Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you

good news of great joy for all people.

Luke 2: 10

I love the green wreaths and the festive ribbons. I love the way our sanctuary looks. I love the presents - admittedly, I love opening presents and giving them, much more than I love shopping for them. But even that can be fun if you get in a groove and can find the time to go to the stores early in the morning when the crowds have not gathered.

And of course I love the traditional holiday food, and sharing that with family. And I'm very much hoping there's still snow on the ground when Robyn and I get back to Rapid City in a couple days, cause that's my favorite thing of all -- a white Christmas.

So I love this sacred and beautiful holiday we celebrate on this, the final Sunday of Advent. And I can't wait for tonight, for our lessons and carols service which we shall celebrate as the chapel glows with its own holy light.

I love all of it.

And yet.

And yet it's a big, bad world out there. The daily headlines are relentless and they seem to militate against the Good News heralded by those angles of so long ago, peace on earth, good will among all those whom God favours!

The truth is Christmas can sometimes be a difficult season. For many of us believing that the magic of Christmas extends beyond the four Sundays of Advent....beyond the carols and the wreaths and the Christmas trees and the presents, believing that the wonder of the season belongs not just to children but adults, believing that the promise of this holy season is a gift given not for a season but a lifetime, believing all of that is, well, sometimes it's an act of faith for all of us.

I remember vividly when I experienced the challenge, rather than the wonder, of Christmas for the first time. When I first had to look at it through the eyes of a minister, and not a child. When I first had to exercise Christmas faith.

I was still in the midst of my training at Fourth Presbyterian, and it was the first Christmas after I had been ordained. I was in Border's bookstore nosing around for gifts, when I came across a book called Migrations: Humanity on the Move .

It's a magnificent collection of photographs by a Brazilian photographer named Sebastião Salgado. It's hard to summarize or describe his work, except to say he documents the human condition more faithfully and more fearlessly than any other photographer I know.

It's certainly not for the faint of heart, though. Salgado's subjects are mineworkers, residents of refugee camps, migratory workers, Palestinian children living in Israel -- the kind of people who would likely play a leading role in the Christmas story if God chose to stage it in our time.

I sat there for quite a long time, trying hard to come to terms with what Salgado's pictures were saying. And then I came across a picture that stopped me in my tracks. It was a photo of a young Guatemalan family, preparing, I believe, to leave their country for a different future.

It occurred to me there was a slim chance their names were literally Maria, José y Jesus , a holy family for the 21 ^st century looking for a room in the global village. I wondered if in the moment that photo was taken they might be contemplating what it would mean for them to leave their home in Guatemala and to travel overland through Mexico with their infant son, risking dogs and barbed wire and deportation just to cross the border into the United States in the hope of finding a better life here.

A trip no less arduous, no less important for them, than the journey of the original holy family.

It was a religious experience for me. And then it got deeper.

Suddenly I realized a Christmas carol was playing overhead. "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," the store's speakers proclaimed. (I'd sing it but I'm afraid you might not recognize it!) "Glory to the newborn king. Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinner reconciled. Joyful all ye nations rise; join the triumph of the skies; with angelic hosts proclaim; Christ is born in Bethlehem. Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King"

A wide gap opened inside of my soul right then, a gap I couldn't immediately bridge. "Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the new born king!" Good news, yes, certainly, but what could it possibly mean 2000 years after the fact to the world's billions living in darkness? What could it mean to Maria , and José and little Jesus ?

And then it dawned on me. As I listened closer the words of the carol, to the promise heralded by those angels I realized Christmas means the same thing now as it did then. It means the same thing to us as it did to them. Christmas comes not because the world is full of light and love, it comes because the world is so desperate for light and love. Because the world, because we, still need such holy gifts.

And it's why Christmas comes every year. It's why we orient our entire calendar around this season. It's why we read the story to children. And why we read it ourselves, again and again, to mine its depths and discover its treasures. Because we need it.

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.

Luke's explicit political language here reminds me of a remarkable story in a little pamphlet by Parker Palmer.

Palmer quotes a speech by Vaçlav Havel, which Havel made before the U.S. Congress. You may remember that name, Vaçlav Havel. During the Soviet era, he was a playwrite and a dissident, but after the fall of Communism he would become the first democratically elected president of the Czech Republic.

In his speech to Congress Havel argues it was ultimately the human spirit that defeated communism and brought the wall down. The Communists insisted that matter -- what you can see and feel and measure -- matter, for them, was the "fundamental factor in the movement of history" (Parker J. Palmer, Leading from Within , pg. 5).

But ultimately that assumption proved false. For Havel, the fall of Communism proved instead that spirit, not matter, is the fundamental factor in the movement of history.

That's a terrifically inspiring idea, and certainly there's truth in it. But I actually think it's not the whole story.

Because this brief story we read today and the whole drama that follows it - a story that has endured the test of time, and shaped the very course of world history - this story suggests otherwise.

It suggests that matter really does matter. That bodies matter as much as spirit, real live human bodies matter. So much so, in fact, that to participate in history, even God had to take one on.

It is a staggering notion. As the Catholic priest Richard Rohr has pointed out, we don't like to believe that. "This mystery," he writes, "this holy mystery, is so central that we must try to announce it in many and new ways. It is so filled with power that our reason and balance will resist and make compromises. Frankly, it is too much" (quote from Sojonet.com).

Maybe so. Maybe that's why people try to take the Christ out of Christmas. It is too much to believe. Too good to be true. Happened too long ago to matter.

But take the Christ out of Christmas and I believe everything changes. You may as well unplug the lights on the trees, for the world surely grows a bit dimmer.

I bought two new Christmas cd's this year. Both of them featured songs by more contemporary artists, namely John Lennon and Joni Mitchell. It seems their music is starting to work it's way into the Christmas repertoire, as Bing Crosby's and Mel Torme's did a couple of generations ago.

And just as those older songs do, these new ones reflect the spirit of our age....

So this is Christmas, John Lennon sings,

And what have you done

Another year over

And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas

I hope you have fun.

O I wish I had a river I could skate away on , laments Joni Mitchell.

You can hear the longing in the music, the hope for something better, something more. A different world, full of wonder and joy and peace.

Of course we all feel that way sometimes, for that is not the world we have.

Which is exactly why I'm glad we can go back to still older songs, songs about angels from the realms of glory and shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night.

We sang some of those songs here in this sanctuary the other night. In my short time at WW, the Cookie and Carols celebration has become one of my favorite events of the year. The crowd was not huge, but a good number of students came and they all packed together into a couple of pews.

And they sang their hearts out, shouting out requests the moment one carol was finished. They sang with joy and gusto, and I thought how wonderful it is that they grew up singing these songs, what a gift it is that they know them. And how great it is that we can provide them, and ourselves,with a beautiful space in which to sing them, anthems of hope and meaning and joy in a world that can be so frightening and stressful.

And then we sang Silent Night, the song which will close our lessons and carols service tonight. When Steve W. started to play it I got up and went and sat beside Kathë Mosher and Tom Eller. If you don't know this, Tom speaks pretty good German. And so the three of us formed a little German-singing trio.

And I sang that old song with tears in my eyes. For I thought of how, in WWII, American and German forces, aligned against each other on Dec. 23rd, would lay down their guns for a short while and sing that song together on Christmas eve in their different languages it's gentle notes wafting over the snow, a tiny little song, yet so powerful it silenced the cannons.

Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!

Alles schläft; einsam wacht

Silent night, holy night!

All is calm, all is bright!

So this is Christmas, friends. It's not about the arrival of heaven on earth. It's about the arrival of God on earth. It's about the marriage of flesh and spirit and the hope that is born of that marriage. It's about the difference Christ's coming makes in history, the difference it makes in our music and our songs, and the difference it makes in our lives.

Documenting the world's darkness, as Sebastião Salgado has done with his photographs, that's the easy part. It only takes a camera. Finding the light in the darkness, spreading the joy, singing the carols - that's the harder part, the best part.

That's the art of Christmas. And it's the source of the wonder, and why the magic is true. It's why we put up trees and light them up in the night. And it's why we stand when we sing the Hallelujah chorus.

It's because this story, this season, this Christmas, is for us and for the world.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Joy to the world!