Four weeks ago, on the first Sunday in Advent, we started a new liturgical year, and with it, a focus on the Gospel Traditionally Attributed to Matthew. You may notice that this is not the gospel we read this evening. We’ll turn to Matthew for Epiphany, for the Three Kings who are neither three nor kings, but that is a sermon for another day. Tonight it is an inn that is not an inn and a stable that is not a stable, angels in the sky, because why not? And shepherds, of course. It is all very sweet, not at all murdery, like Matthew.
But here’s the thing: only some of us have made it to the end of this year’s Hallmark Christmas movie, or maybe the Hallmark Hanukkah movie, because that’s a thing now. Some are still waiting for the real estate developer to have a change of heart, for the hometown girl to stay in her hometown. Others are dragging a bag of grief through the season: a raw anniversary, a first Christmas without a loved one, a difficult diagnosis.
Then there is the world writ large, which feels way more Matthew at the moment than Luke. Give me lambs and shepherds, and even that annoying little drummer boy. If I want Herod, I can turn on the evening news.
But here’s the thing: it is Christmas in Khartoum too. And in Kyiv. There are displaced women giving birth in temporary shelters, families fleeing across borders. The Nativity did not change the world in an instant, no matter what you believe about incarnation. And to be honest, I’m not sure Good Friday did either.
What Christmas is supposed to change is us, so maybe it is sort of like those Hallmark movies after all, or “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a film that was a bit of a flop when first released, and now considered a classic, one of the great Christmas films, right up there with “Die Hard.”
Let’s not forget that the year after “Wonderful Life” was released, J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I. issued a memo about the film’s Communist leanings, noting its negative portrayal of bankers. Imagine if we’d had a twit tweeting on Untruth Social back then, had the Ellison billionaires controlling film production.
Christmas is supposed to change us, turn despair into hope, resignation into resistance. It may feel like Pottersville, but the movie ain’t over. George Bailey produced another reality, actual reality, through courage and kindness, small acts that accumulated, a compound interest of righteousness, the exact opposite of Henry Potter’s usury. John McClane is still alive somewhere in Nakatomi Tower. There is a baby in a manger who will make the wounded and sin-sick whole. And you, just plain old you sitting here this evening, can throw a bit more onto the good side of the scale, the side of love. It may feel so small, so insignificant. It’s not. There a bookstore to save, a war to prevent, and family that needs to be hidden from a murdery king. Let’s get to work.
Amen.