December 24, 2025
Christmas Eve
2025

On Christmas Eve, I always feel the chasm between the way things are and the way they ought to be especially acutely. There’s the beauty and brightness of our church, our worship, and our music; the joy of our celebration, our happy faces, excited children. And then outside, there’s the darkness of night, the realities of a world, suffering people, breaking hearts, hunger, homelessness, violence and evil.

Those differences have always been present, but in the past decade or so, I’ve been feeling that disjuncture more acutely, and it seems that gap between the world’s suffering and our celebration grows ever wider.

We live in tumultuous, chaotic times, as we watch our society collapsing, behavioral norms vanishing, as we witness the attacks on civility, on science, and learning, as institutions we held dear are under attack. We are fearful, anxious, and we know that others around us are even more frightened as families are ripped apart and immigrants deported. We avert our attention from the news because we can’t bear knowing all the details, whether it’s suffering in Gaza, war in Ukraine, or attacks on our healthcare system that put all our lives in danger.

This chaos has even come to Christianity as it is experienced and practiced in the United States. The rise of Christian nationalism has transformed the figure of Christ from the Prince of Peace to a Warrior, as it rejects his message of love of neighbor and enemy, and his embrace of the outcast, the vulnerable, and the foreigner.

It may be that you are tuning me out right now, because you came here to get away from all of that, to have a little peace and quiet, to sing familiar carols, to be reassured of well, normalcy, in these strange and unsettling times. We want to keep the barbarians, or our deepest fears, outside the gates, and activate security systems in our homes and our psyches to keep the chaos at bay.

But there are similar contradictions at the heart of the Christmas story, at the heart of the Christian faith. Think about Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus. On the one hand, he places his narrative squarely in the context of the Roman Empire: “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” We see the reach of empire—a capricious, violent ruler demanding that the population be counted, why, so imperial domination could extend its way to the furthest reaches of the population. Rome, the eternal city, the city to which all roads led, the greatest power the world had ever seen.

On the other hand, and the contrast couldn’t be greater, another city is mentioned, the city of David, Bethlehem,  a tiny village far from the centers of power. But with the mention of David, an allusion to a long-ago monarchy that was conquered, a subject people, and a far away history.

And the people: the emperor, the governor, men in power, men of power, and Joseph, a powerless nobody, Mary, a pregnant, vulnerable teen. Their places: palaces, sumptuous furnishings and meals, many attendants; the other, Joseph and his family at a manger, in a cave? Because there was no room in the inn. Even more: The emperor would be announced throughout the empire as Savior, bringing peace; that’s the good news, the euangelion, the gospel. But the angels use the same language: a savior is born.

These contrasts like other contrasts of the season: light and darkness; the contrast between the emperor who reigns in Rome, and the king who is born in Bethlehem; the empire that rules by violence and intimidation; and the reign of God that ushers in peace and justice.  

Such dichotomies are present throughout Luke’s story. Think of the Magnificat, Mary’s great song of praise:

He has shown the strength of his arm, *
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he has sent away empty.

Such divisions, between the weak and the powerful; rich and power are divisions we know too well today, as the differences between the haves and have nots grow wider, billionaires increase their wealth while people go hungry and unhoused around us. These divisions which we know so well are used to divide and demonize the other.

But it’s not just in the world around us where we see such stark differences. We see them in ourselves, as well. We know the person we want to be, and the person we so often are; the differences between our hopes and aspirations and the realities of our lives; the differences between what we should do, and what we actually do, all the ways we fall short and disappoint ourselves and the ones we love. 

Our tendency, when it comes to our own lives, and the dichotomies in the world in which we live, is to overlook or try to ignore those differences, to hide them from ourselves, to insulate ourselves from the suffering and pain in our hearts and the world around us. We may even want to hide them from Christmas, in our efforts to have the perfect celebration in an imperfect world.

But that’s precisely the sort of misguided exercise we humans tend to attempt. In fact, what we are celebrating at Christmas is the breaking down of those barriers: God becoming human, the word becoming flesh. In the words of a blessing often used at Christmas: “Christ, who by his incarnation gathered into one things earthly and heavenly…”

Or St. Paul: “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to Godself”

Christ comes into the chaos of the world, into its suffering and pain; takes on that suffering and pain, redeeming it, and us. In Christ, we receive adoption through grace, grafted onto his body. In Christ, all things are made new.

We see that taking place as Christ takes on human flesh, as a baby, in all the vulnerability and weakness that symbolizes, in the dependence of a baby on the love of parents and others. 

We will go from this place out into a cold and dark world, the light of our candles extinguished, but the hope in our hearts rekindled. The world will not have changed. There is still suffering, pain, despair; in the dark places of the world, and in the dark places of our heart.

But the coming of Christ brings rays of hope and love into that darkness for the light, the light of Christ, shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. May the light of Christ, may the light of Christmas, shine in the darkness of the world, the darkness of our despair and fill us with his light and grace.