Candlelight Christmas Eve Modern Worship | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

21:44 How old were you when you remember first Christmas? And I was three and a half. I was three and a half. Our family, my sister was two. My mom and dad and the two of us lived in Seattle, Washington, just up the street from the Puget Sound. My dad was 20 years old and he worked for the Boeing Company building airplanes. My mom worked for Traveler's Insurance. and it was 1967. 1967, three and a half years old. Now, I will say this. I'm not sure if I actually remember that or if I remember the videos we saw of it because my mom and dad got in 1967 a Super 8mm Kodak camera. It was a silent film machine. Take a look at the screen there and that's what it looked like, something like that. And so in 1967, they filmed our Christmas. And I suspect that I was six or seven when I... when I saw those films, and maybe that's what I remember, I'm not sure. But, by the way, if you don't know why they're clapping, ask your grandkids why. But, so, we had Christmas. Now, that year, 1967, Jim Neighbors recorded Oh Holy Night, and some of you remember who Jim Neighbors was. Who was he on TV? Gomer Pyle, exactly right. That's Gomer Pyle there being chewed out by a Sergeant. And so I thought since the film was, I'm going to show you a clip of it, Our Christmas 1967. But since it was silent, I thought I'd add Jim Neighbors' 1967 version of Oh Holy Night.

23:05 Here it is. Take a look. So that's me. Some of you baby boomers will recognize some of these toys. My middle name was Joseph. There's my little sister Dina.

23:25 shall we break, for the slave is abroad. Oh, she was so cute. What happened to her? No, I'm kidding. She is adorable. She was here on Sunday night. But that was Christmas. Now, if you had asked me, our family didn't go to church anywhere at the time. We wouldn't start going to church for five more years. So if you were to ask me at three and a half, Adam, what does Christmas mean? I would have said presents, Santa Claus, and the love of my parents. Pretty sure that's all I thought Christmas meant. But you're here tonight because you think Christmas is more than that, that there's something more than just presents under the tree, Santa Claus, and the love of our family, as important as those things can be. And so we know, of course, that there was a baby who was born. His name was Jesus, and we're celebrating his birth. But still, you might wonder, like, why 2,000 years later are we still celebrating his birth? What's the big deal about this baby who was born? And that's the question we ask every year at the service during the message, is what does Christmas really mean? What does it mean for us today in 2025? And people have always asked that question every year at Christmas. What does it mean for us now? So we've been looking at the meaning of Christmas over the last month, the season of Advent leading up to Christmas, through the lens of a Christmas carol, a beloved Christmas carol, the one that Jim Nabors was just singing, O Holy Night. Now this hymn was written in 1847. It was written by a man named Placide Capot.

24:45 Placide Capot was a Frenchman. He sold wine and he was a poet. And his parish priest in southern France said, you know, you're a poet. Would you write a poem for Candlelight Christmas Eve? And he said, well, sure, I'll be happy to do that. So he wrote a poem, and then he asked his friend, Adolph Adam, who was a composer. He wrote operas and ballets, and he produced them, and accomplished a composer, and he composed the music. And so it was sung for the very first time in 1847 by a female opera singer in this little church. Now, when Placide Compose asking this, He's writing this. He's thinking, so what does Christmas mean for us on Christmas Eve of 1847? So I want us to think about that for just a second. But before we do, I want us to ponder what actually happened in that first Christmas Eve because he's going to incorporate this into a song. So that first Christmas Eve or several days before that, perhaps 10 or 12 days before that, Emperor Caesar Augustus ordered a census in which he required families in Judea and Palestine to go back to the husband's hometown where he owned property.

25:49 And they were gonna meet with the Roman censor, and during that time, they would report, here's how many acres or hectares of land we have, here's how much property I have, and then you would be taxed according to that. So this was all about collecting taxes. Now, if you didn't show up for the census, your property could be confiscated, or worse, you could be made a slave by the Romans. So you better go back. Mary's nine months pregnant. They live in Nazareth. Nazareth is 70 miles from Bethlehem. Let me just show you on a map where this is. So this is, of course, the Mediterranean Sea. Here's the Sea of Galilee. There's the Jordan River. Here's the Dead Sea. Here's Nazareth, where Mary and Joseph live. Here's Bethlehem, where they need to go, Joseph's hometown. And they're going to travel 70 miles across two mountain ranges in the center of the country in order to go back to be counted by Emperor Augustus. Now, there's no record of a donkey being used here. We just sort of put in that detail.

26:41 Probably they walked. So here's a woman, nine months pregnant or eight and a half months pregnant, however far along she was, making their way to Bethlehem. When they arrive in Bethlehem, it's not that there was no room in the inn because Bethlehem's a tiny little town. They wouldn't have had an inn there. What they had is people had houses, and in those houses, usually a very simple house, maybe 500 square feet or so, there was a loft. And that loft was called the upper room or the guest room. And so typically your children slept there, but if there was a guest who needed it, your kids would come down and sleep with their parents in their room, and the guests could sleep in the guest room. But the problem was all these people had come back because their family heritage was in Bethlehem. They had to be counted there. So by the time Mary and Joseph, taking 10 days to get from Nazareth to Bethlehem, arrived there, there was no room in the guest rooms. They were all filled. So the only place they could find to give birth was the stable. The stable wasn't a wooden barn. It was a cave underneath the house. If you go to Bethlehem, I've been there many times, you can still find shepherds' houses built on top of caves because there are caves all over the place in that area.

27:39 And so they would build their house on top of it, and then they would bring their animals into the cave at night. So if you went to Bethlehem this year, and you were, I was just listening earlier to NPR, and they had somebody live from Bethlehem, and you would go to the Church of the Nativity, and underneath the Church of the Nativity, which was originally built in the 300s, underneath that is a cave, the grotto of the Nativity. And this is where, since the 100s, Christians went to remember the birth of Jesus, in a cave. So I want you to catch this. Here is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Word made flesh. God descended to the earth, and where is he born? He's born in a cave, in a barn, because there's no place for him. Do you see the story, how the details really matter? It's talking something about God and what God is like and who God identifies with. So God identifies, in this case, with the people who have no place. And Luke tells us three times that Jesus, his bed was a manger.

28:35 A manger is an animal's feeding trough. And so three times he says, for Jesus' bed the night he was born, it was an animal's feeding trough filled with straw or hay. And so this is how he was born. Then it says, the Gospel of Luke tells us, that after this amazing things had happened, that God had come and descended to the earth, the King of kings, Lord of lords, that the angel, the messenger of the Lord, could not not invite somebody. So who does he go to invite to the first Christmas celebration? He goes to find the night shift shepherds. Now, you may not know this, but in first century Judaism, the shepherds were the lowest rung in society. Pick whatever you think is the lowest rung in society today, and that's what the shepherds were then. And the night shift shepherds were the bottom of that lowest rung. So who does the angel go to? He goes to the night shift shepherds, and he says, Hey, guys, I've got to tell you something. It's amazing. Behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all the people. All the people.

29:30 For unto you this day in the city of David is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign to you, he says. you'll find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. In a manger? Our Savior, the Christ, the Lord? By the way, those three titles are really important. Savior is a term that's used of God and also of other earthly kings and warriors. It means deliverer, rescuer. The Emperor Augustus, who ordered the census, he took on the title of Savior of the world. And Christ is a word, it's not Jesus' last name. It means in Hebrew, Messiah is the, Mashiach is the Hebrew, means anointed one. It typically was shorthand for king. So he is the savior, he is the king. And then he's the Lord. And the Lord is the highest authority in a given realm. So Emperor Augustus was the Lord of the world, he said. Well, he was really Lord of the Roman Empire. But Jesus was the Lord, like the Lord of the cosmos. And so when Placid Capote goes to write his song, he knows he's not just writing about a sweet birth of a baby.

30:25 He's writing about how God came into flesh, our king, our savior, and our Lord. and he was born in the most humble of ways. Now, when Jesus began, so that was a foreshadowing of what Jesus would do because he spent most of his life with the nobodies. He spent most of his life with people who were mentally ill or demon-possessed or physically ill or broken or people who were sinners and tax collectors or prostitutes or people who were sort of on the margins of good religious people. He didn't come to them first. He went to these other people, the poor. When he preached his first sermon in Luke chapter four, He's in Nazareth, back in his hometown, Jesus is. And he takes the Isaiah scroll, and he reads this passage of Scripture in the little synagogue where he was at. He says, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. That word in Hebrew is mashiach, or Christus in Greek. He has anointed me. He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners, and recovery of sight to the blind, and to liberate the oppressed.

31:28 To liberate the oppressed. and he said, today the scripture is fulfilled in my hearing and that was his entire sermon. That was the whole first sermon. I was curious, I don't know why I'd never looked this up before but I wondered what was the Greek word for oppressed because we don't use that word very much in this community. Oppressed, what does that exactly mean? But the Greek word for it means one, it's thro, oh is the Greek word and it means bruised, shattered or broken. Jesus came to bring freedom or liberation to the bruised, the shattered or the broken. Who are they in 2025? Well, sometimes they're us. Sometimes when we're discouraged, or we've lost our job or our relationships have been torn asunder or we're feeling really depressed or scared or we have somebody that we've just lost, we are the bruised or the shattered or the broken. But we're only that for a season in our lives usually. But there are people in the world who are this, that's their whole life, that's all they know. Some here in Kansas City, some in areas not far from here where they're not sure, what are we gonna do this year for Christmas?

32:26 How are we gonna eat? or are we gonna get anything for our kids for Christmas? And in other parts of the world, it's just like, can we live another year? Can we survive one more year? Or living in places where they're just pushed down. And he came to set at liberty those who were broken, bruised, and shattered. Now this entire Christmas story stands in stark contrast to Placide Capot's king in France. In 1847, the king was a man named Louis-Philippe I. So Louis-Philippe became king. There you see a portrait of him. He became king in 1830. He started off pretty well. But by 1847, he had become a narcissistic, arrogant, self-absorbed, focused on wealth and power kind of person, kind of king. And he'd stopped caring so much for the people, the ordinary people. Now, this was a problem because in 1846, you remember the potato famine. You remember this from our own history because the Irish began coming to America during that time and later on as well.

33:18 And so there was, across Europe, in England, Ireland, Scotland, across Europe, there were famines. And in France, there were 400 villages where they didn't have enough to eat. These people were going hungry, they were starving, and the king didn't seem to care. 1847, Placide Capot is writing this hymn, you know, that's going to become O Holy Night, asking what does Christmas mean for us now? And he's saying to all of these people in his church, we have a lousy king, but we have a very different kind of king, really. There was a king who was born in Bethlehem, and he cares about us. He cares about our needs, he cares about our concerns, He cares that we are. He loves us. And so he writes in the second verse of O Holy Night, the King of kings lay thus in lowly manger in all our trials, born to be our friend. That's the King of kings, born to be our friend. He knows our need to our weakness is no stranger.

34:11 Behold your King before him, lowly bend. Here's the first thing I want you to know. He knows you, right? John 3, 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only son. like Jesus came to tell you, to put flesh on God and to say, you are loved. God says, I know you. I know every one of you. I know your story. I know where you come from. I know the broken places in your life, and I love you, and I care about you. You are mine, and you are never alone.

34:41 This week, I was watching the classic Christmas film, Home Alone. It came out in 1990, the same year we started Church of the Resurrection. So Macaulay Culkin is Kevin McAllister. And he is, let me just remind you of the story in case you've forgotten. So the whole family is getting ready to go to France, the same place O Holy Night was written. They're getting ready to go to France and they're going to get on an airplane the next day and they're going to have two vans take them because they've got a big family. And that night, Kevin's brother is mean to him. And so Kevin pushes him back and they spill milk and everybody blames Kevin and they get mad at Kevin and Kevin Kevin has to go to bed early, and Kevin gets to his bedroom, and he thinks, I wish I didn't have this family anymore. Be careful what you wish for. The next morning, they forget to, you know, set the alarms, and so suddenly they're up, and they're frantically trying to get ready to go to the airport, and everybody forgets that Kevin's up in that upstairs bedroom. Nobody goes to wake him.

35:34 They get out to the vans, and sister starts counting the heads, but one of the neighbor kids came over, and she thought that was Kevin, and so they count up. They had all the kids, they thought. neighborhood kids goes next door. They all go to the airport in the vans. They get on the plane sitting in different sections, and they get all the way to Paris. And in Paris, suddenly mom looks and says, where's Kevin? Where's Kevin? And you can imagine her shrieking and panicking. They try to call Kevin on the phone, but he's not picking up the phone. And they try to get an air flight back to the States to get Kevin, but they can't get back for several days. So Kevin's home alone. He's home alone. And Kevin, he wakes up the first day and he says, this is awesome. Like my dream came true. My family, they're gone. But after a day or so of that, it's not so pleasant anymore. You know, and he's a little afraid. And then you remember the story. There's burglars that try to break into the house and steal stuff. And they don't succeed at first. So they're going to come back on Christmas Eve night.

36:27 Anyway, Kevin, Christmas Eve night, knows they're coming at 9. So he goes out earlier after sunset. What, 6 o'clock tonight it was. and he's walking in the snow and he comes upon a church and in the church they're having their rehearsal for Candlelight Christmas Eve and he hears a song that draws him in. See if you recognize the song in the scene. Take a look. Here is hope and it's heard. A thrill of hope, a weary world rejoices. For yonder brings a new and glorious Lord. Come on your knees. Now we shorten the scene, but as he's walking in, he's looking at the stained glass, and part of what he's starting to realize is he's not actually home alone.

37:25 That the child whose birth we're celebrating grew up to be a man who promised he would be with him always. We're never really alone, right? He's always with us. And that's part of what we remember at Christmas, is Christ came to say, God is with you all the time, and he put flesh on that to remind us that. all right so you know that leads to something that we do for each other and that is that we embody so Christ embodied God's love we embody Christ's love so um this week I was uh I reached out to one of our members who is in the new century jail in Gardner and made some bad decisions and ended up there and he's been there for about four months he's really a good guy and and um and I just felt nudged like God wanted me to reach out to him and see you know I can't go see him they don't do that anymore. Now you just see people on video screens. So I reached out to him and we got a connection made. And I looked at him and I said, I felt like God wanted me to reach out to you just to say that he loves you and he hasn't forgotten you. And even in your jail cell all by yourself, he's there.

38:26 I just want you to know that. I wanted you to see my face and hear me say that so I could represent him for a moment. Last night before the two Christmas Eve Eve services we had, Candlelight, I stopped by Menorah Medical Center. And one of our members, she's been, I've been her pastor since she was seven, and she was in the hospital. And I stopped by. I just felt like God said, you need to go see her before Christmas Eve, before the services. So I stopped up there at the hospital, and I said, hey, I just wanted to come by. I know this isn't where you wanted to be right now, but I just wanted to come by and say, God told me, I feel like God was telling me that he sees you, and he's here with you. Jesus is here with you in this hospital room. I just wanted you to feel my hands as I pray with you as a way of representing the fact that he's really here. two weeks ago I stopped by to see a family a young dad and he was dying of cancer he only had a few hours left and I just that morning I woke up and I thought maybe the night before I can't remember and I just felt like this nudge saying you know you need to go see them you need to go see them and so the next morning I went to see them and when I got to the house he was unresponsive in the bed and his wife was lying next to him and his mom lying next to her and their three little boys were in the bed next to them. It was beautiful, actually. I thought, if I have to go, I want to go that way.

39:42 And his dad was standing to my left and his brother, and I said, you know, I came here just to be a visible reminder that Jesus is with you. He's with your dad. Jesus said, I'm the resurrection and the life, and those who believe in me will never die. He said, I go to prepare a place for you. God said, even if you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you don't have to be afraid because I'm going to be with you. And I just came to remind you of that, to put flesh on that, and I anointed his head with oil, and we touched their dad and their husband's son and gave them to Jesus. You see, it doesn't take a master's degree to do this, though. It doesn't take, you know, ordination. It's just what we do when we try to love people. We try to care for people. We come alongside them and just say, hey, you're not alone. You're never really home alone because God is with you all the time. Jesus is there, and I came to represent that to you. That leads to another big idea when it comes to Christmas. So, you know, 2,000 years ago, it was a pretty dark world. Emperor Caesar Augustus ruled over the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. How did he rule over that? Well, the Roman legions.

40:41 They just destroyed anybody who resisted, including the Jews. And within 20 years of Jesus' death, 30 years of Jesus' death, they'd kill a million Jews in the Holy Land, according to Josephus, the first century Jewish historian. It was a dark time. And so God's answer to the darkness in the world was to send a baby? What a weird answer, really. I mean, send legions of angels to wipe out the bad guys. The problem, of course, is that there's a little bit of darkness in all of us. So he sends a baby, but not just any baby. The Word made flesh. He grows up to be a man. He begins to teach people. He begins to say to them, you know, I come to, you know, release the captives and the, you know, set at liberty those who are oppressed and, you know, give good news to the poor. And then he tells his disciples, now I want you to go do the same thing. In a few minutes, we're going to turn off all the lights in the room, of course, and we're going to take the candle. Somebody's going to bring the candle. They're going to light the Christ candle. And then I'm going to take this candle and I'm going to go light the Christ candle. I'm going to come and I'm going to say, that baby grew up to be a man. And he then said to people, I am the light of the world.

41:46 I've come to push back the darkness of the world. But then somewhere in his ministry, he turned to his disciples. He said, now what I've been, you have to do. You are going to be the light of the world. You take that light into the darkness. You let your light so shine before this that they might see your good works and give glory to your Father who's in heaven. And they began after his death and resurrection and his ascension. He told them right before he left, now go out and do the things I've been doing. This was the strategy. Let me tell you, you are God's strategic plan for changing the world. You are. So when you come to faith in Christ, you decide to follow him and to try to do the things that he said to do. Then you go out and live that. You change the world in your a little sphere of influence. So do I. This is what Jesus said at the Last Supper. He said, I give you a new commandment. Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you're my disciples when you love each other.

42:40 When I look at the world around us, so much of the world's suffering today is because we fail to live into Jesus' commandment. Several thousand, 10,000, 15,000 people die every day of starvation, we got plenty of food. We're just not very good at sharing it. We're polarized with each other. We, you know, sometimes we can't hardly talk to each other anymore. We kind of forgot about what love and grace looks like, right? And there's so much, anytime you see pain or you see a story on the news where there's something horrible that happened, it's because somebody forgot to love almost always. Conversely, anytime you see a good story that makes your heart feel happy, it's usually because somebody remembered to love. And so this is what he called us to do. And this is what Placide Capot wrote in the third verse of O Holy Night. He says, truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. I love that.

43:34 I saw this last week. One of my friends said to me, you know, we went to see our friend. It's a woman that I know as well. This group of friends is one guy and four gals and they're all in their 60s. And one of their friends has early onset dementia. so they went to see her and they go to see her on a regular basis but she said this time we went to see her and she didn't remember our names she said she you could tell she was happy to see us and she knew she knew us but she didn't know our names anymore we brought lunch over and we set out a lunch spread and we gave her you know our plate you know her plate so she could go first but she didn't remember how to put the food on the plate and so we put the food on the plate she did still remember how to eat and and we started telling stories and partway through she looked down and she started crying. And then she said, you know, I said, tell us about when you were a little girl. And she could still remember that. And she could talk in broken sentences as she talked about, you know, her memories. And then before they left, they just all surrounded her with love. And they took a picture. It was just beautiful. And then she looked at them with a smile and with light in her eyes. And here's the thing. That's what this looks like when we do this, right? As often, it's just, it's not that complicated. Christmas is not that complicated. Jesus' message is not that complicated. Just who needs love right now? And you're going to go do something about it.

44:48 So imagine all of us here, you know, this is, I don't know, 1,500 people here. Just as 1,500 decided to do this, forget all the rest of the services and the thousands of other people. What if we all just decided to do this? How would the world be different? I spoke to Abby this last weekend. Abby is one of our young married couples at Resurrection Brookside, and she's in a small group Bible study with several other couples who are in their mid-20s, no children. And they decided that they would start going to restart a homeless shelter here in Kansas City that seeks to move people out of homelessness and restore dignity to people. And we were talking and she had written this note about what they were doing and how once a month they go prepare the meal, they serve it, and then they linger around with people. And this is part of what she told me in that. She said to me,

45:30 there's page eight right there. This is what she said. I learned early on that serving was one of the simplest ways I could show love to God. Over the years, I've learned that when my focus shifts off myself and onto others, my anxiety is quiet and my faith deepens. That's just true. We serve at Restart to be a consistent representation of God's love as they seek to restore dignity and remind people that they are seen, valued, and loved. When we serve, we're getting just as much as we give. I've learned that you can't give love away. It always finds its way back, often bigger and deeper than before. Have you figured that out yet? Because that's really how life works. truly he called us to love one another his law is love and his gospel is peace now sometimes the people we need to love are the people closest to us i was listening to an npr story not long ago and it was about estrangement in america and this epidemic of estrangement where now kids are frustrated enough with their parents you know adult kids that they don't talk to their parents anymore they just say it's just too hard to talk to them i just won't talk to them anymore or parents sometimes did the same thing with their kids or siblings not talking to each other and so It's like an epidemic of people being estranged from one another.

46:39 And sometimes you have to say, I just got to step away for a little while. I've done that before. Sometimes that has to happen. But somewhere we got to, you know, at least do our part to try to see if we can bring it back together again. And that's part of what Home Alone was about. So there's Kevin sitting on one side of the aisle in the church during the rehearsal. And he looks over and there's his next door neighbor, Old Man Marley. Now he's been told that he is to be afraid of Old Man Marley. He's a bad guy, but he's really not a bad guy. and he's sitting out there and they're both home alone in one way or another. And old man Marley gets up and he comes over to Kevin and he says, Merry Christmas, can I sit next to you? And then this is the conversation they have. You want to know the real reason why I'm here right now? Sure. Came to hear my granddaughter sing. And I can't come and hear her tonight. You have plans? No. I'm not welcome. At church?

47:31 Oh, you're always welcome at church. I'm not welcome with my son. Years back, before you and your family moved on the block, I had an argument with my son. How old is he? He's grown up. We lost our tempers. And I said I didn't care to see him anymore. He said the same. We haven't spoken to each other since.

47:59 If you miss him, why don't you call him? I'm afraid if I call him, he won't talk to me. How do you know? I don't know. I'm just afraid he won't. Just give it a shot. For your granddaughter anyway. so some people several of you sent me a note from some other pastor said you know that old man marley is the christ figure in the film and he's got a wound on his hand a band-aid on his hand and he's like christ who suffered for us well maybe but in this scene it looks to me like kevin is the christ figure for old man marley and saying why don't you just call him why don't you just try to be reconciled to him why don't you just give him a call two things i see in this scene One is, of course, when it comes to people who we're estranged from. Like somewhere along the way, truly taught us to love one another is an invitation for us to reach out and try to do something.

48:50 This may not be the right time for you, but I'm guessing there's 10% of you in this room, you're estranged from somebody. And what would happen if tomorrow you called or you texted or you sent an email and it simply said this, I still love you. Or I'm sorry. Or I would really love to reconnect with you. or I still care. What do you have to lose?

49:17 I also see in this scene a picture of estrangement from God. And I know that there are some of you, maybe now, maybe sometime in the past, where you were angry with God, disappointed because God didn't do what you were expecting God to do. Some terrible thing that happened in your life, and somebody told you it must have been the will of God when it was not the will of God, or why didn't God stop it when you think God could have? and there's a whole lot of theological things you can go into some depth on that. I'd love to talk to you about that sometime. But maybe you've been estranged from God and maybe in this case it's not just Colin, but why don't you just talk to him?

49:51 Why don't you say, God, I've been angry for a long time, but I really hope you're there and I need you. And I'm willing to consider the fact that you might be real and you might care about me and see what happens. all right that leads to the last two lines i want to mention from oh holy night they're the climax of the song and the reason why it became known in america because it was a french song in a tiny little village and of course it spread across france because of these lines so the uh writer placide capot he's living in a time france had outlawed slavery in 1794 but the kings starting with napoleon uh they started saying well we won't have you know slavery in france but we can let it come back in the French colonies. And so they started allowing slavery to return. And Placide Capot knew that people had been trying to advocate to the king, Louis Philippe, to outlaw slavery in the colonies. And he wouldn't do it because there was a price, financial price, to pay for outlawing slavery. He wasn't going to do it. And so he was anti-slavery. When he writes this hymn for Christmas Eve, thinking about the Christ who came to set the oppressed free, he includes this line. And now this is a more literal translation from the French of the third stanza. The Redeemer, Jesus, has broken every bond. The earth is free and heaven is open. He sees a brother where there was only a slave.

51:11 Love unites those whom iron had chained. He was protesting slavery in this song. Well, John Sullivan Dwight lives in Boston in 1855, and he hears this song. There he is right there. And he was really strongly abolitionist in spirit, wanted to abolish slavery. Boston was the center of the abolitionist movement in New England. And so he believed strongly in this, wanting to end slavery. And he hears the song and he thinks, this is a Christmas song. And the tune, you know the tune, it just moves you when you hear it. And he thought, I wonder if I could translate this in English. The only time he ever translated a song in English that we know of. He was America's chief music critic and had a publication. He was also a sometime Unitarian minister. And so he decides to translate this thinking if people sang this at Christmas, maybe it would move their hearts to see that the baby who was born came to set at liberty the captives.

52:06 And so he translated that stanza I just read to you in the more literal English. He translated it this way. Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother. and then his name, all oppression shall cease. It was 1855, six years before the Civil War started. In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in which they said that Kansas will come into the Union as either a free state or a slave state by the decision of the people in Kansas itself. So all of a sudden, pro-slavery folks began trying to encourage pro-slavery advocates to move to Kansas so they could claim Kansas as a slave state. In New England, the people in New England said, we've got to get people to move to Kansas from Boston so that they can claim Kansas as a free state. And they were known as free staters. And Kansas, then if it came into the Union as a free state, runaway slaves could go there and be free.

53:01 People would never be able to have slaves in Kansas. And so they're trying to convince people to do this. They formed a company in 1854. It was called the Massachusetts, later the New England, Immigrant Aid Company. And they were raising money to be able to help fund people to come to Kansas. Well, in Boston, people are like, you want me to move to Kansas? Where is Kansas? What's in Kansas? Like, no, we're not gonna move there. They found that the only people in 1854 that they could get to move, 99% of them Christians. And these were people who said, I'd be willing to uproot my family, sell everything, load a wagon up, and travel 1,200 miles to a place I've never been to before to start all over on the prairie so that people wouldn't be enslaved in that place. Can you imagine the sacrifice they made? So they got several hundred people to go.

53:53 There were Methodists who came. In fact, the president of the company was a Methodist pastor. They got Methodists to come out here. They got Congregationalists. They got some Unitarians to come out. They started First Methodist Church in Lawrence because Lawrence was the company town. The New England Immigrant Aid Company started Lawrence, and so people moved out there. First Methodist Church was started in 1854, still standing. Plymouth Congregational Church, 1854. Unitarian Church, 1855. But they only got hundreds of people coming out. They still didn't get very many people coming.

54:21 And John Sullivan Dwight heard this song, and he thought, if I could, the tune is so powerful. If I could translate this song into English and people would sing it at Christmas, I wonder if some of those people might just choose to give up everything to go to Kansas. And hundreds more people began to do that. They're singing this hymn throughout Boston. and people decide to come. Here's pictures of some folks who decided to come. Look at this family here. And they gave up everything, put everything they had on that wagon to come to Lawrence to claim Kansas as a free state so there wouldn't be any more oppression there. Here's some more people who were coming on a wagon train from the Northeast. so I was thinking about this it's 2025 it's 170 years later like what would we be willing to do to help people experience liberation or hope or escape poverty or something else I mean none of us are going to have to sell everything and move 1200 miles away in a Conestoga wagon what would we do oh by the way I'm a history geek, so I just got to show you a little history here.

55:31 So I was wondering, when they came from Missouri into Kansas, where were the routes, you know, the trails? There was the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail that they took across, you know, from Missouri, and they took it across Kansas to Lawrence. And I thought, it's got to be somewhere close by. And so I went to Overland. You know, you see the signs on the road out here, you know, say Oregon Trail passed here. And so I went to, I could find, Overland Park had a map that showed where the trails passed exactly. So I thought you might enjoy seeing this. This is the map from Overland Park, and this is the Oregon and Santa Fe trails right here. And it comes over here, and then it makes its way this way over to Lawrence.

56:09 You notice it passes right across this piece of property right here. You have any idea where that is? You're sitting in the place where those Christians, there was about a thousand of them decided to come over here, Methodists. They pass right across where you're sitting. I think maybe because they had heard the song, change shall we break for the slave is our brother. And they said, surely we can do this. So, I want to give you three invitations. The first one has to do with the offering. So in a few minutes, we're going to take the offering. Now, I love this service. I love every part of it. But my favorite part of the Christmas Eve candlelight service is the offering. You know why? Because 17 years ago, our church voted to give away the entire Christmas Eve offering to projects benefiting children in poverty.

57:03 It's the biggest worship of the year and the biggest offering of the year. and our church said, let's just give it all away. So every year we have about two dozen projects that we support, things that we're involved in. Half of the money stays here in Kansas City, half of it goes to the developing world, to projects that we're involved in there. In the last 17 years, on Christmas Eve, you've given $24 million to benefit children in poverty, children and families in poverty. And... And that's something to celebrate, and you're celebrating you and your generosity. Last year, it was $2.1 million in one night you gave. So I want to tell you just a little bit about a few of those projects just to give you a sense. So three years ago, we heard that there was a need for a mobile dental clinic with Swope Health so that they could go. And here's the mobile health clinic. You paid $500,000 to have this mobile dental clinic, x-ray machines, everything. They can see two kids at a time, and it pulls up in front of schools.

57:56 and this year they saw 2,700 children to get their teeth cleaned, cavities repaired, whatever it was, through part of what you gave your Christmas Eve offering for. That was one quarter of the offering that year. Go to the next one, and you'll see this is the mobile, the bookmobile. So this was another part of the offering a couple years before. And so we have these mobile bookmobiles, and it's like the Scholastic Fair, but the books are free for children. And last year you gave 65,000 books to children in the Kansas City area who wouldn't have otherwise had these books. Then the year before that, or a couple years before that, it was a mobile grocery store, in essence, it was a food mobile. And inside, cooler, you know, freezer things and all this, and there's fresh dairy, fresh meat, there are fresh vegetables and fruits. And we pull up and we open shop four days a week, three to four days a week, depending on the week, in parts of Kansas City, they're known as food deserts, where you can't walk to a grocery store and get these things. And you make that possible, and so much more. And in Africa, this one example. You built 215 clean water wells in villages across Malawi in South Central Africa, 215 villages where they were drinking dirty water before, now they have clean water.

59:04 215,000 people probably who are affected by that. And that's just one example of dozens of projects. So this year, there's two projects that I want to highlight. It's 24 projects altogether, but two I want to mention. One is working with Avenue of Life, where we are helping, they're working with Kansas City, Missouri School District. There are about 650 families a year who were homeless during some part of the year. These are families with children. And so they're in a shelter, sometimes they live in a car, sometimes they're moving from one house to another. But they have a way of helping get these people on their feet again. And so we're gonna give a $250,000 grant towards that. In Africa, we are going to be continuing our work with Zoe Orphan Project, where we help, literally we've helped thousands of orphans, as well as building more boreholes and solar lights in a country that doesn't have electricity in many places. Anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing just a little of this, take a look. When we started 10 years ago, we started because of a call to action by the mayor in Kansas City, Kansas.

1:00:00 And so, in the Kansas City, Kansas public schools, they identified 1,400 students who were experiencing homelessness. Avenue of Life was asked to lead this effort to provide safe, stable housing for these kids. And so we got together about 40, 50 other organizations, both nonprofit, for-profit. For the first three years, we saw that that 1,400 was reduced to 700 in just three years. So Sophia came to Avenue of Life. Ms. Merce began to work with her. We brought her food, clothing, hygiene, all the needs, all the school stuff she needed. But what was core is that for her in that process, when we found her a place where she could stay, she turned to Ms. Merce and she said, you know, this is one of the first times I can remember where I don't feel alone. She moved on. school and she started her own family and went to nursing school so it's a great success.

1:00:50 Malawi is ranked as the sixth poorest country in the world. 83% of rural Malawians live in darkness. Approximately 30% of Malawians don't have access to clean water and 22% of Malawians are currently facing acute food insecurity. Solar lights, clean water boreholes and permaculture overcome each of these obstacles we got to see the impact from our christmas eve offerings several places in malawi and it is god at work it's jesus at work taking the people and lifting them out of poverty the dollars that people give at christmas eve that go to malawi are giving these people opportunities to eat, to drink clean water, to have solar lights so that they can continue their education. And our funding is allowing that to happen.

1:01:52 How cool is that? Last year, you gave $2.1 million. Somebody asked me, how did you do that? How did you guys give that much money in one night? So I want to tell you how we do that. For those of you who are visitors, just so you know what we ask our members to do, this is not what we're asking you to do. But a month ago, I came to our congregation. and I said, you know, we buy Christmas gifts where people don't need anything. And there are all these people who need a lot. What would happen? And we challenged people for the last 17 years to do this. What would happen if you added up everything you spent on your entire family for Christmas, your spouse, your kids, your grandkids, your brothers and sisters, and then you gave that same amount to benefit people who really need something? And LaVon and I do this every year. In fact, I just got the text from her a little bit ago. Here's how much we spent for Christmas, not counting whatever you spent. So I have to add what I spent in there. And then we take that total and we add some more to it. And that becomes our Christmas Eve offering. And there are people who give 10 times that amount, 100 times, not 100, but probably 20 times that amount. And then there are people who can't come close to giving that amount.

1:02:46 But what we just say is just be as generous as you can because you get to change the world today. And this service is our gift to you. You're not paying for anything, not any salaries, not lights, not the building, nothing. You're just giving to help other people. All right, so that's the offering in just a couple of minutes. Now, the second thing I wanna invite you to do is I'd like to invite you to say yes to Jesus. So Jesus was born, grew up to be a man, called people to follow him, suffered and died for us, rose from the grave to say, evil, hate, sin, and death, don't get to have the final word. And he's asking you, will you follow me? Will you be one of my disciples? Will you let my light shine in your life? And so when we pray in a moment, I'm just gonna lead you in a prayer. And if you say, you know what? I do wanna follow Jesus. I'm gonna invite you to say these words to him. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna ask you to say, and it's quietly under your breath. God, thank you for loving me. I accept your love.

1:03:37 Jesus, I wanna follow you. Holy Spirit, help me to love the way you love. And that's the last thing I wanna ask is just for you to make a commitment to love other people, to make this your lifestyle. I wake up every morning, our congregation knows this. I wake up every morning, get on my knees. I say, here I am, Lord. Please help me to pay attention. Help me to love other people. Help me to love the way you love. Help me to put flesh on your love. And for some of you, that may also be a commitment to reach out to somebody and say, I'm sorry, or can we connect, or I still love you.

1:04:09 All right, here's how Home Alone ends. And I don't feel bad about showing you the ending of the show, because it's been out for 35 years. So if you were going to see it, you were going to see it before now. So spoiler alert, yes. Okay, so at the end, Kevin is home on Christmas Day, and his mom rushes in. She finally gets there, and she hugs him. And then pretty soon, the rest of the family walks in. And now this family who was at odds with each other is just reunited in love, and it's Christmas morning, all drawn together by the birth of Jesus. And then he looks out the window and he sees old man Marley next door. And this is what he sees. Puh, is the only one I can do. The only one I can do. Puh, is the only one I can do. So, I can do the good.

1:05:02 And I can do the good. Puh, is the only one I can do. And Kevin was the Christ figure. And he brought old man Marley and his family back together again. You might be that for somebody else this year. Christmas. What does it mean? The light has come. Christ has come. And he calls us to love one another. Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. change shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease. Let's pray. And if you feel like you want to reconnect with God or maybe just renew your commitment you're already committed to Christ, you might just whisper this prayer into your breath if it feels right for you. Thank you God for loving me. I accept your love.

1:06:00 Help me to love you in return. Jesus, I choose to follow you. I accept you as my Savior. save me from my sin and from myself. I wanna follow you as my Lord. Holy Spirit, lead me.

1:06:27 Give me the courage and strength to love. In Jesus' name, amen. My hope is you'll participate in the offering. You're welcome to do that. There's an offering envelope in the seat back of the chair in front of you. There are acrylic boxes in the back of the room you can leave it in, but it's easier, actually, if you want to use your phone. So you can see the instructions on the screen. Go to court.org slash next where you were earlier, and you can go give now or you can text give to 913-914-2600. It's on the screen. And while you're giving our offertory, can you guess the song we're going to hear? Oh, Holy Night.