Here is the Christmas Day sermon from 1990, meaning that it was given within about a month of Pastor Larson arriving in Seymour.
A scan is available of the bulletin from this service, and I was able to use OCR to get the text of the sermon from the scanned sermon pages. The gospel text is from John 1. This text is a part of each Christmas season, including Year B in the Revised Common Lectionary.
THE CHRISTMAS FAMILY - Christmas Day - 12/25/1990
John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”
Dear friends in Christ, Christ, grace and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ—God’s Word made flesh to dwell among us.
Last evening and today it has been exciting for me to see So many families together…children come home from school or jobs away from Seymour and out of Wisconsin, grandchildren who have come (not over the river and through the woods, but over hundreds of miles). We have Christmas songs about being home for the holidays, we have special gatherings of family at Christmas, with our own special traditions that we re-enact each year. We go overboard with gifts for those we love. And when we don’t have any close family members, sometimes we reach out and give to someone who becomes family to us. And when a family member cannot be with us, they are in our thoughts throughout Christmas Day. Especially when family members are separated from us by death, Christmas Day becomes a time when we are especially aware of their absence. One young widow whose husband was a pastor wrote this in her Christmas letter: “Some people say to me, This first Christmas without your husband will be hard for you. Probably it will be, but without Christmas, my life would be impossible.”
That brings me to my topic today– ‘The Christmas Family’. That’s who we are, not only today, but all year. That’s what John’s words are about when he says: ‘… The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.’ Oh, there had been a family of God before—Israel was God’s chosen people. But their life had been a series of wanderings from God and reunions. They had seen God as creator and judge more than as Father. In time God chose to do what we celebrate today—to become one with those who he wanted to save….taking on flesh and dwelling among us in his only Son…nothing like that had ever happened in history, nor is it likely to ever happen again. While still being very God of very God—the fullness of God took on human form, and was born in a stable in a particular place and a particular time…fully God, fully human. In that one event, we became family with God in a way that was never before possible. And, knowing what this Christmas event means, we can never again be quite the same.
Let me tell a little story to illustrate God’s coming down to let us know we are his family. There was an elderly Pastor who invited the youth group to the parsonage after Christmas caroling. One of the youth asked him who the little boy was in the picture on the living room wall–4 or 5 years old, holding a little pail. The Pastor says, “That’s me! Even I was little once. That picture has been on the wall wherever I’ve lived for a very special reason. It reminds me of living with ‘Nannie and Grampie’. My parents were divorced when I was small, and I lived with my grandparents more than with my Mother. About the time that picture was taken, I had done something very wrong. My grandmother had this pet cat that was big and white and long-haired. One day when I was wearing those overalls in the picture, I took that bucket of orange paint and put a great big streak of orange right down the back of that cat! It went running off, and then I realized what a bad thing I had done. I was SO scared of what Grandma might to that I hid down in the basement, way back in the old dirty coal bin. Hours went by (it seemed like days!), and I could hear my grandma pacing the floor and searching and yelling, ‘Bobby! Bobby’. Finally, I heard her coming down the basement stairs and my heart started pounding for fear. But, to my surprise, when she found me there, all black with coal dust, she ran to me with a big smile and put her arms around me and gave me a big hug…tears flowing down her face. She was so happy to find me, they were tears of joy. She never said a word about the cat, and neither did I! That picture on the wall reminds me of what Christmas is really about—it’s about forgiveness, but more than that, it’s about love—love that causes God to come down into the coalbin of come this earth and to be one with us–to surround us in love and to be family with us. That day in the coalbin I knew what it was to belong…nothing. could separate me from that grandma who loved me so.”
The Apostle Paul says that there is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. It is because of love that the God of all creation came down to be one with us, to be family with us in the Christmas event. Emmanuel, ‘God with us’, means that God has come down and entered the coal-bin of our lives, forgiven us, dusted us off, and holds us tight in his love. God is with us right now, now, no matter where we’ve been and what we’ve done. In Christ, God wants us to know that we can be whole again, free again, part of the family of God.
It’s no wonder that the angel said to Mary, ‘Fear not’, and the same to the Shepherds—this is good news of Christmas, that God has come down to touch us in a family way, to give us the assurance that we belong, we are loved and wanted. God has made room for us, even in a world that had trouble making room for his Son.
This Christmas as we celebrate our family-ness — with time together and memories to share, let’s also remember the story of how God became related to us in a special way in Jesus the Christ. In this Jesus, the Word of all the ages came down to share in our humanity, in our world, and to lift us in the assurance that God knows our condition, knows our need, knows us well. Of course, families seldom get together without a meal, and today we share in such a family meal, in which God shares with us the assurance in those familiar words “This is my body–this is my blood”— that we are touched by God in a special way in the Christ event.
God bless your family time this Christmas. May you be secure in the assurance that you belong to one another….and be assured, that all who would receive him belong to Christ.
+The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.