Two Christmas Eve Sermons
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!
This special episode includes the sermons from both the 4 p.m. youth Christmas pageant and the 10 p.m. Chorale service which included a concert with Gate City Brass, the Grace Episcopal choir and Bill Hildebrandt as organist.
These sermons ask us to explore the fundamental vulnerability of Christ’s incarnation in the world and its call to interdependence and community.
The Glimpses of Grace podcast is a ministry of Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia. We are passionate about supporting the spiritual growth of souls, and we hope these sermons and conversations meet you where you are and enrich your soul as we all continue to make meaning in the world today.
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Transcript
Just a few quick thoughts. There was a line at the very end that I wanted to point back out to us that Isaac said at the start of scene seven, right there, there’s a line that says, “but this is not just the end of a beautiful story. It is the beginning of everything.” That’s the key. That’s the key piece.
One of the things that we do every Sunday, if you’ve not called on, not every Sunday, but every Christmas Eve, we lure you in with a Christmas pageant. We lure you in, and then we’re all here in the same room, and we find ourselves here. And there are people here for many different reasons. Some are here because they’re always here. They’re stalwart members of the parish. And you can open up the door and you find them here 24 hours a day. Others are here because they’ve traveled in to see their family. Others are here because this is the first Christmas in a long time that they have had the strength and the courage to come back to church because they were hurt. And it’s important to put that in the room. Some are here because they honestly don’t know where they are, and they thought they were going somewhere else. But we have this moment where we can all look and we all find ourselves all in the same room. So what I want you to do is something that might seem kind of odd. I want you to actually turn and look around you and look someone near you in the eyes and see each other’s faces, because one of the things that we do when we come into this space is we all face forward, and we don’t always pay attention to who is actually in the room.
Some of you may not have seen each other since you were youth, and you grew up at this church. It might have been years that some of you have actually been in the same room with each other. Here’s why. This is very important. Each and every person that you saw is another struggling human who’s trying their best to make sense of the world that we find ourselves in, trying to make meaning, trying to put together a puzzle pieces that don’t seem to fit, trying to make sense of where we are. And we have this moment on Christmas Eve when we come and we celebrate this service in this story, and we spend time and we need the strange thing about it, we need children to do a Christmas pageant like this, I think, because the truth at this point is so profound that we honestly maybe couldn’t handle it any other way.
So it’s a ploy. It’s a subtle ploy that we’ve used for about 2000 years now to gather people on Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day, to reflect on what this actually means, what it means, what is this that we’re celebrating? Here’s the deep teaching of Christmas.
One of the struggles that we have is we separate the figure of Jesus from the teaching of Jesus. And here’s what that looks like. When we separate out the figure of Jesus, we can project onto that figure all sorts of things, and it becomes an easy thing to pull the teaching of Jesus actually out of that and not actually pay attention to what Jesus actually teaches us.
So what this pageant tells us is this If God can enter into human life in the vulnerable form of a baby, God can continue to enter into human life and the vulnerable spaces of our own life. And that’s why we can find hope. So as you look around this space and you see all the faces of those gathered here, just recognize that you’re all kindred spirits.
We’re all in this together. And don’t let this be the last time that you actually give thanks for that. Find a community that can support you as you stretch and grow. Think of something in your life that is a struggle. Shouldn’t not be that easy. I’ve already thought of five just in the time I said that, and then do something that seems pretty radical when you identify what it is in your life, that’s a struggle.
Here’s what we want you to do, Sister Genevieve and Brandon, and I want you to email us over the next month and come in and have a cup of coffee, come in and have a cup of coffee and name out loud something that you need the spirit to help you work on. Otherwise, why are we doing this? If we just come and have a pageant and celebrate that and we go back home and go back to our lives in the struggles, what good has this done?
So that’s our invitation. Maybe it seems radical. Maybe it is. But we have good chocolate, so hey, it’s worth it to come back. Thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time to come and celebrate.
Rev. Stuart Higginbotham, DMin
On Sunday, in Joseph’s story, we lingered with interruption—
with lives that do not unfold as planned,
with expectations unmet,
with the quiet courage it takes to welcome a new thing when
the ground keeps shifting beneath our feet.
Christmas does not resolve that uncertainty.
Instead, it reveals what God does with it.
Christmas is not the moment when everything finally makes sense. It is the moment when God decides to draw near.
Isaiah names it this way:
“Those who have lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” Not because the darkness vanished.
But because a presence appeared within it.
This is the movement from interruption to incarnation.
God does not simply interrupt human lives with a message.
God enters human life with a body.
A body that must be carried.
A body that must be fed.
A body that will cry in the night and need to be held.
The Word becomes interruptible.
Luke tells us that this happens amid paperwork and power.
An empire issues a decree.
A census is ordered.
People are displaced, counted, controlled.
Joseph and Mary are not on a spiritual retreat.
They are navigating systems larger than themselves.
They are tired.
They are vulnerable.
They are dependent on strangers.
And it is there that God chooses to be born—
not self-sufficient,
not in control,
but entirely reliant.
Which tells us something essential about where wholeness is found. Not in holding everything together.
But in being held.
The child in the manger survives because others show up—
because Mary holds him,
because Joseph names him,
because shepherds come close,
because creation itself makes room.
This is the shape of God’s dream for God’s creation:
Not rescue from relationship,
but life through it.
The shepherds hear the announcement first.
Not the powerful.
Not the prepared.
But ordinary workers, outdoors at night,
keeping watch together.
And the angel doesn’t promise ease.
The angel says:
“Do not be afraid.”
Which suggests that fear has not disappeared.
But fear no longer stands alone.
“To you is born this day a Savior.”
To you.
In the midst of your labor.
Your uncertainty.
Your shared watching and waiting.
A child. Wrapped in cloth.
Laid in a feeding trough.
This is the sign.
God doesn’t choose strength, but vulnerability.
God doesn’t choose dominance, but right relationship.
God doesn’t choose distance, but closeness.
Isaiah dares to call this child
Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God,
Prince of Peace.
Peace—not as the absence of struggle,
but the presence of interdependence.
Peace as a world reordered toward belonging.
Titus puts it plainly: “The grace of God has appeared.”
Grace appears.
Grace takes shape.
Grace has a body that must be welcomed, tended, returned to.
This is why Christmas is not necessarily sentimental.
But is absolutely demanding.
Incarnation means God commits to us—
to our rhythms,
our conversations,
our grief,
our joy.
Wholeness, then, is not found in isolation or control,
but in a shared life.
In rhythms that return us to our selves and to one another.
In truth-telling that keeps us grounded.
In love that is deep, love that outlasts shallow happiness.
In the humility of needing others
and the grace of being needed in return.
God does not save the world alone.
God forms a people.
Which means that when things are unsteady—
when we cannot be strong—
we are meant to be held.
This is the gift Joseph welcomed.
This is the gift the shepherds witnessed.
This is the gift lying quietly in the manger.
Life does not suddenly make sense.
But it becomes livable.
Because it is shared.
Psalm 96 invites all creation to respond:
“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad.”
Because when God enters the world this way,
nothing remains untouched.
From interruption to incarnation,
God has come not to fix everything from afar,
but to dwell with us,
to bind us to one another,
to teach us that wholeness is not self-sufficiency,
but communion.
Unto us a child is born.
And God is with us.
Amen.
Rev. Brandon Nonnemaker, Ed.D.