Christmas Eve - 2025

Good evening, and Merry Christmas!

What a joy it is to see all of you here tonight. Whether this is your first time at St. Paul’s or your 500th, whether you come brimming with Christmas spirit or carrying the weight of the year on your shoulders, know that you are welcome here. You enrich this sacred space with your presence.

Tonight, we gather in candlelight and song to tell a story we know so well that we can almost recite it from memory. And yet, year after year, this story still finds new ways to surprise us, to meet us where we are, to speak into the particular joys and wounds of our lives. Christmas is not just a remembrance of something that happened long ago. It is a proclamation of something that is still happening now: God is with us.

The prophet Isaiah tells us “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Isaiah was speaking to a people who knew fear and uncertainty first hand—war, political domination, economic strain, lives shaped by forces beyond their control. Into that very real darkness, Isaiah dares to announce light, joy, and peace. Not someday. Not abstractly. But tangibly. A child is born. A son is given. Authority rests not with weapons or empires, but on the shoulders of a child.

Each December, we hear Isaiah’s words through that warm Christmas filter—soft candlelight, full pews, beloved hymns. And rightly so. There is deep joy here. But Isaiah’s promise is not sentimental. It is defiant. It insists that God’s joy breaks into real history, into real humanity. The historical Nativity—the census, the journey, the borrowed space, the feeding trough—shows us that God does not wait for perfect conditions. God enters the world as it is. And contemporary Christmas joy, at its best, echoes that same truth: joy does not deny darkness; it shines within it.

That is good news for us, because many of us arrive here tonight carrying both joy and grief, gratitude and exhaustion, hope and worry, tradition and expectation. Christmas does not ask us to choose between them. It tells us that God meets us right there, in the middle.

Luke’s Gospel makes that abundantly clear. The angels appear not to kings or priests, but to shepherds—ordinary people working the night shift. And when heaven breaks open with glory, their first response is fear — “They were terrified.” Surrounded by divine light, they are still afraid.

That detail matters. Because it reminds us that fear is not a failure of faith. The shepherds are not afraid because God is absent; they are afraid precisely because God is so very present. The light is overwhelming. The moment is bigger than they could know And isn’t that true for us as well? We can be surrounded by signs of God’s goodness (by love, by beauty, by grace) and still feel anxious, uncertain, even afraid.

The angels’ first words are not a correction, but a comfort: “Do not be afraid.” Not because there is nothing to fear, but because fear does not get the final word. “For see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.” Not some people. Not the put-together people. All the people. Including shepherds. Including us.

And what is the shape of the angel's good news? Not power. Not spectacle. A baby, wrapped in bands of cloth, lying in a manger. God chooses vulnerability. God chooses nearness. God chooses to be known through love made small enough to be held.

And right as the angle completes his message to the shepherds, suddenly, the sky is full—angels upon angels, praising God and singing of peace on earth. Heaven cannot keep quiet any longer. And as the song fades, the shepherds do not stay frozen in fear. They go. They see. They tell. They return, glorifying and praising God. Fear gives way to movement. Awe turns into joy.

That is where Christmas leaves us, too. Not stuck in sentimentality. Not overwhelmed by fear. But sent back into the world with a deeper joy than we had before. A joy rooted not in perfect circumstances, but in the unshakeable truth that God is with us.

So tonight, let joy rise.

• Let it rise quietly, like a candle flame in the dark.
• Let it rise boldly, like angels singing in the night sky.
• Let it rise in laughter and in tears, in gratitude and in longing. Peace has been proclaimed. Light has come. Christ is born this day.

Amen. And Merry Christmas!