes to you and holds you. God knows the rain and the fear and the joy and the grief, because through Jesus, God has lived it all with you.

And Jesus calls each of us to be that presence for others. To be the people who show up. Whether it is paying off a grocery bill, offering shelter, feeding the hungry, or simply sitting with someone in their sadness…in the rain. We are all invited to be the miracle of God in someone else’s life.

That is the kind of hope Christmas brings. Not vague optimism, but deep confidence that God is present and active in the world. Christmas does not deny pain or struggle. It simply declares that pain and struggle do not have the last word. God does. Hope does. Love does.

May this night fill you with joy. May it strengthen your trust in a God who keeps showing up. And may you carry the light of this story into the days ahead, confident that in Jesus Christ, our deepest hopes are not only imagined but are fulfilled.

Merry Christmas, dear friends. 

Thanks be to God.

Amen.