Tonight is not what we planned, not how we like to celebrate Christmas, is it. I'm used to a full church, not an almost empty one, I'm used to speaking to open, responsive faces, not to a camera.
You're used to coming here to the church, greeting friends, seeing adult children home for the holiday, sharing smiles and hugs. You're used to crowding into a pew, looking around the church, holding your candle.
I think it's important that we acknowledge what we are all missing tonight. This is not how most of us would choose to spend Christmas Eve. But it's also important to remember that the first Christmas almost certainly was not what Mary & Joseph planned either.
While we love the story of Jesus born in a stable, I can't imagine that was Mary's first choice. I also can't imagine it was her choice to be in Bethlehem with only Joseph instead of at home in Nazareth, surrounded by her family and most likely with a midwife in attendance. Yet the fact that Jesus' birth didn't go as planned is why the story is so powerful isn't it.
So in an odd way, we are more connected to the story this year than ever before. Only we're a bit of a reverse to Mary & Joseph, who were in stable, far from family and home. We're in our homes, but our family can't come visit.
But just as Mary & Joseph created a home in that stable with unexpected guests, so we have the possibility of creating something new this Christmas. Our family can't come visit, but God can. And maybe the fact that Christmas is less crowded this year leaves more room for God.
Let me share one more Bible reading with you to show what I mean. This is from the Gospel of John, chapter 1, one of my favorite passages in the Bible.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him is life, and the life is the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
Isn't that beautiful? I love the way it echoes Genesis 1. In the beginning . . . there was life and light. The image of light is so powerful, but there's another image in Genesis 1 that we sometimes forget, one near the end. It says that we, human beings, are created in God's image. What does that mean?
It's a huge responsibility, isn't it. We're created in God's image to do God's work in the world, to look after creation. The whole Old Testament is the story of God's people trying to do that and struggling with it a lot of the time.
Jesus came as a reset. We were created in God's image, but we forgot what that looked like. Jesus came to remind us what it means to live in God's image. That's the heart of everything he taught and modelled. You were created in the image of God, now here's what living as that image looks like: loving your neighbour, doing justice, being aware of the needs of people on the margins, inclusion, the list goes on.
Jesus was also like a reset for God. We believe that God lived in and through Jesus in powerful way, that in Jesus, God fully experienced what it means to be human. So through Jesus, God came to understand us better just as Jesus offers us an opportunity to understand God better.
One of my theology professors, Douglas Hall, put it so beautifully, he said Christ is God reaching for humanity and humanity reaching for God. Christmas is one of the moments where we honor and sit with that intersection. God reaching for humanity and humanity reaching for God.
If you think about it, Christmas is like a “reset” for all of creation. It's about living in God's image, living in God's light with renewed love and compassion and justice. That ties in to Covid times.
The world needs us to live in God's image more than ever right now. Without other distractions this is a good year to think more deeply about what it means that Jesus came, about how each of us is called to live in his light, in the image of God, each of us as individuals and together as a family of faith and even as the whole family of humanity.
We've been asked to make sacrifices for the good of our larger society, for the good of humanity as a whole. We have been asked to be flexible, and the Christmas story is certainly about both of those, sacrifice and flexibility.
This year is like a double reset, the pandemic making us rethink what it means to celebrate Christmas when we can't have all the usual festivities and celebrations, which makes us look more deeply at what it means to be created in the image of God, to live in God's light even when the world seems dark.
I think those two things go together, living as the image of God and living in God's light. Living as the image of God on its own is overwhelming. How can I possibly be the image of God? I'm too flawed, I make too many mistakes, sometimes it feels like a cruel divine joke to even ask that of us.
But then I think of stained glass, and I have hope again. I think we're like stained glass, made in God's image, but needing God's light to shine in and through us to bring us to our full potential and beauty. On our own we're dull, our colors seem faded, but add God's light and suddenly we're made new. Christmas helps us to both rediscover our own stained glass, our own ways we are created in the image of God, and to renew that flame of the Spirit within us, to strengthen the light of Christ that shines in all of us.
So in the extra quiet time of this Christmas, I would encourage you to think about that image of stained glass. How are you created in God's image? What are your gifts? Are there places where you need to clean the glass off so God's light can shine more clearly in and through you? What can you do to let God's light shine in you more brightly?