Christmas Eve Homily 2024

When Johnny Cash sang about a “boy named Sue,” I’m betting Joyce Hall could relate. 

When his parents named him after the Methodist Bishop Isaac W. Joyce, they could have gone with Isaac. Instead, he spent his life going by his initials, J.C. 

When he was seven, his father, a Methodist pastor, died, and at eight he started selling products door to door. He would go on to create a business empire, first with postcards and wrapping paper, then moving into media with the “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” By the time he died, he was a billionaire in today’s dollars. And while I am generally not a fan of billionaires and private wealth. Lord knows I am not a fan of billionaires this year! But Hallmark is fairly benign as these things go. 

We can joke about their formulaic Christmas movies, but Hallmark, along with other Christmas movie producers like Netflix, have slowly embraced the 21st century. You’ll see more mixed race couples, more queer characters, and even the occasional queer romance. 

And of course, the quaint old inn will be saved, the wicked developer will have a change of heart, and the kind old man turns out to be Santa, because in the universe of Hallmark, old is good, the big city is (mostly) bad, and kids are always precocious.

The story goes that the Hall Family Bible contained the inscription “the Lord will provide,” to which J.C. added “It’s a good idea to give the Lord a little help.”

Because we would not be The Park Church if we were not about doing, about “Practical Christianity.” 

In a bit, our benediction will come from the Rev. Howard Thurman, the great African-American pastor and theologian who profoundly influenced the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thurman reminds us of the real work of Christmas.

For while our annual mash-up of two different Nativity narratives leans into the bucolic, Luke’s shepherds and stable and Matthew’s three kings who are not necessarily three and not actually kings, the reality is that life was tough when that baby was born, whatever the circumstances, and while we would come to understand him as “God-with-us” in a special way, God is with us still, in so many ways, in so many children. 

The child who is unwrapping presents tomorrow morning, wound up from too much sugar and too little sleep on that air mattress with the cousins, is a reflection of all that is holy, but today’s Christ child is likely not in a mansion on the Connecticut shore. She was cowering under a desk last week in Madison, Wisconsin or hiding in a makeshift bunker in Gaza, or being terrorized in today’s Bethlehem.

There is nothing wrong with beautiful music and the giving of love and gifts, gathering at table, for gathering at table is the most Jesus thing to do. I am as much a sentimental sap as anyone. But it is not Christianity if it stops there, is only performative and cultural. The story is not just “Sweet Baby Jesus,” for as Ricky Bobby’s wife reminds him in “Talladega Nights,” that baby grows up.

So we celebrate, we laugh… we eat too much and watch sports or “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “Home Alone” or “Die Hard,” all great Christmas classics. And then the work resumes. Because the town bookstore was not actually saved in two hours minus commercials. It still needs saving. And there is some big city hot shot out there who is about to grow a heart and discover love. 

I know. I saw it on Hallmark.

Amen.

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