SPEAKER_00: Tonight the church dares to proclaim something almost unbelievable that God has entered our story.
SPEAKER_00: Not symbolically, not poetically, not as a distant idea, but truly, personally, irreversibly.
SPEAKER_00: At Christmas we do not celebrate a myth or a memory, not some sentimental fairy tale meant to warm our hearts for a season.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate a moment when eternity stepped into our time, when heaven touched earth, when the infinite God became a fragile child.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight God did not shout from the sky, he cried in a manger.
SPEAKER_00: And Saint Matthew begins this astonishing story in the most unexpected way.
SPEAKER_00: Not with angels, not with shepherds, not with a blazing star, but with a list of names, a genealogy.
SPEAKER_00: At first glance it feels almost tedious.
SPEAKER_00: Forty two generations, names we struggle to pronounce, stories we barely remember.
SPEAKER_00: Why begin here?
SPEAKER_00: On the holiest night of the year when something that feels so ordinary.
SPEAKER_00: But because Matthew is asking and answering the deepest questions the human heart asks.
SPEAKER_00: Where does Jesus come from?
SPEAKER_00: What is he here for?
SPEAKER_00: Who is he really?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's answer is daring.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did not fall from the sky disconnected from our human condition.
SPEAKER_00: He entered it, a real life human being.
SPEAKER_00: He belongs to a family, a people born in our history, a story marked by glory and failure, faithfulness and betrayal, hope and exile.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew structures this genealogy carefully, three movements.
SPEAKER_00: From Abraham to David, promise and glory.
SPEAKER_00: From David to exile, collapse and total loss.
SPEAKER_00: From exile to Joseph, waiting, longing, quiet hope.
SPEAKER_00: And into that story Jesus is born.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what the prophet Isaiah announces.
SPEAKER_00: For Zion's sake I will not be silent until her vindication shines forth like the dawn.
SPEAKER_00: Christmas is the night when God refuses to remain silent any longer.
SPEAKER_00: The long waiting of Israel, the experience of exile, abandonment, and being forgotten, Isaiah names it honestly, forsaken, desolate.
SPEAKER_00: But tonight God gives his people a new name, not forsaken, but my delight, not desolate, but my espoused.
SPEAKER_00: In the birth of Christ, God does not merely rescue his people, he commits himself to them.
SPEAKER_00: Like a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, Isaiah says, So shall God rejoice in you.
SPEAKER_00: Because you see, Christmas is not simply about coming about God coming near us.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's true, but it is about God binding himself to us forever.
SPEAKER_00: And that comes, and then comes the surprises.
SPEAKER_00: Along the way, Matthew names people no one would ever expect.
SPEAKER_00: Tamar, Rabhard, Ruth, Bathsheba.
SPEAKER_00: Bathsheba, women marked by scandal, suffering, foreignness, moral complexity.
SPEAKER_00: Their presence is deliberate.
SPEAKER_00: Before Jesus ever speaks a word, Matthew is already preaching a gospel.
SPEAKER_00: God did not wait for perfect families or spotless histories before acting.
SPEAKER_00: He works through our brokenness.
SPEAKER_00: He redeems what is irredeemable.
SPEAKER_00: Some of the people in Jesus' family tree were saints, others were not.
SPEAKER_00: Yet God wove salvation through all of them.
SPEAKER_00: And that's good news for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Because each of us carries a history beneath the surface.
SPEAKER_00: Some of it is beautiful, some of it painful, and some of it we would rather not remember.
SPEAKER_00: And yet tonight the gospel declares this with clarity and with hope.
SPEAKER_00: Your story is not an obstacle to God.
SPEAKER_00: It is the very place where God chooses to enter.
SPEAKER_00: And then Matthew delivers the greatest surprise of all.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph is not the biological father.
SPEAKER_00: This child comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is conceived not by the power of a human, but by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: He comes from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He comes through human history, fully divine, fully human, Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: And that name, Emmanuel, changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: Not God above us, not God watching us from a distance, God with us.
SPEAKER_00: And where does this God with us choose to arrive?
SPEAKER_00: Not in a palace, not in power, not in comfort, but in a stable.
SPEAKER_00: Rejected, overlooked, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a feeding trough.
SPEAKER_00: God chooses poverty so that no one could ever say, He doesn't understand my life.
SPEAKER_00: He chooses obscurity so that no one could ever say, He doesn't see me.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Christmas speaks so powerfully to us tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have come here carrying joy, others carrying grief.
SPEAKER_00: Some carry the ache of a loved one missing from the table this year.
SPEAKER_00: Some carry guilt, doubt, exhaustion, loneliness, disappointments, or even have questions you have not dared to voice.
SPEAKER_00: And Christmas has a way of intensifying all of that.
SPEAKER_00: But tonight the gospel does not tell us to pretend everything is fine.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us that God entered into our messiness.
SPEAKER_00: The cries of the infant in the major already echo the cries of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The wood of the crib already points toward the wood on Calvary.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus did not come to avoid suffering, He came to redeem it from the within.
SPEAKER_00: So I tell you, if you're hurting tonight, the Christ child whispers to you, I know you.
SPEAKER_00: I will never abandon you.
SPEAKER_00: I am with you.
SPEAKER_00: And if you feel lost, he's telling you, I have come for you.
SPEAKER_00: If your faith feels fragile or distant, remember this.
SPEAKER_00: Christmas is not about your search for God, it's about God searching constantly for you.
SPEAKER_00: The angels, the shepherds, the wise men all testify to the same truth.
SPEAKER_00: The word made flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight, this is not a story we admire from afar.
SPEAKER_00: This is an invitation.
SPEAKER_00: Saint Paul makes that point.
SPEAKER_00: When he stands in the synagogue, he does not begin with ideas, he tells a story.
SPEAKER_00: God chooses our ancestors.
SPEAKER_00: God raised up David.
SPEAKER_00: God remained faithful through exile, through struggle, and through waiting.
SPEAKER_00: And then Paul delivers the heart of the Christian proclamation.
SPEAKER_00: He says, From this man's descendants, God, according to his promise, has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christmas is not God abandoning history, it is God fulfilling it.
SPEAKER_00: What God promised across generations, he now delivers tonight in a child.
SPEAKER_00: So this night invites us to bring whatever we're carrying to the manger, our wounds, our doubts, our failures, our disappointments, our hopes, to believe again that light can break through darkness, that grace can emerge from any failure or mistake, that God is closer than what we actually think or believe.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah announces a God who will not stay silent.
SPEAKER_00: Paul proclaims a promise finally fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: And Matthew shows us how God keeps that promise by entering into a family, a history, a human story like our own.
SPEAKER_00: So when you leave this church tonight, don't leave unchanged.
SPEAKER_00: Pause at this crush tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that Christ child.
SPEAKER_00: Let the light of Christ reach your heart, and then carry that light into your homes, your relationships, your work, your world.
SPEAKER_00: Because tonight heaven has entered earth.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight God has stepped into our fragile, complicated story.
SPEAKER_00: And if God has chosen to be with us, then no life is too broken, no night is too dark, no heart is too gone, absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And if you believe this with all of your heart, then nothing can be the same.
SPEAKER_00: Allow Christ, this Christ child, to transform your lives.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_00: Merry Christmas.