Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re here tonight, though I have to tell you the pageant this afternoon was something to behold, truly. There were so many young people who wanted to be in the pageant, the altar area was packed with shepherds, sheep, cows, angels, wise men, someone holding the star, the holy family and Gabriel, and three narrators. It was joyfully chaotic and people couldn’t stop smiling.

The tiny cows, finding it hard to pay attention, but cows aren’t famous for their focus. And the little angel who brought her pink purse with her to herald the birth of Jesus – after all she was a long way from home, you never know when you might need something. And the angel Gabriel and Mary speaking and nodding, two good friends in conversation, negotiating this deal between them. And baby Jesus, was sitting in his manger/car seat grinning from ear to ear, recently baptized here, he knows how to win the crowd over. The sanctuary was vibrating with excitement as all the kids shared their energy and joy with the rest of us, and we needed it.

We need this too, a different service, more centered, more comprehensive in our celebration of this night. We need to spend some time finding our way from the world we live in to this holy night. Because we live in a world that is more complicated than the greeting card images of the holy family, clean and neat and two dimensional.

And as cute as our pageant was, in reality: two of the shepherds have life threatening food allergies, another of the shepherds is wearing hearing aids, Mary was adopted from Kazakhstan, and Joseph has already battled and beaten cancer in his one decade of life.

Like the rest of us, the kids of our pageant live in the real world, which isn’t cute, isn’t neat and clean. We know that – and this year we have been reminded again and again. It’s been relentless, hasn’t it? There’s a sense of inevitability that we can’t shake. Each time we hear of another heart wrenching event – we know it isn’t an isolated incident, or even just that we are having a very bad year, our very real fear is that this is our new normal.

So perhaps this year we hear this story of Jesus’ birth with a different perspective. We can take some solace from the fact that this miracle, the incarnation of God, didn’t happen in a “happy” time, in an easy time, to upper middle class parents living a stress free life. Rather, God chose to come to us in the hard times, in the midst of our struggles with power and oppression and violence and human greed.

God chose to be present with us in the midst of the harsh realities of this world: then, and now. On this holy night, God came to us to live among us, in a time of an oppressive regime, among down trodden people, who were forced to take to the road for the purposes of taxation. God’s own son is born to a poor couple who arrive to find there is no room for them, to a mother who gives birth among the animals. The birth is noted only in heaven, and among some scruffy shepherds. The new family will soon be refugees running for their lives, as a homicidal ruler hunts for the baby, slaughtering innocent children in his fear and rage. And while he will not succeed in killing the child, this family will know the pain of loss, their son will be persecuted unjustly and killed by the state.

This long ago story doesn’t feel as distant this year. A year filled with violence, killing, intractable racism, fearful bigotry, hateful rhetoric, and fear of the other. We have experienced multiple acts of extremism, as terrorists, both foreign and home grown, have committed violent acts against innocent people.

So we need this night, to be here, to hear this story together once again. Because this is a night of deep remembering, of claiming the depth of true joy, of receiving the gift of God’s presence in our midst. Of giving thanks that God chose to become one of us – in the reality of the world, in the reality of our lives.

Our God knows what it is to be us. This is not a “happy” story. But it’s a real story, and that matters more than happy ever can. God with us, Emmanuel, not in a bucolic Christmas card manger scene, but in reality. In all the reality of our world, then and now.

That’s the source of the joy that is within us, that’s the foundation of our hope. That God chose to be in the midst of us, as one of us. That God still chooses humanity, God chooses to be present with us, even though God knows what that means, what that feels like.

I know it’s been a tough year, disillusioning and heart breaking – but this night invites us to choose humanity ourselves. To hold out hope for humanity. To be vulnerable to one another, to the reality of the world, and our experience of it, so we can be part of God’s transforming work. To care when another is in pain, to be enraged when another life is lost to senseless violence, to value the lives of all of our children. Even if they happen to born some place only fit for livestock, to an impoverished uneducated family, of different ethnicity than us. (or language or religion…) Even if they are homeless, refugees from violence.

Tonight we remember, we hear the story, and we are invited to choose to be invested in one another and all of God’s people. To be people of hope and love. God chooses us, and invites us to choose to care for God’s children, and thereby to be transformed into agents of grace, bringers of light, people of true hope and joy, trusting in God’s faithfulness and love.

And yes, we can sing beautiful carols and take communion and visit with friends and family, and enjoy this holy time together… and all that food. (And the gifts, can’t forget the gifts.)

But in the days to come – pay attention. For God works in and through and for those whom the world has no room for, those the world considers to be of no account.

In what unlikely person, place, situation, we will see God at work, transforming the world? Maybe someone who looks like us, or someone who is so completely other that they frighten us. Or someone who normally goes completely unnoticed by us – the fed ex person who dropped off packages, the young kid standing on the median at the intersection holding the cardboard sign asking for help, that older woman who is always in the way in the grocery aisle. God is at work in the most unlikely people. God might even choose to be at work in and through us. Because that’s the beauty of God’s incarnation, that God chooses to be among us, to join with us in this life, in all it’s joy and pain and messiness.

So pay attention – God’s saving work happens in subtle, out of the limelight ways. Ask the shepherds, they will tell you to keep alert and look up – if you want to notice angels shouting for joy.

Pay attention – for in a small forgotten place, lit only by a starry night sky, and heralded by outcasts and misfits and common laborers, a love story is playing out, over and over again, as God is at work in and through and for seemingly inconsequential people. A child is being born, a family is defying the odds, powerless people are changing the world, through love and mercy.

God is at work, saving the world. Pay attention, you don’t want to miss it. It will happen in unexpected ways and places, and it will matter more than we can imagine. Love is like that. And it’s the only thing that can change the world from what it is, into what God dreams it will be – for all of us, the people of God, God’s beloved.

On this night God’s love came to us, in the form of a newborn child, God with us, and for us, in every moment of our very real lives. Emmanuel. God with us.
Thanks be to God.