Merry Christmas! There is something in the story of Christmas that brings us all here tonight, that draws us in. For many of us it’s a familiar story that draws us into things like wonder, joy and hope during this particular season each year. But the interesting thing about the story of Christmas from the Bible is that we end it just as the story is getting started! The Christmas story is the miraculous beginning of an even more miraculous story, a story that ends more gloriously than we could ever imagine. If all we read is the story of the angel’s visit, the shepherd’s joy, the wise men’s journey, we would never get the full Christmas story. We would miss out on the most amazing truth about us and the most amazing truth about God that only just began that first Christmas morning. So what is the whole story? What happens after the shepherds leave, the wise men go back, the angels return to heaven and, like your house, there is now plenty of room at the inn because everyone has gone home? How does the Christmas story end? Well, the angels in the story actually tell Mary, Joseph and the shepherds the whole story. Hidden in their glorious pronouncements is the whole story of what Christmas is all about: it is about Immanuel. A way, a chance for God to be with us again and we with Him. That all people can know the great joy of being close to their Heavenly Father again; tidings of great joy for all people. Tidings of great joy for those who are not perfect and are tried of pretending to be. We need a Savior because we were created to be with our Creator God in vital, purpose-giving, life-restoring relationship. And all of our ills, all of our brokenness in us and around us in our world comes from living life separated from God. What the angels announce that first Christmas is no less than God’s offer of forgiveness, that He will send us Himself. The infinite God will become an infant for us. He will be our Savior who will bring us back into abundant life with the One who made us. It is His forgiveness that will save us out of the lostness and brokenness of our sin against Him. The angel’s message on that first Christmas was filled with hope for us; the hope of our Savior, now come to us, born of God and born as one of us. In the angel’s message is the whole story of our forgiveness. And because forgiveness is always costly, our forgiveness will require both the joy of the cradle and also the pain of a cross.
