12/24/2025 - Christmas Eve - A Weary World Rejoices

Luke 2:1–20

The story of Jesus’ birth does not begin in stillness.

It begins with empire — with a decree that reminds the world who counts and who is counted. Paperwork, politics, control. 

People on the move because power demands it. Luke tells us this so we see the truth: God is born into a world already ordered by force, already crowded, already weary.

Luke is careful to tell us this because he wants us to see where this Christmas miracle actually happens — in the churn of ordinary life shaped by forces far larger than any one person.

Mary and Joseph — tired. Displaced. Obedient to a system that has no concern for their bodies, their future, or the child soon to be born.

Bethlehem is crowded. There is no room.
The world is full, busy, overbooked.

This is where God chooses to arrive.

Not after the chaos settles.
Not once the world becomes calm or kind or ready.
God comes right into the middle of it.

This is one of the most radical claims of our faith: that the miracle of God-with-us does not interrupt ordinary life—it inhabits it.

We often imagine miracles as moments that break the rules: angels blazing across the sky, voices booming from heaven, everything stopping so we can be amazed.

But Luke tells a quieter, braver truth.
The miracle happens while the census continues: while animals need feeding, while Mary’s body labors and aches, while Joseph figures out how to make do with less than what is needed.

The holy is born in the midst of what is unfinished, inconvenient, and overwhelming.

There is no room in the inn — but there is room in a feeding trough.
There is no room in the inn — but there is a stable.
God does not wait for ideal conditions.
God takes what is available and fills it with presence.

Shepherds show up. People without leisure or influence. People working the night shift. Watching. Waiting. Doing what needs to be done to get through another night.
And it is to them — the heavens open.

“Do not be afraid,” the angel declares. “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people.”

Not just for the powerful.
Not just for the holy.
Not just for the well-prepared.
For all the people.

The sign they are given is ordinariness, something that could easily be missed if they weren’t looking, waiting, open to receiving: a baby. Wrapped in cloth. Lying where animals eat. 

The miracle is not a child who is above the mess, but God, who enters it completely.

This is the pattern of the Incarnation. This is the miracle of the incarnation.
God does not rescue us from being human; God joins us in it. Every bodily aspect of it.

Which means this night is not only about what happened long ago in Bethlehem.
It is about what God is still doing — right now — in lives like yours and mine that feel crowded, fragile, stretched thin, or unresolved.

Some of us arrive tonight carrying joy that feels almost too big to hold.
Some may carry grief that no amount of candlelight can erase.
Some exhausted by the sheer logistics of life.
Some lonely in rooms full of people.
Some quietly wondering how much longer they can keep going as they are.

And the astonishing promise of this moment is this: God does not wait for any of that to be fixed.

The miracle is already happening.

God is born to us tonight, not into a perfect world, but into ours.
Into bodies that ache.
Into systems that fail.
Into nights that feel long.
Into lives longing for sanctuary.

And like the shepherds, we are invited not to understand everything, not to clean it all up, but simply to go and see. To notice where love has taken flesh.
To trust that even here — especially here — God is at work.

The shepherds return to their fields.
The census does not stop. Rome still rules.
Life goes on. 

And, tonight, everything is different because God has entered the ordinary and made it holy.

Tonight, we proclaim that truth.

The truth that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it —
not because the darkness disappears, but because God chooses to dwell within it.

This is the very miracle of Christmas:
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

This is good news of great joy.
This is the thrill of hope that can help this weary world rejoice. 

So, on this Christmas Eve, may the God who chooses the crowded places
and the unfinished world
be born again in your life this night.

May hope find you not after the chaos has passed,
but right here in the midst of it.
And may you trust that God’s future
is already stirring within what is.

Amen.