Christmas Eve, Year C | Luke 2:1-20
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
December 24, 2024
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
For the last four Sundays, we here at St. Andrew’s have been taking heed to Advent’s warning: Love is coming. Love—fiery, jealous, all-consuming, and unquenchable Love—draws near, intent on reasserting its reign. This raw and raging Love returns to reestablish our wayward world in its glorious and terrible image. A Love whose intensity will melt mountains and sear the ocean depths arrives to free the captives, cast down the mighty, and restore God’s Kingdom of unity and peace.
Tonight I tell you, Love has come.
Love has arrived, but not in the fearful form humanity ought to expect. Love has set foot among us, yet not to crush its foes or overwhelm opponents with its unyielding power. Love is born among us, feeble and frail, gasping its first breaths and widening its new eyes in awe beneath the stars it fashioned. What will it see? What will it hear? What adventures, pleasures, and harms might shape the world in which it matures and grows?
How long will this Love maintain its innocence? Will its curiosity and delight remain intact throughout its days or wither while still young? Will it receive from the world the mercy, kindness, and joy it bears within itself, or will its virtuous nature conflict with harsh reality? Who will guide it, shape it, and raise it among us as it grows in strength? Who will nurture it throughout its days and guard it in the night? Who will watch its habits, embrace its dreams, and adopt its image as it leads us from our present darkness toward a gleaming dawn?
Tonight Love lies among us, dreaming not of what has been or what now is but what our world can be. In what ways, then, will we choose to meet it? How will we hold ourselves as we enter its profound presence? What responsibilities must we bear, what hopes might we fulfil, now that Love reigns not from some distant throne but rests, small and fragile, in our hands?