Christmas Eve 2025
Luke 2:1-20 Jack Hardaway
ENCHANTED
What do you want me to say?
What do we need to hear?
What can we hear?
I pray when I work on my sermons.
I pray things like that, often in desperation.
I wear myself out, and usually when I’m done over thinking things and in a daze, something comes to me. It’s like I’m finally ready to listen.
Christmas Eve.
The message I am almost always given is that this world is enchanted, it is full of magic and wonder. The children have it right.
Unto you is born this day.
A sign. A child wrapped in bands of cloth.
Good news, great joy.
A multitude of celestial beings singing in the night to a little band of sleepy shepherds way out in the fields.
The world is being reenchanted, inhabited, filled with magic and awe, splendor and praise.
The weary world rejoices.
A thrill of hope.
The outward signs of the enchantment manifest this time of year in the storm of decorations and festivities and gift giving, we can’t help ourselves, even in the crass commercialism, we are trying to express this magic.
The grief of this time of year is also a manifestation of the enchantment, because we know we are missing something or someone or both who fills the world with splendor, and they are gone or they never arrived. We feel the absence.
We relive the magic of childhood sometimes through our own children or grandchildren, or other people’s children.
And then there are those children, who love Christmas presents, make no mistake, but what really has their attention is Santa Clause and the magic and mystery that surrounds him, and they pursue that mystery with great passion.
Those children are tuned in to the enchantment of the world in a special way.
So if the infinite mercy that speaks the world and the Universe into existence can become an infant child, then the world is deeply inhabited with a splendor that defies our capacity for perception.
Anything can happen.
The smallest things done in great love seems to be the key to opening the door.
Swaddling clothes.
A field by night.
Visiting someone.
Bringing something good, speaking something good, using words the right way, the way they were meant to be used, for building a world filled with magic.
Small things done with great love.
Good news of great joy has come to us, that this world is crowded and crammed with the infinite love in the smallest of ordinary things and people.
The savior, the messiah. The Lord.
In the ordinary things of this night and this life.
I pray that the quiet thrill of this night will carry us and lift us.
I pray that we will be the children who pursue the mystery of Christmas with great passion, and that we will be relentless.
The world has been reenchanted.
Good news that we need to hear.
May we have ears to hear.