Jesu Juva
Luke 2
December 24, 2020
Christmas Eve
Dear saints of our Savior,
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter! That may be the first German phrase I ever learned. I wasn’t lucky enough to have German-speaking grandparents. But the soundtrack to my childhood Christmases was Nat King Cole. And he crooned out that tune auf Deutsch. And, of course, I also knew the English translation: O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches. Or, my own personal translation: How faithful is your foliage.
In my family we always had a live, fresh cut Christmas tree (like the one behind me tonight). The smell, the sap, the needles—that’s how Christmas was done. (In fact, my sisters and I were forbidden to associate with families that had artificial trees.) But I lost my Tannenbaum bigotry twenty years ago. It happened on a dark and snowy night in a Kmart on South Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Turns out, someone in our family was allergic to tree pollen; so I swallowed my pride and my prejudice and brought home a blue-light special from Kmart.
Best purchase I ever made. For twenty years that artificial tree has stood like a champion in our living room every December. Every year someone will inevitably ask, “Is it real?” But two decades in, I’ve started to wonder: Just how long can this tree last? Will its hundreds of branches continue to support the weight of all those lights and ornaments? Will we still be able to shape and bend a box of branches stored in the basement into a thing of beauty? Will those branches still be “lovely” after all these years? Will that “foliage” remain “faithful?”
If ever there would have been a year for the prized Tannenbaum to give out, this would have been it, right? Christmas 2020 is a little different for most of us. If you had told me a year ago that we were going to need TWO Christmas Eve services in 2020 to accommodate the crowd size, that would have been music to my ears. Little did I know our seating capacity would be cut in half by Covid—that this year there would be no room for anybody in about half of our pews.
When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, there was, famously, no room for them in the inn. This year has been the year for “no room.” No room for you at the office. No room for you in the classroom. No room for you at the coffee shop and the barber shop. No room at the restaurant, theater and stadium. No room for you at church. No room for you with loved ones.
That’s been an inconvenience; but it also highlights a deeper problem which transcends 2020. The real problem isn’t with the virus; the problem has always been with us. In this year of “no room,” we ourselves have subtly shut out the Savior. We who know best have silently refused to make room for Jesus in our lives and hearts. We’re no better than the Bethlehemites of the first Christmas.
No room for Jesus in our lives. No room for His Word. No room for His promises and His love. No room in our hearts for growth in faith. No room for the forgiveness of others. No room for the people—the family—whom Jesus has given us to love and care for. On this strange Christmas in this strange year, our sin has estranged us from the Christ we come to worship. In our lives, our homes, our hearts, the sad, unspoken sentiment of the season is: No room—no room for Jesus.
As a preacher, I approach Christmas every year the same way I approach my aging, artificial Christmas tree. With the tree I wonder: Will that fake foliage hold up for another Christmas? Will that Tannenbaum have what it takes to lighten the darkness of our home for yet another holiday season? Will it bear the weight of lights and ornaments and memories? Will those ever-green branches retain the strength to point us upward, from whence cometh our help, in the Christ of
The Christmas gospel I’m called to preach is much older than my old tree. But every year as I approach the pulpit on Christmas Eve (and this, by the way, is my 25th consecutive Christmas in the pulpit), I approach the task with uncertainty. It’s such an old and ancient story which took place back in the days of Caesar Augustus (back when Quirinius was Governor of Syria). Do these dusty old words have what it takes to lighten our darkness? To inject the thrill of hope into our weary world and our sinful lives? To cause us to lift up our eyes with the shepherds and “fear not?”
I know every chapter and verse of the Christmas gospel, like every branch on my old Christmas tree. There are no surprises. But every year anew it is a great and mighty wonder: Will Mary believe the angel’s unbelievable message that she should be the mother of God? Will Joseph set aside his doubts and take Mary to be his wife, and faithfully raise a Son who is not his son? Will angels fill the starry sky with song? Will those stinky shepherds set aside their fear, leave their sheep, go to Bethlehem and the manger and the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes? Will Mary invite us all to ponder all these things in our hearts?
And every year I am deeply moved to discover how these good tidings of great joy become even better and ever greater. Our hearts may have no room for Jesus; but Jesus has come to make room for you in His eternal kingdom. God’s love for us stands like a champion once again in this sacred space, on this holy night. The Savior’s love for sinners—His thirst for our redemption—it is as real as the tree that stands behind me tonight. And the wood of this tree is as real as the wood of the cross on which Jesus stretched out His arms of love to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray. Those strong arms—like evergreen branches—were able to bear all the weight of all the sin that would condemn us eternally. Jesus bears it all away. That good news lightens our dreary darkness and declares: Let nothing you dismay.
Christmas is always wonderfully the same; but it always makes us different. The message never changes; but the message changes us. The forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting—that 200 proof, glorious good news transforms us each year. It changes us from sinful saplings into oaks of righteousness. Jesus makes you ever-green with His everlasting life. He makes your life “lovely.” You are His branches, after all (John 15:5). He gives you His faithfulness and you—you can take a lesson from the Tannenbaum. Perhaps this is what the Psalmist had in mind when he wrote these words from Psalm 92: The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright. The Lord is upright—just like the tree behind me. In Him is life, and that life is the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter!
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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