Pastor Darren: It's an interesting story.
Pastor Darren: In way interesting in the sense that it is so simple and so basic, a 2,000-year-old story.
Pastor Darren: And yet so many Christians come together every year on this night, and we retell this very same story, the same story.
Pastor Darren: Joseph and Mary coming together, traveling to Bethlehem, having trouble getting into the inn, right?
Pastor Darren: Then the shepherds are told about this Jesus being born.
Pastor Darren: Wise men are told about this baby going to be born.
Pastor Darren: Angels appear.
Pastor Darren: It's this event that in some ways magical and in some ways pretty darn basic and simple.
Pastor Darren: And here we are telling this tale every single year.
Pastor Darren: I'm here to tell you, we got a lot of good Christmas stories in our culture that we could use on Christmas Eve night.
Pastor Darren: This is what I'm telling you.
Pastor Darren: We've got good stories.
Pastor Darren: How many of you have already watched It's a Wonderful Life for this year?
Pastor Darren: Did you get it in?
Pastor Darren: Some of you, I guess.
Pastor Darren: You're not committed, you're not of the the church of It's a Wonderful Life.
Pastor Darren: Miracle on 34th.
Pastor Darren: Anyone got fans of that?
Pastor Darren: A few of you over there.
Pastor Darren: Okay, some of you.
Pastor Darren: Now, those are some good, some good movies, right?
Pastor Darren: The stories of Christmas.
Pastor Darren: There's these values that are being lived out, right?
Pastor Darren: And we've got uh Jimmy Stewart of all people fighting for the folks, fighting for deep, deep inner values.
Pastor Darren: And boy, when he's hurting, we're hurting too, because it's Jimmy Stewart.
Pastor Darren: And then the town comes together for him, and Mr.
Pastor Darren: Potter doesn't get to win, right?
Pastor Darren: Good stories about Christmas, right?
Pastor Darren: Miracle 34th Street, too.
Pastor Darren: We get to believe in Santa Claus and good things like that.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: We watched uh Elf just the other day.
Pastor Darren: Even that one, kind of silly, but still this sort of fun value of the spirit of Christmas being awakened by this nutty elf that finds his way into the real world.
Pastor Darren: Well, not really an elf, but you know the story, I'm sure.
Pastor Darren: But here's this good story of the spirit of Christmas, these great stories that we got.
Pastor Darren: And diehard.
Pastor Darren: Am I right?
Pastor Darren: We got John McClain out there fighting to protect whatever building it was he was protecting from Hans Gruber, who was just a simple robber, nothing better, had no values.
Pastor Darren: Good Christmas stories.
Pastor Darren: Am I right?
Pastor Darren: We've got these stories, and yet we don't turn to them on Christmas Eve.
Pastor Darren: We turn to this simple, simple story every single year.
Pastor Darren: Two thousand-year-old story.
Pastor Darren: I don't know if you ever ask yourself why we land there every year.
Pastor Darren: Because it's not really the story that we're um tied to.
Pastor Darren: I think it's more the story is pointing to some deep, deep beliefs and values that we as Christians hold really, really dear.
Pastor Darren: These values and understandings about how the world works that are so important to us.
Pastor Darren: Like just the idea that when God was taking an opportunity to come to this world, God didn't come to the leaders of the world, God came to these fairly low people, Joseph and Mary.
Pastor Darren: Didn't seem to have too much wealth, too much power.
Pastor Darren: There's a value there that's getting expressed by the Christian faith about how God appreciates all people, and not just those who are in power.
Pastor Darren: I like too how the story includes shepherds and these wise men, these magi, the shepherds.
Pastor Darren: I've preached before about shepherds.
Pastor Darren: You ever been a shepherd before?
Pastor Darren: Do you ever want to be a shepherd?
Pastor Darren: It's a little bit of a rough life.
Pastor Darren: You're out there, your best friends are sheep.
Pastor Darren: You're hanging out with it's kind of dirty, a little bit lonely out there.
Pastor Darren: Those are not jobs that people are hunting down.
Pastor Darren: It's not definite, it's not folks uh uh beating down the door to get these shepherd jobs.
Pastor Darren: These are people who are on the economic scale fairly low.
Pastor Darren: And yet angels are sent to bring them to the party here.
Pastor Darren: And the wise men, the magi, were told that they come from far-off places.
Pastor Darren: Not necessarily from this one spot, but from a broader sense of the globe, at least as they understood it in those days.
Pastor Darren: I hear values getting expressed in this story, this simple story about how God was not trying to reach a small amount of people, God was trying to reach the whole world.
Pastor Darren: And when we tell that story, when we hear it again year after year, we're reminding ourselves of that value that God has, of that God that we worship, that we follow, that we appreciate.
Pastor Darren: Finally, I think maybe maybe most important about this story is the fact that God, the God who created all that we understand, at least in our belief system, the God that created everything that we understand to be, also loves that creation and loves the people in this world, uh the children of God, so much so that God sent God's Son to come and to be amongst us and to teach us about what life abundant was supposed to look like, how we were supposed to live in this world, how we were supposed to find richness in this world, how we were supposed to bless our lives in this world.
Pastor Darren: I'd like to think it has something to do with an individual thing, but I think it's a communal thing too.
Pastor Darren: God wanted us to understand the depths of love that were present in our world and all around us.
Pastor Darren: And on this day, when we celebrate the birth of Christ, it's a day where we remind ourselves of that belief that God loves this world and loves the people in it and wants us to share that love.
Pastor Darren: So it's not just this simple, simple story.
Pastor Darren: It's a simple story full of eternal truths that we want to embody, that we want to own.
Pastor Darren: It's a story that we hear, but it's also a story we want to make ours.
Pastor Darren: And my prayer for you is that here in this Christmas season, you might be able to here on Christmas Eve and maybe Christmas tomorrow, be able to claim that story as yours.
Pastor Darren: Be able to believe with some depth about that the reality of love in this world, and then dare I say, go on and live your lives beyond just tomorrow in that belief.
Pastor Darren: That it won't be just this story or the Christian story, but it'll be your story.
Pastor Darren: Amen.