Christmas Message
Thank you for being here today. What a unique opportunity to gather and worship God on a Sunday morning that is also Christmas Day. I can’t imagine any place I’d rather be to celebrate the birth of Christ than among the body of Christ in worship.
This is also our last Sunday worship of 2016. But the scripture we just heard is the same one we heard on the first Sunday of 2016. On that day I preached about the importance of words. The scripture reminds us that it was by God’s word that the universe was created. “In the beginning was the Word, and all things came into being” through the Word.
I said then that God uses words to create, but humans often use words to destroy. God said “Let there be light,” and there was light. God spoke the word, and it happened. Creation, by a word.
But the words humans use aren’t always so creative. Quite often, the words humans use are destructive. Bullies use words to slander and ridicule others.
It just so happens that, in the wee hours of the night last night, I had a conversation with someone who had experienced just that. I had got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water, when I heard a noise. I stepped outside, and - I kid you not - there was a sleigh hooked up to a bunch of reindeer! I know, right!
I went up to the first one, who had a bright red nose. And he told me about how he used to get picked on and bullied. He said to me, “all of the other reindeer used to laugh and call me names. I’m different, you see.”
I did see. It was hard not to see. That nose was so bright. And all the other reindeer, he said, didn’t think that was normal. So they used their words to try to destroy Rudolph’s spirit.
Rudolph said: “I felt so terrible. I even thought about ending it all. But then, one night, the big man himself - Santa Claus - looked at me, and he saw my bright red nose not as something to make fun of, but as a gift. He even affirmed and welcomed me and my nose. And he said to me, ‘Rudolph, with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?’”
Rudolph then told me how good that made him feel, that Santa didn’t just want his help despite his red nose; that Santa didn’t just want to tolerate what made Rudolph different. Santa celebrated it. Santa affirmed it. Santa saw the diversity that Rudolph represented as a gift and a blessing!
And for Rudolph, I think that made all the difference. And it made a difference for everyone else, too: Once Santa saw Rudolph’s nose as a gift, all the other reindeer learned to love him; they even shouted out in glee!
Just like Santa affirmed Rudolph and his uniqueness, so does God affirm each one of us in our uniqueness. And God does that through Jesus. Through Jesus, God especially affirms those who have been cast aside by society. God chose to become not just any human, but a human who came from a poor family in a town that others looked down on. And all his life, Jesus identified with the poor, with those who had been forgotten, with those who had been ridiculed and bullied and made fun of.
And this took place so that every person who has ever had words used against them in an effort to destroy them might know that God’s only desire is to love them and affirm them and lift them up. Not in spite of what makes them different, but because of what makes them different.
And that is why Bixby Knolls Christian Church is an open and affirming congregation. We don’t just tolerate our differences. We celebrate them. No matter what your race, your sexual orientation, your gender identity, we celebrate and affirm the gifts you bring to the body of Christ. And we will do everything we can to use our words to create and not destroy. Because that, we believe, is the way of Christ, the one whose birth we celebrate today.
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