Candlelight Christmas Eve (Sermon Only) | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

0:52 What's your earliest memory of Christmas? Were you five or six or seven? I was three and a half. And I'm not sure that I actually remember it, but I do remember it because my parents in 1967 bought a Super 8mm camera. And it looked like this on the video screen. And it was silent, silent films, but they started filming everything. And so that year at Christmas, they filmed the Christmas. So I think I watched it again when I was five or six, and that's probably what I remember it from as being five or six. But that year, my folks and I, or our family, lived in Seattle, Washington. My dad was working for the Boeing Company. He'd grown up here in Kansas City, but he was building airplanes for the Boeing Company as a 20-year-old. My mom was 21, working for the traveler's insurance company. My little sister was two years old. I was three and a half. And, well, I'll just mention, I'm going to show you a little bit of the footage. I looked at it again this last week, hadn't seen it in years.

1:45 If you're a baby boomer or an Xer, you might recognize a few of these presents that were there. But I also, since it was a silent film, I thought I'd put some music to it. Now, over the last month, we've been talking about Oh Holy Night. And so I looked to see who recorded Oh Holy Night that year for Christmas. It was Jim Neighbors. Do you remember Jim Neighbors? What person did he play on television? Gomer Pyle, that's right, Gomer Pyle. So here's a picture of Gomer Pyle with his sergeant, whatever his name was, who was chewing him out. And so he recorded Oh Holy Night that year. And you're gonna hear that as a part of this little video. So let's go ahead and run the video. This is my Christmas at three and a half, Seattle, Washington. That's me. to love one another. His law is love and his law is peace. My middle name was Joseph. My little sister, Dina. Change shall be break For the slave is abroad Oh my gosh, she was so cute.

2:45 She was here on Sunday night for the first Candlelight Christmas Eve service. So I'm pretty sure if you'd asked three and a half year old me what is the meaning of Christmas, I would have said presents, Santa Claus, and my mom and dad's love. We didn't go to church. I don't think I knew the Christmas story. I didn't learn that until later on. But we're gathered here tonight because we have a sense that Christmas might be something more than just the presents under the tree and the love of our family for each other. And we know, of course, that it's about the birth of a baby, and that baby's name is Jesus. But we're asking the question, so what's the big deal? Why would we get together to celebrate the birth of somebody who was born 2,000 years ago? What's the real significance of Christmas? And every year, we come to the message, and this is where we try to ponder that for just a little bit. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to ponder this for just a few minutes. what is the real meaning of Christmas? Now, we've been doing that over the last month here at Resurrection through the lens of one of the most loved Christmas carols of all time, O Holy Night. And you're going to hear that carol sung right after the sermon.

3:44 So the carol starts with these words, O Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior's birth. It was written by a Frenchman named Placide Capot. Here's a photo of Placide Capot. And he wrote it in 1847. Now, he was a poet and he was a wine merchant. And in his town in southern France, the parish priest said, would you write, you're a poet, would you write a poem that could be set to music for our candlelight service this year in 1847? And he said, sure, I'd be happy to do that. After he wrote it, he found a man named Adolphe Adam, who was a noted opera producer, and he composed the song or the music for it. And it was sung for the very first time by an opera singer, a woman that year in 1847. And what Capote was trying to ask when he set this to music was, okay, so what does the Christmas story mean? What does Christmas mean for us in 1847 in southern France. And so he began to think about the story in Matthew and Luke, and look at the difference that it made, and then looked at his own life. Now, Matthew and Luke tell the story about the birth of a king. So we're celebrating not just the birth of a baby, a sweet baby a long time ago, but a baby who was born to be the king of kings and the Lord of lords.

4:49 And I just want to remind you a bit of that story, because every detail in the story from Matthew and Luke is meant to tell us something about this child and who he would grow up to be. Here's Nazareth, which is the town where Mary lived and Mary and Joseph lived after they got married. This is the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, the Mediterranean. All right, just before Mary was to give birth, there was an order that came down from the emperor that they had to travel back to the husband's hometown through two mountain ranges right here to the town of Bethlehem near Jerusalem. It was a 70-mile journey for two people pregnant, one woman who was pregnant and her husband. There's no evidence that they had a donkey. Doesn't say that in the story, so they walked. 70 miles on foot, nine months pregnant. They arrived there, and when they arrived in Bethlehem, it's not that there was no room at the Holiday Inn or the Motel 6. There were no inns in Bethlehem. It was a tiny little town, only a couple hundred houses that were there in the time of Jesus' birth. So what happened was they arrived, as well as all of these other people who likely got there before them who had to return for the census that the emperor had commanded. By the way, if you didn't return for the census for the count, your property would be confiscated, and you could be made a slave of the Roman Empire. So you needed to go back. So they get back there, and what people had is they had a guest room, but nobody in his family had a guest room left. They were all filled. All they had was the stable, the barn, right? Stables in Bethlehem were underground. They were caves. You can still go and visit these caves today. You can visit the cave where from the second century Christians went and believed that Jesus was born underneath the church of the nativity.

6:17 So underneath the house was the cave, and there with the animals, Mary gives birth. And you remember Luke tells us three times that Jesus' crib, the first place that he slept, was a manger. That is an animal's feeding trough. Now, that whole story is meant to say that when the King of Kings came to us, he was born in the most humble of ways. He was born basically in poverty and homelessness. And that night, the angel went to find somebody to celebrate the birth of Jesus. And who did they find? They found the night shift shepherd on the hillsides in Bethlehem. The night shift shepherds. Now, the shepherds were the lowest rung in society. They weren't trusted to testify in court. Most people turned their noses up at the shepherds. And then these were the night shift shepherds. And the angel went to them and said, you've got to see this. God has done something amazing. Actually, this is what the angel said. Behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all people. Not just for some, not just for the special ones.

7:10 I bring you good news of great joy for all people. For unto you this day in the city of David is born a Savior who is Christ, the Lord. And this will be a sign to you. You'll find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in an animal's feeding trough. Wow. That's how the Messiah, the Savior, the Lord is coming? All right. So just to remind you, these titles are important. Savior and Lord are used of God in the Old Testament, but they're also used of kings. They were used in the time of Jesus of the Emperor Augustus. He took on the title of Savior of the Empire in the world and of Lord of the world. And kings would take on the title of Lord as well. And Christ means, well, it's the Greek version of Messiah. It means anointed one. It means, it's shorthand for king. And so Jesus was the savior, the rescuer, the deliverer. He was the king, the anointed king, and he was the Lord, the highest authority, born in a stable, sleeping in an animal's feeding trough. All right. So I just want to remind you, that's giving you clues as to what this king was like. And you remember, of course in Matthew's gospel, King Herod the Great is so terrified hearing that there was a king that was born that might take his place that he sends his soldiers out to try to kill all the babies in Bethlehem. So he has to flee to Egypt as a refugee, and this is where he spends his first couple of years of his life. All right, so just to remind you, that's all setting the stage for everything that the gospel writers want to tell you about Jesus and what he's like. So in Luke chapter 4, you find Jesus' very first sermon in Luke's gospel. He goes back to his hometown of Nazareth up to the north, I showed you. He goes back there, and this is what he says. He quotes the book of Isaiah, and he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because the Lord 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, to liberate the oppressed. I don't know why I'd never looked this up. I've been a pastor for 38 years, but I just wondered, what was the Greek word for oppressed here. I mean, because it's not a word we use very often anymore. And the Greek word is a word thraal. And this is a word that I, you know, I just looked it up today. It means bruised, shattered, or broken. He came to liberate the people who were bruised, shattered, or broken.

9:19 Who are those people? Well, sometimes they're us when we're hurting, when we're grieving, when we're afraid, or we're helpless, or hopeless. And sometimes it's people whose situations and lives are in a very different place than most of us sitting here. Now, the entire story of Christ's birth and the king he would become, for Placide Coppeau back in 1847, the end of 1847, it just stood in such stark, so he's writing this poem, and it's just the birth of Jesus stood in such stark contrast to the king that ruled over France at the time. His name was King Louis-Philippe. Here's a portrait of him, a picture of him, a portrait of him. He started off pretty well in 1830, but by 1847, he'd become arrogant, proud, narcissistic. He was no longer concerned for the poor in his realm. That year, there was a famine, and there were 400 villages across France where they didn't have enough to eat. People were starving in France, but he didn't seem to notice, didn't seem to care.

10:15 Most of the people couldn't vote. Most of the people had no say in what was going on, and so Placide Capot is writing this song, and he's thinking, what a different king Jesus was than the one we're stuck with. And so he says this, this is verse two. The king of kings lay thus in lowly manger. In all our trials, he was born to be our friend. He knows our need to our weakness. He is no stranger. Behold your king before him, lowly bend. I love those lines of what this king is like. And in essence, what it's saying is, you are not alone. God came to us in Jesus to say, I'm with you all the time. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I understand your brokenness and your hurts and your needs and your wounds and the places you mess up. I understand all of that. And I love you.

11:08 That's in essence what was happening here. You are not alone. Hey, this week I watched one of my favorite Christmas movies. I hadn't seen it in years, Home Alone. How many of you watched Home Alone, the original one, right, 1990? All right, so most of you have seen it. So in 1990, the same year we started Church of the Resurrection, this film came out. And there is, Macaulay Calkin is Kevin McAllister. You remember, there he is right there. He's eight years old. And his family is going on a vacation. Now, they've been really struggling, and his brother, you know, is horrible to him, and his parents get mad at him because of something he does. And so, he goes to bed that night, you know, the night before they were leaving on a big family trip to France, of all places, the same place O Holy night was written. They're going there for vacation. And so he goes to bed that night, and he thinks, I don't like my family at all. I wish I didn't have this family. That's kind of like his bedtime thought when he goes to bed. Well, the next morning, the alarm doesn't go up, and all doesn't go off. And so suddenly they realize they're running late, and the family's going crazy trying to get out the door to get to the airport to fly to Paris. And one of the siblings does a count of all the kids and miscounts. And Kevin is asleep upstairs, and he's left home alone. They get to the airport. They get on the plane. It's not until they get to Paris where they do another count and they realize, where is Kevin? Kevin is gone. He's not here. He never got on the airplane. They try calling. They can't reach him by phone. They are terrified. And they try to get a flight back and they can't get a flight back. And so it's going to take a couple of days before the family can get back home. And you can just almost hear the mother screaming. And there is Kevin. He's not hearing the phone. And he wakes up and his family's gone. He thinks he's got his wish from Christmas. Like, you know, my family, they're gone. And at first he thinks it's awesome, and then he's a little scared, and then he feels home alone, right? Now, the fun part of the story in the middle is where two thieves on Christmas Eve night try to break in, and they try to steal things, and he ends up, you know, outwitting the thieves, and so that's a lot of fun. But on Christmas Eve, before all that happens, Kevin is feeling lonely, and he's home alone, and he had no friends' parents, and he goes walking. He takes a walk in the snow that night, Christmas Eve, and he hears a rehearsal for the candlelight service at the church down the street.

13:15 And this is what happens. Here there is hope that it's worth A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices For yonder breaks a new and glorious Lord Fall on your knees Did you recognize the song, by the way? Oh, Holy Night. So he hears Oh, Holy Night, and he's drawn to go inside the church, and he sits there. He's looking around. We cut it shorter, but he was looking around at all the stained glass windows, and he sits down, and I think he begins to realize I'm not really alone, that Christ is with me. I'm not alone.

14:07 This story of his birth is a story that God came to us in the flesh, and you are never really alone. Here's the Christmas stories as told by Matthew. At least, Matthew, just in one verse, he says, and the baby Jesus was born, and then he says this, Now all this took place so that what the Lord had spoken to the prophet would be fulfilled. Look, a virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel. And you may remember in Hebrew, Emmanuel means God with us. And so Matthew's saying, this is what's happening. This child is God's way of saying. He takes on flesh to say, I'm with you. No matter what you walk through, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, I am with you. God is with us. This week I was visiting one of our members who has struggled some and he's in the New Century Jail in Gardner and he's been there for several months and they won't let us go and visit anymore. You have to visit by video. So I set up a video time to meet with him and we're talking together across the computer screens and I said, I just, I wanted to see you and I wanted you to see my face and I wanted to remind you of two things.

15:07 I thought if you looked at me and you saw my eyes, I might be a visible reminder that God is with you where you are. Even in the jail, even now as you're discouraged, Jesus is with you, God is with you and Jesus came to put flesh on that for all of us to say God is with you and I said, I want you to know this, I see your heart and I know what a good person you are inside and I know you've struggled and God sees your heart too. He is with you right now, even in your prison cell, he's with you. When I go visit people in the hospital, So this afternoon before the service began, about two hours, about an hour and a half before the service began, I stopped by Menorah Medical Center, one of our members who I've known since she was just seven years old. She'd had surgery yesterday, and I just wanted to go by and see her. I thought, you know, it's kind of discouraging when you're not feeling well and you're sick and you're in the hospital and it's Christmas time. And so I stopped in, and she was by herself in the room. Well, actually, there was a nurse who was helping her, and I said, hey, I just wanted to stop in and say that you're not alone. I wanted to put flesh on the fact that Jesus is here with you.

16:01 and even in the middle of the night when nobody else is in the room, he's here by your side and he knows you and he loves you and you're his. I stopped by to see a family two weeks ago. The dad, a young father, was dying. It's the final stage, final hours of his life and when I got up to the house to visit, his boys, his three boys were in the bed with him. His wife was laying next to him, his mother next to her and his dad standing by my side and his brother was next to me and it was just this beautiful scene of all these people just surrounding this man as he was making the final step of his journey. And I said, I came over here. I felt I was supposed to come just to remind you, just to put flesh on the fact that God is with you, that Jesus is walking with your dad through the valley of the shadow of death, and he doesn't have to be afraid. Your dad is safe with him, and so are you. This is what we do. Jesus came to put flesh on God, and then he called us to put flesh on his love. so part of Christmas is actually an invitation for us to become Christ for other people to put flesh on God's love for other people just to remind you Jesus said this just before he died rose again showing that he triumphed over evil, hate, sin and death and then he said lo I am with you always even to the end of the age if you can't feel me I'm still there I am with you all the time you are never home alone all right so that leads to another big idea in christmas and that is that christ came and as he grew up he showed us what it means to be human he showed us who god is what god is like what god's character is what god wants from us and then he suffered and died for us and he rose again to say these triumphs over all of these horrible things including death and then he said now all the things that i've done you're supposed to go out and do like part of it we can look at this It's like the baby Jesus, we light the candle in a few minutes.

17:55 Like, what difference did that one baby make? Except for he came and he showed us something different. He launched a revolution and then he invited people to follow him. And we're still inviting people to follow him, right? We're still saying, Jesus, I want to follow you. I want to be a part of what you're doing in this world. In a moment, we're going to light the Christ candle. So a family's going to come up. They're going to light the white candle. And we're going to have all the lights turned off in this room. We're going to remember the world can be really dark sometimes. We light that one candle and it's going to be nothing, just one tiny little candle. and then I'm gonna take my candle and I'm gonna go up there and I'm gonna light that candle and I'm gonna take it and this big candle represents Jesus. So I'm gonna say, that one does, but now when I carry it around, it represents Jesus and I'm gonna say, you remember what Jesus said? He said, I am the light of the world. Like I came to throw out the darkness, to push back the darkness but then there came a certain point to his disciples where he said to them, now you, you are the light of the world, right? And so, you know, we take these candles and each of us take the light and we go, okay, now I'm part of the light too and pretty soon this whole room is gonna be filled with light And all of that is a way of saying that this is God's strategic plan.

18:56 God's strategic plan is you. That you are going to push back the darkness. That you are going to practice love. That you are going to break the chains. That you are going to care for the oppressed and bring good news to the poor. So the third verse of O Holy Night begins this way. Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Christmas is not that complicated to figure out, really. What did Jesus stand for? What did he want from us? Well, this is what he says at the Last Supper, just hours before he was crucified. He said this, 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 are my disciples, when you love each other. We put flesh on God's love. Jesus put flesh on God's love. We put flesh on Jesus' love. Now, here's what strikes me.

19:49 So much of the suffering that happens in the world today is because we forget what Jesus said mattered most. If you want to talk about people who are dying of starvation, it's not because there's not enough food on our planet. It's because we forgot we were supposed to share. When you look at people who are in oppressive situations or they're hurt and broken and nobody's coming along to help, you're looking at a place where people forgot to love. When we look at the hurt we inflict upon each other or the crimes that we see on the news every night, Or sometimes I think, every night I feel like I'm looking at news stories, and I watch the news every day, and I look at the news stories and I think, how is it that at this level I feel like we have forgotten empathy and compassion and concern for our neighbors? We seem to have forgot that. Now, when I look at people on a more local level, like I look at you all, I see people who remember that. It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat, you have empathy and compassion for people. You see somebody suffering, you say, I want to do something to help.

20:43 That's just who we're supposed to be. but I feel like at a certain level in our country, we kind of forget that. And there's pain and brokenness and darkness, right? But every time you see a story that's good and beautiful and kind, where there's healing and hope, and in every one of those places, what you find is somebody who remembered the call to love.

21:05 Christmas, our King, our Savior, our Lord, born in a stable, who would grow up to say, this is my commandment, that you love one another. Okay, what does that look like for you? Well, I'm not sure exactly, but I wanna give you a few examples. One of those examples was this week, I was talking with a friend in our church, part of our church, and she told me how she and four of her friends went to see another friend, they're all women in their 60s, so they went to see another friend who has early onset dementia. And so when they arrived at their friend's house, they said it was clear she couldn't remember our names. They've been friends for like 25 years. She couldn't remember their names. But she knew that she knew them and she was happy to see them. and they brought lunch over and they made a lunch spread there, and they go by and see her regularly, but they have sent out the lunch and then they gave her a plate and she didn't know how to put the food on her plate. And so they got her food ready and she was able to eat on her own. And as they're talking, they're having these conversations and at one point she looks down, she starts crying.

22:02 Just a sadness about not being able to remember. And then this woman said, you know, tell us about when you were a kid and what Christmas was like then. And she perked up and she smiled and she started talking in broken sentences about what her childhood was like. And before they left, you know, they just all, they took a picture, it was a beautiful picture and they just loved on her, right? And then she loved them the best way she could with a smile and with her eyes, right? But that's what it looks like sometimes. It's to show up for people, it's to be there for them, it's to show empathy and compassion and to show up even though maybe, you know, you got a million other things you could be doing, which is what happened with them this last week. This week I spoke to, this weekend I spoke to Abby. Abby goes to our Resurrection Brookside location and she and her husband are a part of a small group for young couples who don't have children yet and or may never have children, but they've decided four months ago that they wanted to go to a homeless shelter, they want to go to Restart every month and they want to serve people meals and so they prepare the meals, they serve the meals, they hang out with the people and it's really quite beautiful and she said this, she said, just a moment,

23:07 well, where did it go? Okay, I'm just going to tell you what she said, as best as I can remember it. We're missing a page, and that page is... Gosh, that's really embarrassing, but I'm sorry, my pages got messed up. There we go, here we go, okay. So, this is what she said. 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, this is a really important lesson, my anxiety is quiet and my faith deepens. We serve at Restart to be a consistent representation of God's love as they seek to restore dignity and remind people 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? That when you serve other people, when you love other people, it always comes back to you? May not from that person, but somewhere along the way you find that love comes back to you.

24:02 You just can't give it away. It always comes back. I want to show you one more picture of this. And most of the services are not going to get to see this, but because we're okay on time, I'm going to share this with you. So Rudy Ehrenberg is one of our members. His day job is telecommunications, but for I think the last 18 years, he's worked in our global ministries, our global mission ministries, just as a volunteer. And so he leads teams to Haiti and to Uganda and other places. And so he just got back a month ago from Uganda. We had a team, a medical team going there. We had a doctor, a dentist, six nurses, and then the rest were ordinary people like most of us in the room. And so this is a partner ministry we have in Uganda. Now, what you're about to hear, it was, he just got there. He spent 22 hours getting there and it was first thing in the morning and they already had hundreds of people lined up to see a doctor or a nurse. And so he's just, he sent this video back for our missions team to know, hey, we're getting started right now. Now, you're gonna hear, it's gonna sound a little wonky because on the loudspeaker, somebody's talking to all the Ugandans who are getting ready to see their nurses and doctors for the first time.

25:00 But I just love his, just his joy and what he was doing. Take a listen. Good morning. I'm here with the medical team in eastern Uganda. We got in last night, and we were at our first medical clinic today. We're looking forward to that. A lot of patients here, as you can see, that are gathered in the tent down here. They're looking forward to being seen between our team and the Uganda medical team. So we're really looking forward to the day. Some of these people have been here since the sun came up this morning. So great to be here. We've got a lot of activities going on, and we just got done meeting with the Uganda medical team, kind of getting prepared for our labs and our reviews of patients. So it's time to get to work.

25:45 So I wanted to see that because, you know, that week they went to three different villages in Uganda. They saw, of course, that week, and these people paid their own way and took vacation to go do this. They saw 2,470 patients. They filled 7,000 prescriptions with medications we took with them on the trip. And most of that was for malaria, but there were a number of other things that they had a chance to see. People lined up starting at, you know, 5 in the morning to be able to go be seen by a doctor or nurse that they normally wouldn't have a chance to see. And what they found in the middle of that was joy. Now, we had 18 global teams go out last year just like that. Uganda, Malawi, a whole host of places around Haiti, other places around the world. And they're people just like you, ordinary people who said, you know, maybe I could do something to make a difference. but most of the work that we do is here in Kansas City, just like Abby and her team. So I just want to remind you of these words from the hymn. Truly he called us to love one another.

26:38 His law is love and his gospel is peace. All right, sometimes what it looks like to love other people is to love the people in our family who are hard to love. Or sometimes there's just pain or brokenness in families, which is what Home Alone ultimately is about. So I was listening to NPR a couple of weeks ago and there was a story about estrangement in families and how there are an increasing number of people in America where the parents don't talk to their kids or the kids don't talk to their parents or a sibling doesn't talk to a sibling. And I'm pretty sure that in this room, about 10% of you know exactly what I'm talking about. And sometimes having Jesus model something for us about loving even your enemy and your estranged loved one is not your enemy, but even love your enemy speaks to us at Christmas as well. So in Home Alone, there's Kevin sitting in church and he looks over and there's old man Marley, his next door neighbor, sitting across the aisle.

27:36 Now again, this is during rehearsal. It's not even during service yet. And he looks over there and old man Marley, he's terrified of old man Marley. He's been told that he's a scary figure and he should stay away from him. So he sees him and he's scared and old man Marley gets up and he comes over and he wishes him a Merry Christmas and he says, can I sit down next to you? And they sit down next to each other and this is their conversation. Take a listen. 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? Oh, you're always welcome at church. I'm not welcome with my son.

28:18 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. 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.

28:55 Several of you knowing that I was going to be including some clips from Home Alone sent me a little video clip, some preacher somewhere, who had said that he saw Marley, old man Marley, as a Christ figure. If you look, he's got a Band-Aid on his hand, and they said, just like Christ, his hands were pierced, and so he was like a Christ figure for Kevin, maybe. But in this clip, it seems to me that Kevin is the Christ figure. He's the one who's saying to old man Marley, why don't you just call him? or call, you know, why don't you just reach out to him?

29:24 And I think at Christmas, it's like a wonderful time where the Holy Spirit might say to some of you, why don't you just call her? Why don't you just call him? Or if you're afraid to call, why don't you just text or send an email or a handwritten note? Why don't you just try? And what would you say? Well, you might say, I'm sorry. Or you might say, I still love you. or you might say, I care about you or can we connect? But maybe this is the Christmas for you to do that. I also love the bigger picture that for some of us, the person that we're estranged from is God. We ran away from God or got mad at God a long time ago and we stopped going to church and stopped talking to God in prayer and maybe God's been waiting all along saying, I still love you and I still want you and I still care about you. Christmas is a great time.

30:18 to come back to God. Truly, he called us to love one another. His law is love, and his gospel is peace. That leads me to the last two lines in All the Way Night that I want to mention, and they are in some ways the climax of the song, and the reason why we know this song in America, because it was written in France, and it was written in, you know, for a little tiny town in southern France on the Rhône River. How did we get to know this song? Well, the reason why we got to know it is, first of all, Placide Capot, as he was writing this song, he gets to the third verse, and one of his concerns is slavery. Now in France, slavery had been outlawed in 1794, but in the colonies, the kings of France had allowed them to reinstitute slavery in the colonies. And there were a lot of people who were really angry and upset about that and wanted the French to end slavery altogether. So when he writes the, and by the way, well, anyway, I'll come back to this. When he writes the third verse, this is what he says, and this is how it is in the more literal English from the French. The Redeemer, Jesus, has broken every bond. The earth is free and heaven is open.

31:20 He sees a brother where there was only a slave. Love unites those whom iron had chained. Now, two months after that song was written and sung for the very first time, the king of France was overthrown. And two months after that, slavery was abolished in all the colonies of France. and Placide Capote celebrated. So anyway, the man who translated this hymn from the French into English was a man named John Sullivan Dwight. John Sullivan Dwight was the leading music critic in America in the 1850s. He was a gifted and talented person. He, a musician. He was also someone who had, he was a sometime minister in the Unitarian Church and he had strong abolitionist feelings. And he was in Boston and Boston was like the hub of abolitionism in America at the time. This was six years before the Civil War started. And so at the time, there was something going on.

32:13 By the way, he thought slavery was moral suicide for Americans. But at the time, the Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. You may remember from history in high school, 1854. And it said that Kansas would come into the Union as either a slave or a free state, depending on what the people in Kansas wanted to do. So the people in Kansas would decide. So the slavery folks were sending as many people who were pro-slavery to Kansas as possible. and the abolitionists were trying to find as many people to move to Kansas who were anti-slavery as possible. So in New England, they formed a company called the Massachusetts Lator. It was the New England Immigrant Aid Company. And the goal was to talk people into and to help pay for people to move from Boston to Kansas. People are like, Kansas, where is Kansas? Why would anybody want to move to Kansas? They didn't realize how awesome Kansas is, right? It's an awesome place, but they didn't know that at the time. So they're trying to get people to go after a year of doing this or months of doing this.

33:06 they only had a few hundred people who were willing to go. And you know who those people were? This is what they found. The only people who were willing to uproot their families, sell everything they had, load what they had left in a wagon, and travel 1,200 miles over three months, the only people willing to do that were Christians. They found Methodists and Congregationalists and Unitarians and a few others were willing to move all the way to Kansas just to claim the state as a free state. They were called free staters, some of you know. And they wanted to make sure slavery was not going to be allowed in Kansas, and that runaway slaves could have freedom in Kansas. Christians. So John Sullivan Dwight said, I'm gonna take this hymn that I've heard in French that is beautiful and I'm gonna translate it in English and maybe it'll become a rallying cry for Christians. This is how the third verse goes in the English that he translated. Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace.

34:01 Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease. And people began singing that all across New England. There were people who sang that song around Christmas time who made the decision that they were gonna move to Kansas and all of a sudden there was an uptick in the number of people, Christians and churches, after Christmas who said, I'm gonna sell everything and we're gonna move to Kansas to do what Jesus talked about, to bring good news to the poor, to bring liberty to those who were oppressed, bruised, broken, enslaved. I want us to think about that for just a second. That's what they did. Can I show you a couple pictures of some of those wagon trains? Here's one of them right there. Here's a family coming to Kansas. Like they sold all they had. They gave up everything to come here. Why did they come here? They were going to Lawrence, Kansas. Why? Because they believe that Jesus, the one whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, called them to liberate the oppressed, right, to set the captives free.

34:58 Here's another wagon train coming across the mountains in the New England area, coming to Kansas. So here was the question I had. It's like, what would we do today as Christians because Jesus was born? Would we live in any way differently than we do right now? I mean, you're not being asked to like uproot everything and go move 1200 miles away. Just what would you do to follow Jesus? To bring wholeness and light and life and love and encouragement in your daily life with the people that you're around and when you see a need to be able to help somebody who's in need, what would we be willing to do to do what they did? By the way, I'm a history geek, and so I really love this stuff. Can I just show you, they took the Oregon and Santa Fe trails through, across Missouri into Kansas over to Lawrence. Lawrence was a town founded by the New England Immigrant Aid Company.

35:52 Can I just show you, this is an Overland Park document on where those trails came through in this area. So you can see this is the Santa Fe and Oregon Trail right here. You see that red box right there? Do you know what that is? That's where you're sitting right now. You are sitting where those wagon trains passed right across with Christians who came, who started First Methodist Church of Lawrence, Plymouth Congregational Church, the Unitarian Church, to claim Kansas as a free state. By the way, they went from Lawrence, they founded a university there in 1855, I think it was, started a university there called Baker University. Then they went all the way to Manhattan and founded Blumont College. The Methodists founded Blumont College in order to prepare young people to change the world. Blumont College, of course, became what? Kansas State University. And then the year after the war was over, in Lawrence, the Methodists and several others said, we need a university right here that's a state university.

36:47 And they founded what university in Lawrence did they found? University of Kansas, all about preparing young people to change the world. All right. So what are we going to do to break the chains today? 170 years later. I'm gonna give you three invitations as the sermon wraps up, okay? Here it is. The first one is that in just a moment, we're gonna receive the offering. Now, I have to tell you, I love candlelight Christmas Eve service. I love the candlelighting, the holding up the candles as we sing joy to the world. I love the whole thing, all the music, all of it. Can I tell you my favorite part of the Christmas Eve service? The offering. You say, yeah, you're a preacher, it'd be the offering. No, I don't love the offering most in most services. I mean, it's fine. I don't mind that we take it. I'm glad we do. but on Christmas Eve, I love the offering the most. You know why 17 years ago, our church voted to give away the entire Christmas Eve offering to benefit children and families living in poverty. This is the biggest worship of our entire year by multiple factors.

37:44 And we said, let's just give away the entire offering to benefit children and families living in poverty. In the last 17 years, on Christmas Eve alone, you have given $24 million to benefit children and families in Kansas City and in other parts of the world. Half of it stays in Kansas City. Half of it goes to, mostly right now, to Projects in Africa. These are all things that we work with. You can volunteer to be a part of them. You get to see them, experience them. There's like two dozen projects that we work on every year. I'll just remind you of a few of the things that you've done over the last few years. So a couple of years ago, you paid for a mobile dental clinic. Here's a picture of it. And that's through Swope Health. You gave a half a million dollars to create a mobile dental clinic that provides dental care for 2,700 children in low-income communities in the Kansas City area every year, getting their teeth cleaned, getting their, you know, the whole thing, cavities filled, all that. You did that through the Christmas Eve offering. You see how that's breaking the chains and how that's, you know, setting at liberty those who are captives or, you know, loving one another. You also provided a bookmobile four or five years before that. So there's our bookmobile, and we take books and brand new books and sometimes generally used books, mostly brand new, and we give those to children who can't afford to buy books at the Scholastic Book Fair.

38:51 And last year you gave away 65,000 books there. And then a year after that, you built a mobile grocery store. And so this is our food mobile. And it goes out with fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and meats. And we go to communities where there's food deserts. And people don't have access to this kind of stuff in those communities. And so you distribute food every week, four or five days a week, to people who need it in Kansas City. You did that through the Christmas Eve offering. And in Malawi, you built 215 boreholes or clean water wells for communities that had dirty drinking water. 215 villages with 500 to 1,000 people in each village. And you're talking about 215,000 people have clean drinking water today because you know what you did. That's why I love the Christmas Eve offering so much. It's like we have a chance to change the world right now in just a minute. And so I wanted you to see where some of the money is going this year. These are two of the 24 projects. Take a listen.

39:42 When we started 10 years ago, we started because of a call to action by the mayor in Kansas City, Kansas. 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. Over 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, she graduated high school, and she started her own family and went to nursing school.

40:35 So it's a great success. 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.

41:36 And our funding is allowing that to happen. Rod and Sharon just got back from Malawi last month just to see what was going on over there. So this year, the Christmas Eve offering, the first $250,000 is going to help 600 homeless families, families that sometime during the year are homeless with children to be able to get a leg up and have a chance to have a home. you are going to be funding about $400,000 going to Malawi for boreholes. We're going to build 10 more boreholes this year. We're going to provide aid for kids who are orphans and various orphan projects through Zoe International, a host of others. And then there's like 10 other projects you're going to support. You have a chance to change the world. I just wanted to say, how did we raise that much money in that period of time? Last year was $2.1 million in one night. So here's how it is. For our members, I give this challenge every year. Now, if you're a visitor, this isn't for you, but this is the challenge I give to our members. is I say, what would happen? You know, we buy all this stuff for our family and they don't need anything.

42:30 But what happened if we said, maybe we scale back a little bit, but we say, we're gonna take the amount we spend on our entire family and we're gonna give that amount to help other families in the world that really need it. And we have hundreds of families who do this. LeVon and I, every year, we add up everything we spend on our entire family. LeVon and I, each other, our kids, our granddaughter, our extended family, we take that, we add a little bit more to that and that becomes our Christmas Eve offering. And not everybody can do that, but many people can. And sometimes people give multiple times that in a Christmas Eve offering. But no matter where you are, just to say, and if you're a visitor, I want to say this to you. Join us in helping in some way. Be generous in what you do. And you're gonna make a difference. 100% of what you give, we don't keep any of it. This service is our gift to you. 100% of what you give is going to help other people in Kansas City and beyond. All right, so that leads me to the second invitation. That's the first invitation. The second invitation is for you simply to accept Christ. like just to say, I want to follow Jesus.

43:25 He was born. You know what he became, what he taught, what he did, how he suffered, died. I just want you to be able to say today, yes, I want to follow you, Jesus. So when we have the prayer in a moment, I'm going to lead you in a prayer. And if you feel like you're willing to say, yes, I want to follow you, Jesus, I'm going to ask you to say that prayer quietly under your breath. And then the last thing is for you to take up Jesus' challenge to love one another. This is my commandment, he said, that you love one another. I wake up every morning, our congregation knows this. I get on my knees. I say, Jesus, I belong to you. Do with me whatever you want. Please help me to pay attention and help me to practice love towards other people. I fail at it every day, but I try. That's my goal, my vision, is to love other people the way Jesus loved me and the way he loved others. And I wanna invite you to take that challenge. And for some of you, that's how you're gonna serve other people and you're gonna look around and see people who are in need and encouragement and care. But for some of you, maybe 10% of you, that might also mean tomorrow, sending a note or a text or an email saying, hey I still love you can we reconnect I want to end the way Home Alone ends.

44:29 So I'm sorry to be a spoiler on this, but you know what? You've had 35 years to see the movie. So if you haven't seen it now, so here's how Home Alone ends. So Kevin's family shows up on Christmas Day. There they are on Christmas Day and they're all brought back together and they don't hate each other anymore and there's just this beautiful love. And then Kevin walks towards the window and he looks across this next door and he sees old man Marley out there in the snow. Take a look. THE END Kevin was a Christ figure and reconciliation happened.

45:31 And in some ways, that's an invitation for us to be reconciled to God and to other people. 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 led Do you want to accept Christ? Put your trust in him again? I'd like to invite you just to whisper this prayer under your breath. Thank you, God, for loving me. I accept your love.

46:06 Help me to love you in return. Jesus, I choose to follow you. Be my savior. save me from my sin and from myself. and help me to follow you. Holy Spirit, help me to pay attention. empower and use me to take Christ's light into the world, to push back the darkness, and to live a life of love.

46:49 In Jesus' name, amen.