Among the sermons I’ve done for Christmas Eve is one titled "The Grinch Who Tried to Steal Christmas," the Grinch being, of course, Herod the Great, the "monster of the Christmas Story" in Matthew 2. It’s one I will likely do again someday, as Herod really did try to steal the Christmas story by ordering the killings of those baby boys two years old and under. Try as he did, he failed, and to this day the Christmas story has not been stolen, even though hoards of people (most notably, perhaps, the ACLU) have tried to.

In a word (or two), what is the Christmas story? As the one hymn puts it, it is "God and sinner reconciled." Christmas is God becoming flesh, one of us, who would go from cradle-to cross-to crypt. In so doing, Jesus reconciled us all to Himself by forgiving us of all our sins. Truly, Christmas is "God and sinner reconciled," that is, the gift of bringing us back to God whom we had left by sinning.

Please join us for this year’s Christmas Eve and Day services; Thursday, December 24 and Friday, December 25.