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

36:39 almost all volunteers, they got here about one o'clock this afternoon, and they've been staying and singing and playing all day just to bless you and to bless the other congregation. Join me in thanking them. I am so proud of you. And that last song was just magnificent. Thank you so much. I want to ask you a question. What's the earliest birthday you can remember? How old were you? I was three and a half. Three and a half. And it was 1967. My dad worked for the Boeing Company. And he was 20 years old. My mom was 21. And she worked for the Travelers Company. I was three and a half years old. My sister was two. The reason why I remember this is because in 1960, this was 1967, Seattle is where we're living. And in 1967, my parents had got a super eight millimeter Kodak camera. It looked like this one on the screen and didn't have sound, but they filmed, you know, they filmed us that year. Of course, now the truth is, I don't know that I actually remember from when I was three and a half. I think it was either six or seven when I happened to, you know, watch this video years later. And as I was, I, you know, probably logged it into my memory banks. But so, that year, 1967, the Jim Neighbors sang, recorded a version of O Holy Night for Christmas. And since this is a silent video I'm about to show you, I placed, we placed Jim Neighbors' version of it on the, of O Holy Night, just a part of it, on the video.

38:05 Now, you may remember Jim Neighbors, most of you probably knew him as a sitcom character named Gomer Piles. There he is, Gomer Pile, with Sargent screaming at him. All right, so listen to the music, and here's the thing. I'm pretty sure those of you who are baby boomers will recognize the toys we got that Christmas, and maybe some of you older extras take a look. So that's me right there. My middle name's Joseph. That was to Joe over there. There's my little sister Dina.

38:47 break, for the slave is abroad. Oh, she was so cute. What happened to her anyway? No, I'm kidding. She's so cute. She was here on Sunday night. But so here's the thing. At that point, our family did not go to church. I was baptized as an infant, but we didn't go to church. We didn't start going to church for another five years after that. So if you had asked three-and-a-half-year-old me, what is the meaning of Christmas? I would have said, presents, Santa Claus, and the love of my parents. I didn't know anything about Jesus. But here we are tonight, we've gathered in a church for this service, and we have gathered here because I think you think there must be something more than what's under the tree. There must be something more than presents, and even the love of our families to what Christmas is all about. And so we know that something more is located in the birth of Jesus, but still we wonder, what is the significance of a baby? Why are we still celebrating his birth 2,000 years later? What's the big deal? And so we're going to try to answer that question today. And we do this every year. Every year at Christmas, we stop partway through the service. We say, what does this mean? Now, we're not the first people to be doing this.

39:53 People have been doing this really since there was the beginning of the celebration of Christmas, probably in the fourth century or before, because originally they only celebrated Jesus' death and resurrection, not his birthday. But eventually they began to celebrate Christmas tied into the winter solstice, when suddenly the entire cosmos from the perspective of a human here on earth move from daylight getting shorter and nighttime getting longer to daylight defeating the darkness, which happens after the winter solstice. So what a great time to celebrate the birth of the light of the world. All right, so I want to tell you the story, a little bit of a story, about a man named Placide Capot. Placide Capot was a Frenchman. He was a wine merchant, and he was a poet, and there's a picture of him. In 1847, his parish priest asked him in southern France, asked him, would you write a poem in honor of the candlelight Christmas Eve service, in honor of the birth of Christ. And he said, sure, I'll be happy to. And then he contacted, after he wrote it, he contacted his friend, Adolf Adam, who was a opera composer and a ballet composer and producer.

40:51 And he said, would you put this to music? And he did. And that's the song we know of is O Holy Night. And here was what he realized. He was looking at this thing. How do I help people understand the meaning of Christmas in 1847 for us today? And as he was doing that, he was thinking about the birth of this baby and how different it was, this king, from the king that he knew in France, his king, and his king was King Louis-Philippe I. King Louis-Philippe started off pretty well in 1830, and then pretty soon he became enamored with wealth and power. He became more and more arrogant and prideful, narcissistic, a lover of money, and he stopped paying attention to people, the ordinary people. And he's writing this carol, and he's thinking, I want the people in my little parish church to know that there's a different kind of king than the one we have here in France. he's a better king, a different king. And his story is so different from the story of our king who rules over us in France.

41:47 Let me just remind you of a few of the details of the Christmas story, especially in Luke's gospel, because these details matter. They're telling us something about the character of Jesus and then ultimately the character of his followers, or at least what he hopes for his followers' character. So let me remind you where all the story takes place. So this is a satellite image of the Holy Land. here's the Mediterranean Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, which flows into the Dead Sea. Now, Mary and Joseph are living in Nazareth when the emperor, Augustus Caesar, says that all the Jewish people need to return to the husband's hometown. And Joseph's hometown was down here in Bethlehem. There's two mountain ranges between Nazareth and Bethlehem. It's about 70 miles. And for a pregnant woman, there's no mention of a donkey in the scripture. So for a pregnant woman traveling in the ninth month of pregnancy or eighth month of pregnancy, whenever she was traveling, It's going to take a while to get there. It takes about 10 days if you're walking it at a slow pace. And so they arrive in Bethlehem.

42:41 In Bethlehem, that's a tiny little village. You know, we say there's no room in the inn. Well, there was no inns in Bethlehem. It was a little village of a couple hundred families or people, actually. And so what happened was people had a guest room. Often the children slept in that room, but if you needed it, you would have the children come downstairs, and they would sleep in the upper room, the guest room. And so, but by the time Mary and Joseph get there, It appears as though everyone else who were also having to go back for the census, because Emperor Augustus wants to collect more taxes. By the way, if you didn't go back to your hometown for the census, according to some scholars, you could have your property confiscated. You could actually be sold into slavery to satisfy your debts if you didn't go back. So Mary and Joseph go back. So they arrive there, and there's no room in the upper rooms or the guest rooms. And so the only place that they can give birth to this child is in the stable. In Bethlehem, and I've been there many times, the houses are built on a limestone that was typically formed caves.

43:36 And so houses were built on top of the caves. You still see this to this day. And animals were brought into the caves at night. As we're gathered here, people have been gathering in Bethlehem in the church of the Nativity. And underneath the church is a cave, the grotto of the Nativity, where it was believed that Jesus was born. So he's born in a barn, right? So Christians believe that the King of kings and the Lord of lords, God in flesh, has come to earth, and he's gonna be born in a barn with the animals. And Luke tells us three times that the place where he was put to sleep that night, where he rested, was a manger. A manger is an animal's feeding trough. I mean, you see the humility of this story, the just humbleness of it. And then the angel of the Lord goes out to find somebody. You know, the messenger says, somebody's gotta come see this. The Messiah, the Lord has been born and he goes out and he finds the night shift shepherds. Remember the shepherds were the lowest rung in society among Jewish people in the first century, and the knights of shepherds were the lowest of the low.

44:31 And the messenger says, behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all people, not just some, but for all people. For unto you this day in the city of David is born a savior who is Christ the Lord. Savior was a term that was used both of God and of kings and warriors. It meant deliverer, rescuer. And the emperor took on that title himself. He was the savior of the world, he thought, when the Romans said. And then there's the title Christ. Christ is the Greek version of the Hebrew Messiah, which means anointed one, one in a sort of shorthand usually for king. It could mean prophet too, but generally for king. And then there is Lord. And Lord is master, sovereign, ruler, the highest authority in a given realm. The emperor was Lord of the earth. King Herod the Great was Lord of his little kingdom in Judea. But Jesus was the Lord, the Lord of the cosmos. So those three titles are pointing to the fact that this baby who was born wasn't just an ordinary baby, and he is for us, those who believe in him, our Savior, our Messiah, and our Lord. Now, this humble birth for him is so remarkable, and it then sets the pace for everything else he does. So when he begins his ministry, his ministry is with the down and out, the outcast, the lowly, the broken, the mentally ill, the demon-possessed, the people who were, you know, who were considered outsiders to the church. They were called the Amha Arets of that time, that meant the people of the land, the kind of yokels and the people who were considered unclean, and that's who Jesus hung out with. He hung out with them.

45:57 When he preached his very first sermon in Luke chapter 4, we find that his first sermon is preached in Nazareth, and this is what he says. He takes the scroll of Isaiah the prophet, and he reads from it. This is what he reads. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me. There's that word Messiah, Mashiach. He's 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 never looked at this, but I wondered what's the Greek word that's used in Luke's gospel for the oppressed? And it's the word thraou, thraou, excuse me, thraou, and it means bruised, shattered, or broken. He came to bring liberty to the bruised, the shattered, or the broken. Who are the bruised and shattered and broken today? And of course, sometimes it's us. Sometimes it's when we're struggling with depression or other kinds of mental illness. Sometimes it's when we have been, you know, we've experienced some terrible tragedy in our lives or we're just afraid or we've lost somebody that we love.

46:56 And so sometimes we're the bruised and the shattered and the broken. And so he came to liberate us. But there are some people in the world who live bruised and shattered and broken lives all the time. I'm thinking about people who live less than 30 minutes from here. Well, actually, there's people who live in our community who weren't sure, could I get Christmas for my kids this year? Or am I going to have enough to eat on the table? Or people who have been pushed down or marginalized or made to feel like they don't matter? And he came to liberate them. How beautiful is that? Now, this entire story of Christ's birth, again, stands in direct contradiction to the king of France at the time, Louis-Philippe I. You can see his image here. And one who had become, again, less concerned about the ordinary people and more concerned about his stature, his pride, his own arrogance, and his wealth. Now, what was happening in 1856, in 1857, you may remember the potato famine in 1856, and then on into 1857, and so there were food shortages across Europe. In France, there were 400 villages where they didn't have enough to eat during the course of the year. People are starving to death, and the king doesn't seem to care or matter. He doesn't seem to think it matters.

48:06 So when Placide Capot is writing this carol, O Holy Night, what he's saying is, there is a king who does care. There's a king who cares about you, who loves you, who knows you, cares about you. And he's come humble, concerned to befriend people, ordinary people. And so this is 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. He knows our need to our weakness. He's no stranger. Behold your king before him, lowly bend. I love those lines. And that whole story, the manger, the shepherds, all of it is meant to point towards this. So you remember the classic, you know, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Well, the whole point of Christmas was for God to say, I see you and I know you and I care about you and I love you and you matter to me. That's all wrapped up in this baby who was born in Bethlehem.

49:02 And finally, he knows your pain, your sorrow, your weakness, and you are not alone. All right, I was watching a classic Christmas movie this week. Anybody watch classic Christmas movies? So some of you do. It was Home Alone. Home Alone came out in 1990, the year Church of the Resurrection was started. So you remember Macaulay Culkin was Kevin McAllister. He's eight years old, and he, so let me just remind you of the story. So his family is going to Paris, he's going to France, where the song of the Holy Night was written. He's going to France. They're going to France for Christmas. And the night before they're leaving for the airport, he and his brother have a little fight. His brother wasn't very nice to him. He pushes his brother. They spill the milk. Everybody blames Kevin. He's sent to bed. He's sent to go upstairs to the upper bedroom, and he's sent to go to sleep there. And he's really upset, and everybody's just being mean to him. And he wishes, as he goes to bed, that he didn't have this family anymore. Now, the next morning, the alarms didn't go off, and the family wakes up late, and now they're scurrying to get to the airport.

49:59 They're frantically getting ready, getting everybody ready. nobody thinks to go up to that upper bedroom to get Kevin and wake him up. So now they're getting everybody loaded on the vans. They have two different vans, and one of the siblings counts all the children, but the neighbor kid came over, and she counted him instead of Kevin. And so now all of a sudden we find that they think everybody's there. They take off in the two vans. They go to the airport. They get on the plane. They're in different seats throughout the airplane. Nobody notices until they get to Paris that Kevin is not with them. He has been left behind. He is home alone. They frantically try to call him. They can't reach him on the phone. And now they're terrified. They try to get a flight back, and they can't get any flights back, you know, to go get their son. So he's home alone. They can't reach him. And he wakes up the next morning, and remember his wish that he didn't have that family anymore? They were gone. He was happy. He didn't have this family anymore. But, you know, over time, he starts getting a little lonely and kind of beginning to second guess whether he really wished he didn't have that family anymore. There's burglars who try to break into his house, and then they decide they're going to come back at 9 o'clock Christmas Eve. And so, you know, as he gets closer and closer, the story, of course, unfolds where he's going to outwit the, you know, the dimwit burglars.

50:57 but he ends up on Christmas Eve before the time the burglars are coming. He goes out for a walk feeling lonely and he happens to walk by a church and they're having rehearsals for candlelight Christmas Eve and he hears a song and he decides to go in. See if you can figure out what song he hears. Take a look. To hear the soul that it's heard, A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, For yonder brings a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees, all these... You know, and we shortened the clip, but as he's walking through, he's looking at the stained glass window, and he's starting to realize he's not really home alone. Right?

51:53 That there is a God who has come to us and Jesus who is with him. He's starting to feel that, sense that. And that reminds me of Matthew's account of the Christmas story. So Matthew just tells that, you know, Jesus was born. It's just like one sentence. And then he comes in with this. Now all of 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 in Hebrew, Emmanuel means God with us. And that's part of what Kevin's beginning to figure out. Now, Jesus came to put flesh on God. The invisible God becomes visible in Jesus, who comes to say, I love you, I care about you, you're mine, I'm yours, you're forgiven, all of this. Now, what we do as Jesus' followers is we put flesh on Jesus' love. this week I was reaching out to one of our members who had made some mistakes in his life and he ended up at New Century Jail in Gardner and he's a good guy and I just I thought I am guessing he probably feels a bit afraid and a bit alone and so you can't go and visit anymore as a pastor you have to do a visit on the on the computer so I had my computer screen he went before the computer at the jail and I said I just felt nudged by God to reach out to you I wanted you to see my face and to hear my voice to be a reminder that God is with you in the jail, that Jesus is with you in your prison cell and you are not, or in your jail cell, you are not alone. And he loves you and he sees your heart and he knows who you are and he cares about you. Want to go visit people in the hospital?

53:25 That's part of what I'm trying to say to people. I went yesterday, right before our Candlelight Christmas Eve services last night, I stopped by to see a woman at Menorah Medical Center. And when I walked in, I said, I just felt nudged by God to show up. I just wanted to put flesh on Jesus' love. He's here with you. You're okay. He's got you, and you belong to him. I just wanted to remind you of that. I stopped by two weeks ago to visit a family, a young man who was nearing death, a father. When I got to the house again, I just felt like, okay, you're supposed to go see him today. So I went by to see him, and he was lying in bed, no longer able to respond. His three little boys are laying in bed with him, along with his wife, who's laying right next to him, and his mother just on the other side of her. His father was standing to my left, and his brother was standing next to me. And I said, it was beautiful, actually. Like if I was dying, it's how to want to go with my kids next to me and my wife and my parents. But I said, I felt nudged to come over here just to remind you that as your dad and your husband walks through the valley of the shadow of death, neither you nor he have to be afraid because God is with you. And I just came to remind you that Jesus walks with you. He's the one who said, I'm the resurrection and the life. And those who believe in me will never die. He was crucified, dead, and buried, and he rose from the grave.

54:37 And he said, because I live, you shall live also. And your dad's going to be okay. And so are you. It doesn't take a master of divinity degree to do that. You don't have to be ordained to go do that. You're just somebody who cares about other people, right? And that's what we're all called to do. We're all called to be the people who come to people who are feeling discouraged or broken or shattered. And we come alongside them and say, you're not alone. you're never really home alone. That leads to another big Christmas idea, and that is God's strategy for changing the world. So you go back to the first century when Jesus is born, like the Romans are ruling, and there's going to be a million Jews put to death within 70 years of Jesus' birth, at least according to Josephus. I mean, they're going to rebel, and the Romans are going to come in and just squash them, and there's, you know, the Roman peace is kept by the power of the Roman legions, and there's a lot of injustice going on in the world, and a lot of darkness, and God sends a baby to deal with that? What a weird plan.

55:31 He sends a baby to deal with this. Except for he wasn't no ordinary baby. And he grows up to be a man. He begins to teach and preach. And in a few minutes, we're gonna share this with the candles. We're gonna turn off all the lights and we're gonna remember the darkness in the world. And one family's gonna come up and they're gonna light the Christ candle. And I'm gonna light this candle from the Christ candle. And I'm gonna stand out here and I'm gonna tell you that Jesus said in his ministry, I am the light of the world. And the darkness can't overcome this light. But then there comes a certain point in Jesus' ministry where he turns to his disciples and he says, now you, you up here in this section and you over here and all the rest of you, you are the light of the world. You take my light into the world and you push back the darkness. You knock holes, they're punch holes in the darkness. That's what you're supposed to do. And then he goes on to tell them, you know, what this looks like. He says, this is at the Last Supper, he says, 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.

56:31 You're called to love. This isn't a warm, fuzzy feeling. It's a dogged determination to bless and care for and encourage and lift up other people. And that's what Placide Capot captured in the third verse of his hymn. Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. So much of the suffering that we see in the world today, in fact, I would say all of it, other than natural disasters, is a direct result of people forgetting what Jesus said it means to be human. It's people deciding that they are going to ignore the commandment to love one another. Why are there thousands of people who starve every day? Is it because there's not enough food on our planet, or is it because we forgot how to share? Why are we so polarized, and why do we treat each other the way we do? Why are there crimes and violence and brokenness and families? Well, somewhere in there, underneath it all, is this failure to remember what Jesus said was the most important thing we could do. Well, he says the most important thing is to love God. And the second is to love your neighbors, you love yourself. And you love not only your neighbor, you love even your enemy. And by the way, all of the beautiful good things you see in the world today, I would venture all of them could be traced back to somebody remembering what it means to be human and loving their neighbor.

57:42 You see a beautiful story on the news or you see something beautiful that happens, it's because somebody remembered what it means to love. And here's what I sense. I watch the news a lot. I see what's going on in our country. And I look at this and I think, it seems like at this level in our country, at the sort of highest 20,000 foot level, we have lost this to some degree. That we no longer remember what it means to have empathy or compassion or concern for people hurting or broken or the people who are the oppressed, the shattered and the broken. We, you know, we've sort of lost that at this level. But when I look at this level where you all live, I think all of you have empathy in your hearts. You have compassion for people. You see somebody who's hurting and you want to help them. You just inherently want to do that. You are always looking at ways. And as a congregation, I see this constantly looking at ways that we can make the world a better place, that we can come alongside people who are different, you know, who are hurting.

58:37 And what's interesting about that is that's not a Republican or Democratic thing. Republicans and Democrats both do that, right? We just come alongside. We feel like we're supposed to help. We just have lost it somehow up here at the 20,000-foot level, I think. Now, I saw this last week. This is an example. A friend of mine said that she and her friends, they're all women, well, one man, and the rest are women in their 60s. And they had gone to visit their friend who has early-onset dementia. So they do this, they visit her from time to time. They went to see her, only this time she didn't remember their names anymore. But she was happy to see them. She knew she knew them, she just didn't know their names. And they brought lunch over. And she set out a lunch spread for, they set out a lunch spread for their friend. And they gave her a plate so she could go first, but she didn't remember how to put the food on the plate anymore. And so they did that for her and prepared her plate. And then she did know how to eat and she fed herself.

59:32 And then they were telling stories. And at first that was okay. And then after a little while, she looked down and she began to cry. and her friend said, well, tell us about, you know, Christmas when you were younger, and all of a sudden, she perked up a little bit, because she could remember some of those things, and she started telling stories, although she only had spoken broken sentences. Before they left, they had a picture, and she showed me this picture, and what I saw was four friends who were just surrounding their friend who was scared with love. They were being the presence of Christ for her. It was beautiful, and she was being loved to them as best she could with a smile on her face and the brightness in her eyes. I spoke with Abby this last weekend. Abby and her husband are part of a small group at our Resurrection Brookside location. They're young people in their 20s, mid-20s without children yet. And they made a decision a few months ago, starting in August, that they would go once a month to restart a homeless shelter here in Kansas City that tries to elevate people and move them out of poverty. And they would prepare and serve a meal and hang out with the people there once a month. And then she had written this about her experience.

1:00:33 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. 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. Now she's in her mid-20s. I don't know how old you are, but have you figured out this yet? That when you focus on other people and you help them, your anxieties begin to quell or that you can't give love away because as much as you give it away, it comes back to you. That's how God designed the world. And you are God's strategic plan for changing the world.

1:01:24 Truly he called us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Now sometimes the people we're supposed to love in extraordinary ways are not the people out there. they're the people in our family who are difficult to love or with whom we're having some conflict. So I was listening to the NPR the other day, and there was a story about estrangement in America and families. And they were saying it's like an epidemic of estrangement that now, you know, in the last, I don't know how many years, 10 years or so, that there are more and more children who don't talk to their parents anymore, or parents who don't talk to their children, or siblings who won't talk to each other, or even old friends who won't connect with each other anymore. So this, you know, this estrangement. And I was thinking about that and and how the gospel of Jesus, he calls us to love not only our neighbors and the people we like, but even our enemies. Now, your family who you're estranged from, they're not your enemies. But if they're not your enemies, shouldn't you also be loving them?

1:02:16 And of course we love them, which is part of why the pain is there. And then, so what do we do about that? We just don't talk to each other. And sometimes that's the right answer. Sometimes the pain is so much, you just have to say, I need to take a break from this relationship for a while. That's the easy part. The harder part is to say, how do I actually try to figure this thing out? so it's interesting that Home Alone is about this too so Kevin's sitting there in the church and across the aisle is old man Marley who is his next door neighbor and he's been told that he's a scary guy and he's afraid of him and he looks over there now they're both there not at Candlelight Crystal City but at the rehearsal before they're both there Home Alone and he looks over he's scared and Marley stands up and he comes over and he says Merry Christmas can I sit next to you and he sits down and this is the conversation they have 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?

1:03:08 No. I'm not welcome. At church? 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.

1:03:31 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. Just give it a shot. Now, it's interesting. Several of you sent me video clips of a pastor who said that old man Marley is the Christ figure in the film, and he had bandages on his hand like he'd been wounded, like Christ's hands were pierced for us. But when I look at this clip, I actually think it's Kevin who's the Christ figure for old man Marley. A child is saying, why don't you just call him? And when I look at this, I think of two things. First of all, I think that some of us have become estranged to God.

1:04:25 Like we got angry with God at something. there was some disappointment we had. And so we got angry with God and we decided we wouldn't talk to him anymore. I'm not gonna believe in you anymore. I'm not gonna talk to you anymore. And God's still waiting, hoping. Maybe this year for Christmas, maybe tonight is a chance to say, I choose to believe in you again, to love you and let you love me. But I do know that there's probably 10% of you in the room who are estranged from somebody in your immediate family. and I'm just wondering if tonight or tomorrow, this might be the time where you reach out. Maybe it's an email, maybe it's a phone call, maybe it's a text and maybe it just says, I want you to know I still love you or I'm thinking about you or I care about you or I'm so sorry or can we try again? What have you got to lose?

1:05:16 And it may not be the right time for all of you to do that but I think for many of you, this may just be the word. 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 of the third stand I want to focus on. So, O Holy Night, we come to know it in America in 1855. Now, in 1855, there was a man named John Sullivan Dwight. He is America's foremost music critic at the time, and he's a Unitarian minister sometimes, not a little bit, but he is a great writer about music and assessor of music, and he's also a gifted musician. And he hears this song, 1855, he hears this song from the French, from Placide Capot, and he hears the third line, and the third line says this, the Redeemer has broken every bond. This is in the more literal French translation in English. The Redeemer has broken every bond. The earth is free and heaven is open.

1:06:09 He sees a brother where there was only a slave. Love unites those whom iron has chained. now John Sullivan Dwight was in Boston he lived in Boston he was very strongly against slavery Boston was the center of abolitionism at the time and he was very strongly against slavery and he saw this line and you see Placide Capote was strongly against slavery slavery had been outlawed in France in 1794 I believe but the kings then let it come back into the French colonies in the 1800s and so there were many people in France who were like we've got to stop slavery anywhere where it is in the French colonies. We have to stop it, but the kings wouldn't do it because money depended on having those slaves. And so two months after Placide Capot wrote A Holy Night, the king was overthrown, abdicated his throne. Two months after that, slavery was abolished in all the French colonies. That was 1848. 1855, we're six years away from the Civil War. And so Dwight, John Sullivan Dwight, hears these words, and he thinks, this is such a powerful tune. And if I could translate this into English, maybe Christians would sing this song around Christmas time. And they would hear this call, Jesus' call, to stand with slaves and against slavery. And so he translated this line, this phrase, truly he taught us to love one another.

1:07:26 His law is love and his gospel is peace. Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease. Now, during this time in Boston, there was a group that was formed called the, it was originally the Massachusetts Immigrant Aid Company. It became the New England Immigrant Aid Company. Formed in 1854, the president, the founder was a Unitarian, the president was a United, was a Methodist pastor. And their job, so in 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It said that Kansas would enter the union as either a slave state or a free state, depending on what the people voted in Kansas. So all the slavery proponents were trying to get people who were pro-slavery to move to Kansas. And in Boston, they were saying, we got to get people from New England to move to Kansas. So they're out there trying to preach this. You know, we'll even raise money to help you move out to Kansas. And they're saying, you've got to move to Kansas. We've got to claim it as a free state. And people are like, Kansas? Where is Kansas? Why would anybody want to move to Kansas? And so they were having a hard time getting this done.

1:08:23 You know, they couldn't get very many people to go. They found that they got hundreds of people to go. The hundreds they got to go, you know who they were? 99% of them were Christians. a large number of those first hundreds were Methodist and Congregationalists and Unitarians and so they moved to a town that the New England aid company had founded called Lawrence Kansas so they were having people move there well John Sullivan Dwight says with this song it might just touch their hearts and have people at Christmas time remember that Christmas isn't just about a baby born it's about changing the world and if we could claim Kansas as a free state then runaway slaves could escape there and be free. And nobody could be enslaved in that state anymore. And so in 1855, he released this song and people began singing it and their hearts were moved. And suddenly there were hundreds more people who wanted to move to Kansas in order to claim it as a free state. I thought you might like to see, you know, it was 1,200 miles from Boston here.

1:09:21 They had to sell everything, uproot their families and load up a wagon and travel for three months to get here. Christians, because they sang this song. Here's a picture of one of those families. I'm going to look at them. These are real people who in 1855 decided to sell everything and move to Kansas. Here's some more who were coming across the mountains in the northeast, coming to Kansas. By the way, they settled Lawrence. First Methodist Church was founded in 1854. Plymouth Congregational Church, 1854. My granddaughter was singing there just last week. the Unitarian Church 1854 and more people came in 1855. In 18, shortly after 1857, I think it was, some Methodists moved to Manhattan and they decided to start a college called Blumont College to train young people to change the world. Of course, Blumont College became what? K-State University. Baker University formed right along the Oregon Santa Fe Trail to form young people just south of Lawrence in order to change the world.

1:10:19 In 1866, the year after the Civil War ended, the University of Kansas was founded by a lot of those same people, Methodists and others, who said, let's train people in Lawrence to change the world. Partly because of a song. I want to ask you this question. What are we willing to do today to release the chains, to set the prisoners free, to break oppression? Or are we just going to go back and open our presence and that's the end of the story?

1:10:48 And I think God's calling us to do more than that. Hey, by the way, I'm a history geek, So can I just show you one little thing? I went and found a map of where the Oregon and Santa Fe trails came from Missouri through Kansas to Lawrence. I thought, where did they come through? You see the signs sometimes on the side of the road. And so Overland Park has a map of where the trails came through. These were the two trails, Oregon and Santa Fe, that took people to Lawrence. So let me just show you. Hold on. There we go. Right here. This is the map from Overland Park. So this is the Oregon and Santa Fe trail. And the trails turn this way and they make their way to Lawrence. So they passed right across this piece of property that's marked in red. Do you know what that piece of property is?

1:11:28 That's where we're sitting right now. 170 years ago, there were Methodists from New England who gave up everything to come to claim Kansas as a free state and to make sure that, you know, the oppressed were set free. What are we going to do? So I have three invitations for you. Here they are. The first one is we're going to have the offering in just a couple of minutes. 17 years ago, Church of the Resurrection voted to give away the entire Christmas Eve offering to projects benefiting children and families living in poverty. This is the biggest worship of the year for us. It's our Super Bowl. And our leaders said, we're gonna give it all away. So everything you put in the offering today is gonna go to benefit children and families in poverty. This service is our gift to you. You pay nothing for this. But you have a chance to change the world tonight. And so I just wanna remind you, over that 17 years, you have given over $24 million on Christmas Eve in the Christmas Eve offerings to benefit children and families living in poverty, 24 million.

1:12:24 During that period of time, so what did you do with that? Well, two years ago, we had commissioned and paid to purchase and have built a mobile dental clinic. You know this, many of you do. There it is, the Swope Health Dental Clinic. It costs $500,000 to do that. This last year, they saw 2,700 children, 2,700 children who would not otherwise have seen a dentist, got their teeth cleaned, their cavities filled, their dental work done, because you gave in a Christmas Eve offering two years ago. It was actually three years ago. Before that, you had given for a bookmobile. So we purchased and had outfitted this bookmobile. And every year, we take this bookmobile to the lowest income communities in Kansas City. And we give books away where kids couldn't participate in the schoolastic book fairs. And last year, you gave 65,000 books to children here in Kansas City. A year before that, you had the mobile food pantry built, the foodmobile. And it takes fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products and meats, and it takes them to the food deserts here in Kansas City where you can't get these things within walking distance of where you live.

1:13:18 And so we, four days a week, we offer free fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products to people who need them in the Kansas City area. And those are just a handful of things that you've done in Kansas City over the last 17 years. Now, half of it stays here in Kansas City. Half of it goes internationally to some of the poorest countries in the world. So we go to all of these places. We don't just send money somewhere. We go to all these places. We have people who serve there. One of those things we've done is in Malawi, a small sliver of a country in South Central Africa, and you have built 215 boreholes their wells, clean water wells, in communities where they only had dirty drinking water before. That's like 215,000 people have clean drinking water because of what you've done. And there's so much more that you've done. So this year, I just wanted you to see every year we try to show you, here's two of the 24 projects you're going to support with the Christmas Eve offering this year. One of those is helping homeless families in Kansas City, Missouri, 650 families over the course of this next year, get back on their feet, get a deposit for rent, get started getting the right kind of job. So these children are not moving from house to house or living in a shelter or somewhere else.

1:14:16 And the second you're going to see is things we're doing with kids in South Africa. Or I'm sorry, in Malawi. Take a look. 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.

1:15:12 She moved on, she graduated high school, and she started her own family and went to nursing school. 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.

1:16:17 And our funding is allowing that to happen. One last thing about the offering, Christmas Eve, I love passing the candlelight, singing, selling, all of it. My favorite part is the offering. And you'd say, well, yeah, you're a pastor, of course. But no, I don't love the offering most of the time. I mean, it's just kind of something that we do as an act of worship to God. But on Christmas Eve, what I love is the fact that this is one physical way that we can change the world together in one night. Last year, you gave $2.1 million on Christmas Eve. And people say, how in the world did you all do that? $2.1 million. So if you're a visitor, I just want you to know how we do it. But we're not asking this of you. But a month ago, I asked our members, would you consider, because you're buying all these things for your family, and your family doesn't need anything. And there are families who need something. What if you took the entire amount you spent on your family, your spouse, your kids, your grandkids, you took all that and you added it up, and you gave that amount in the Christmas Eve offering? And LaVon and I do this every year.

1:17:13 We add up what we spent on our kids, our granddaughter, our extended family, and then we add something to that, and that's what we're going to give in the Christmas Eve offering. Not everybody can do that. Some people give multiple times what they spend on their own family. But you can do something. And I'm just going to ask you when we come to the offering, be generous. Change the world. Here's the second invitation, and that is for you to say yes to Jesus. So he was born, grew up, taught us, suffered, died, and rose from the grave. And he asks us, will you say yes to me? Will you follow me? I'd like for you tonight, when I lead you in the prayer, to simply say, Jesus, I wanna follow you. I accept your love, God. Help me to love you. Jesus, rescue me, save me from myself and from my sin. I wanna follow you. Holy Spirit, help me to love. I'm gonna ask you to do that. here's the last thing I wanna challenge you to do. So what if every day, every one of us said, I'm gonna live my life and part of my life mission today is to love other people.

1:18:07 I wake up every morning, I get on my knees and I say, Jesus, I belong to you. Help me to pay attention and help me to love people. Help me to see and notice and help me to love the best I can. And I'm not perfect at that, but that's my mission every day is to love other people. And what if we did that? And for the 10% of you who are estranged from a family member, what if tomorrow you reached out and said, I'm thinking about you. I care about you. I still love you. Please forgive me.

1:18:33 Here's how the movie Home Alone ends. And by the way, this is a spoiler, but if you haven't seen it after 35 years, you're probably not gonna see it. So Kevin is home alone on Christmas Day and his mom rushes in. She got one flight, you know, or got a way back to come find him. She wrapped her arms around him. And then pretty soon the rest of the family runs in and they're all reconciled together and it's just beautiful and lovely. And then he's looking out the window and he walks to the window and he sees old man Marley next door. Take a look. your love.

1:19:30 And Kevin was a Christ figure for old man Marley. And somehow Christmas brought them all together again. So let me just remind you, 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 in his name, through us perhaps, all oppression shall cease. Would you bow in prayer with me?

1:20:00 And if you feel like you want to reconnect with God, I'd just love to invite you to whisper this prayer or something like it to God right now. God, thank you for loving me. I accept your love. help me to love you in return. Jesus, I trust in you. as my Savior, my Lord, my King. save me from my sin and from myself and help me to follow you Holy Spirit, fill me.

1:20:42 Give me the power and courage to love. In Jesus' name, amen. At this time, we've received the offering. You can give in a couple of different ways. There's an offering envelope in the seat back of the chair in front of you, and there are acrylic boxes as you walk out the door. You can leave it there. It's easier for most people to use your phones, and so you can use your phone today.