Bible Text: Matthew 1:18-25 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: Christmas | December is often a month of intense to-do lists.  But it’s Christmas Eve!  And that means there is just one thing left to do:  Rejoice!  The word rejoice means to be fully of joy, to take delight in something wonderful, or to make glad.  In the Bible, rejoicing is not a feeling but an activity.  People Rejoice and Give Thanks.  They Rejoice and Sing.  They Rejoice and Obey.  Jesus tells his disciples to Rejoice and Leap for joy!

Leaping might not be such a good activity for us tonight, since it’s a little dark and maybe slippery.  But I think we can Rejoice and Cheer!  Would you like to try it?  I admit, I made this cheer up all by myself, so I hope you like it.  It goes like this:

Lean to the Left

Lean to the Right

Ring your bells for Christmas night!

What do you think?  I think that’s a pretty good way to rejoice, at least during a pandemic when we have to be very careful about singing and yelling and high fiving each other.  Rejoicing in a pandemic requires getting a little creative.

But even during a pandemic, we can rejoice, because our Savior is born.  He is named Jesus, Jehovah Saves, God Helps.  He is called Emmanuel, God With Us.  He is here!

This name Emmanuel is so important.  Just think.  GOD is with us—Jesus wasn’t just an ordinary man, but was God made flesh.  God IS with us—not just in the past, not just in the future, but with us even in this moment.  With us in our happiness, with us in our sadness, with us all the time.  God is WITH us:  not oblivious to us, or working against us, but WITH us.  And God is with US.  God didn’t come just to connect with a select few, or to hand-pick an elite group of followers.  God came to connect to everyone, people just like us.  God sent Jesus to be a friend to all humankind.

I’ve got a story to tell you.  It was Christmas Eve, and Bill was sitting in his easy chair, enjoying a warm fire in his fireplace.  His wife had asked him to go with her to the Christmas Eve service at church, but he said no, no.  I don’t believe in all that stuff.  You go without me.

While Bill’s wife was at church, the weather changed.  It got very windy, and it started to snow.  He heard several loud thumps against his living room window.  These were very unusual noises, and Bill was concerned.  So he got up and looked out the window.  His porch light showed three little birds lying dazed on the ground, and many other birds perched on his fence.  They looked so pathetic, out in the cold stormy night.

Bill wanted to help them.  He pulled on his coat and boots and went outside, thinking he could open up his garage door and they could stay there for the night.  But the birds wouldn’t trust him.  He tried to get near them to shoo them toward the open garage door, but they flew away.  He tried to catch them to carry them to safety, but they hopped away.  He ran back into the house and god some pieces of bread.  He tried luring them into the barn with a trail of bread crumbs, but they wanted nothing to do with his efforts to save them.

“If only I could become one of them,” he thought to himself, “then I could show them the way!”  At that moment, the church bells rang out in honor of Christ’s birth.  They were announcing that it was Christmas Day, the celebration of Emmanuel—God with us.

Suddenly, everything Bill had ever heard about Christmas fell into place.  We are like those birds, Bill thought.  God sent Jesus out of compassion for us, to show us the way, to lead us into safety.  God found a way to connect with us:  by becoming one of us.

That is why we rejoice on Christmas Eve.  This is our anniversary, the anniversary of God sending Jesus as a way of proving to the whole human race just how much God loves us.  Emmanuel, God with us.  Tonight is a night to rejoice.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, spent his life spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.  Along the way he had many failures as well as successes.  He had good years and bad years.  At the very end of his life, he uttered these final words:  “The best of all is, God is with us.”  No matter what our circumstances, we can always rejoice, because God is indeed always with us.

So Merry Christmas!  Rejoice and Be Glad!  Will you do the cheer with me one more time?

Lean to the left

Lean to the right

Ring your bells for Christmas night!

Amen.