Will Rice - Sermon #13 - Christmas Day - Rejoice

Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com

Psalm 96
Luke 2:1-14

“Rejoice”

For a pastor every Sunday is a challenge. It is a challenge because each and every week we are faced with doing a number of different things in worship. If you to ask me to name the primary purpose of worship, I would probably say that it is about expressing our love and reverence to God, praising God. But we all know it is much more complicated than that. The word in Greek that we most often translate as worship (proskewneyoh) conveys a meaning of bowing down before. The word in Hebrew (ahvad) conveys more of a sense of serving. In worship we do these things and more. We praise God, we bow down before God in prayer and in confession, we serve, or at least we reflect upon how we do and should serve. We also experience the mystery of God in the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion. And there is more.

Because, for many, worship is the primary, if not only contact with the church, we teach. We teach in order that we may expand our faith and deepen our relationship with God. We teach, not only through the words of the sermon, but through everything we do. The songs usually not only lift praise to God, their words can teach us about God. The words and actions of our sacraments tell about God. Even the place we worship teaches. Stained glass is more than just beautiful decoration. The images in the glass teach us about our faith in pictures.

If that were not enough, worship can be evangelism, in the true sense of the word, meaning to spread the good news of the Gospel. Worship can be a place where people for the first time or again can experience call of God on their lives and reach back toward the outreached hand of God.

Somehow the pastor, and this only works with God’s help, has to pull all these things and more together into something that makes some sort of sense and doesn’t go much over an hour. But I think on Christmas day, the challenge is a little less. Christmas day may be the one day where we can make worship simply about rejoicing and absorbing the wonder of Christmas.

But as good as that sounds, it can be kind of hard for a pastor to do. If I just read you the Christmas story again and say, “let’s just rejoice in the good news of the birth of Christ!” I am left wondering if I have done a disservice. As a teacher, I am wondering if we all know what that means, as an evangelist, I am wondering if that is enough for those searching for God to feel like they have found a connection.

But then I think back. I will never forget, as a young boy, standing outside in the freezing cold of a Western New York winter in front of the United Methodist Church down the street from my home. My oldest sister was singing "Silent Night" as part of what I think was a live nativity. I remember being moved by the sounds I heard, but not knowing why.

I think Christmas reminds us that is sometimes alright just to be moved by wonder and not worry about why. Don’t get me wrong, the why is important, and throughout the year, in sermons, in liturgy, in Bible studies, we will and should talk about the why. We should explore the questions of our faith in hopes of deepening our faith and enriching our relationship with God, but today, perhaps we can just rejoice.

Donald Miller in his book Searching for God Knows What takes me one step further. He contends that there is stuff you just can’t understand in your head until those things sink into your very being.[1]

Today’s reading from the Hebrew prayer book, The Book of Psalms so reflects that idea of wondrous praise and rejoicing.

⁹Worship the Lord in holy splendor; tremble before him, all the earth.

Notice it says “all the earth.” Not just, all the people, all the earth.

¹⁰Say among the nations, “The Lord is king! The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity.” ¹¹Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; ¹²let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy ¹³before the Lord

All the trees in the forest sing for joy! What a wonder-filled image. If you look at plants, from the tiniest weed to the grandest oak, they all reach up their leaves in branches in praise, their very existence in triumphant praise to God.

I think back to that cold night listening to the words of “Silent Night.” As United Methodists, we believe in prevenient grace, that idea that long before we go searching for God, God is reaching out to us, seeking to draw us close, just waiting for us to reach back. As I think about that moment and that music, I sense God's wonder in it and consider how that worked in my heart for decades before I reached back and accepted the love that God had always offered me.

It is humbling when preparing for Christmas worship, when thinking about all the details and all the words, to consider that no matter what I do, God will be reaching out, whispering to us all, teaching our hearts the story of Christmas in words we can all understand.

Today, I will just try to stay out of God’s way.

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[1] Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What, (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2004) 57